Coburn To Shift Focus To A Constitutional Convention?
Coburn to Focus Retirement Efforts on Article V Convention
by Brian Gilmore
Last month, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) announced that he will retire at the end of 2014, cutting short his second Senate term by two years. His decision was in part the result of his health struggles related the recent recurrence of prostate cancer. But Sen. Coburn also cited the dysfunction in Washington D.C., and particularly in the U.S. Senate, in stating: “As a citizen, I am now convinced that I can best serve my own children and grandchildren by shifting my focus elsewhere.”
John Ward’s HuffPost interview with Sen. Coburn last week sheds some light on exactly how Sen. Coburn intends to shift his focus:
“It’s time for me to go do something else,” Coburn said. “I know me. I’ve made lots of shifts in my life, and I know when it’s time. My faith comes into that. I pay a lot of attention to what I think I’m supposed to be doing. … And it’s just time for me to do something else. So I’m getting ready to walk through whatever door opens.”
“I don’t have any set plans whatsoever,” he said.
There are two exceptions to that statement. He has plans to play golf, a game he loves and has rarely been able to enjoy during his time in Washington. And he is going to lend his support to a growing effort in state legislatures across the country to call a convention to amend the Constitution with the aim of limiting the size and reach of the federal government.
“I’m going to be involved with the Convention of States. I’m going to try to motivate so that that happens. I think that’s the only answer,” Coburn said. “I’m just going to go around and talk about why it’s needed, and try to convince state legislatures to do it.”
Sen. Coburn’s endorsement of and plans to actively support an Article V convention of the states to propose amendments adds further momentum to the movement that has been gaining steam since the second half of 2013. Fueled in large part by conservative talk radio host Mark Levin’s book The Liberty Amendments: Restoring the American Republic