"This is literally the kind of guy that we’ve been praying for to be in that position,” Tim Barton, head of the Wallbuilders organization that promotes the view that the founders were evangelical Christian conservatives, told Politico. “We’ve known this guy for years. He’s been a friend for years.”
Johnson vocally supported a petition in 2016, when he was a state legislator, asking Congress to convene an Article V convention, telling his colleagues that it was "measure of last resort" to rein in a government that was "doing way more than the founders intended."
“I came to this conclusion myself reluctantly, but I’m there,” Johnson said at the time. “I think we have to do it.”
Johnson also worked behind the scenes to persuade reluctant legislators, and while he hasn't spoken about it publicly since going to Washington, he convened a hearing last month of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government to discuss topic.
There are two paths to amending the Constitution, and only one has been used in the nation's history.
On that path, two-thirds of Congress must approve the potential amendment, and then three-fourths of the states must agree before it's added into the Constitution.
Article V, on the other hand, calls for a constitutional convention where multiple amendments can be debated if two-thirds of states petition Congress, but there's no limit on what changes could be made or how the convention would ratify them, but three-fourths of states would still have to approve for those changes to become law.
So far, 19 states have submitted COSA petitions, more than halfway to the 34 states necessary to open one, but Johnson's office downplayed his interest in the topic.
“Subcommittee hearings about a given subject should not be considered endorsements from the Chairman,” said Corinne Day, a spokesperson for Johnson.
The COSA movement exploits some ambiguity in Article V to insist that state legislatures, which tend to skew far more conservative than the public, would select delegates, and each state would get only one – giving Wyoming as much voting power as California.
“The worst-case scenario is that [an Article V convention] puts all of our cherished constitutional rights and civil rights completely up for grabs,” said Stephen Spaulding, vice president of Common Cause, when he testified at Johnson’s subcommittee hearing last month.
The mainstream legal consensus holds that an Article V convention could essentially repeal the founding document to completely restructure the U.S. government and the Bill of Rights, and civil rights watchdogs have been warning that's exactly what the COSA movement has been preparing to do.
“It is alarming to have a speaker of the House who supports the extremist Convention of States movement, which is striving to radically rewrite the U.S. Constitution,” said Russ Feingold, legal professor, former Wisconsin senator and current president of the American Constitution Society. “Any move by Congress in this direction risks catapulting this country into a constitutional crisis.”
