Constitution Party

The Constitution Party is a paleoconservative minor political party in the United States. The Constitution Party strongly champions the principles of our Republican form of government laid down by our Founding Fathers in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. The goal of the Constitution Party is to restore American jurisprudence to its Biblical foundations and to limit the federal government to its Constitutional boundaries. It is the third largest political party in terms of voter registration with 367,000 registered voters.^[1] Rick Jore, Member of the Montana House of Representatives, was the highest elected official who is a member of the Constitution Party.

History[edit]

Howard Phillips, a native of Boston, Massachusetts, founded the U.S. Taxpayers Party in 1992, with a goal to limit the U.S. government to its constitutional boundaries and to restore civil government to its original principles. In 1999, at its national nominating convention for the 2000 elections, delegates changed name of the party to the "Constitution Party" in the belief that the new name better reflects the party's primary policy approach of enforcing provisions and limitations of the U.S. Constitution. Conservative columnist Joseph Sobran of Virginia was the initial vice-presidential nominee, but he withdrew in favor of J. Curtis "Curt" Frazier of Missouri.

In 2004, the party nominated Michael Peroutka for President and the Christian pastor from Montana, Chuck Baldwin, for vice president. Baldwin was nominated in 2008 to head the Constitution Party ticket; he defeated Alan Keyes, the former United Nations Ambassador to the United Nations.^[2] Baldwin emerged in 2016 in the ranks of Never Trumpers.

In 2012 the party nominated former U.S. Representative Virgil Goode of Virginia. In 2020, the Party nominated Don Blankenship of West Virginia, with William Mohr of Michigan as its candidate for Vice President. Blankenship had made a strong bid for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in 2018, but was defeated in the primary election after President Trump and Senate Leader Mitch McConnell threw their support behind a rival candidate who went on to lose in the general election.

Core Principles[edit]

• Abortion: The pre-born child, whose life begins at fertilization, is a human being created in God's image. The first duty of the law is to prevent the shedding of innocent blood. It is, therefore, the duty of all civil governments to secure and to safeguard the lives of the pre-born.
• Local Government: Civil government should reside close to the people. The best way to ensure this, is to keep it in the local arena, this ensures that government will be more responsible, responsive, and accountable than the current Federal Government.
• Congressional Reform: The Seventeenth Amendment (providing for direct, popular election of U.S. Senators) should be repealed
• Deficit Spending: The government must not spend more than it takes in during the payoff period.
• Crime: Crime, in most cases, is to be dealt with by state and local governments. "Hate crimes" is an excuse for the federal government to extend its jurisdiction to crimes which would otherwise be in the province of the states.
• Defense: The primary obligation of the federal government to provide for the common defense.
• Education: The federal government has absolutely no jurisdiction concerning the education of our children, the United States Department of Education should be abolished; all federal legislation related to education should be repealed. Education should be then relegated solely to the states.
• Immigration: The Constitution Party affirms the integrity of the international borders of these United States and the Constitutional authority and duty of the federal government to guard and to protect those borders, including the regulation of the numbers and of the qualifications of immigrants into the country.
• The Judiciary: The Constitution Party supports Congressional enforcement of the Constitutional rule of good behavior and to restrain judicial activism by properly removing offending judges through the process of impeachment provided for in Article I, § 2 and 3 of the Constitution.
• Trade: The Constitution Party favors the abolition of the Office of Special Trade Representative, and insist on the withdrawal of these United States from the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the World Trade Organization (WTO), and all other agreements wherein agencies other than the Congress of these United States improperly assume responsibility for establishing American trade policies.
• Religious Freedom: The Constitution grants no authority to the federal government either to grant or deny the religious expressions of the people in any place.
• State Sovereignty: The Constitution Party believes the federal government should divest itself of operations not authorized by the Constitution, the operations include, but are not limited too, policies relating to state education, natural resources, transportation, private business, housing, health care, and many more.
• Taxes: The IRS should be abolished. The Liberty Amendment should be ratified which would repeal the Sixteenth Amendment, and provide that "Congress shall not levy taxes on personal incomes, estates, and/or gifts."

Notes[edit]

1. ↑ Constitution Party Press Kit
2. ↑ http://www.constitutionparty.com/news.php?aid=751

External links[edit]

• Party website