Warning! Conservatives Trying to Take Ownership of Constitution. Tea Party Movement Populated with Constitutional Scholars.

The The Mount Vernon Statement is an important sounding document, cleverly marketed as a tribute to George Washington. The most famous conservative ideologues were all there, those elite anti-American government leaders who knew better than most of us how to tank the global economy -- "names like Grover Norquist, Ed Meese, Richard Viguerie, Edwin Feulner and Alfred Regnery."

The Huffington Post wrote this: The proclamation (is) based on the Sharon statement -- a conservative declaration signed in 1960, that is credited with helping "launch and define the conservative movement … "The change we urgently need, a change consistent with the American ideal, is not movement away from but toward our founding principles," the statement reads. These founding principles, the drafters believe, can be broadly-defined as Constitutional conservatism. They then provide a short bulleted list of the way they believe these principles should apply to government.

Did you get that? The Mount Vernon Statement can be BROADLY-defined as Constitutional conservatism. It may not necessarily be a strict interpretation of the constitution, or may not be completely un-constitutional considering some parts, but can surely be BROADLY-defined as generally constitutional.

I guess it depends on how you might interpret the constitution. Or if we all wanted to make it simple, we could leave it up to the new Constitutional Conservatives to decide for us what the founding father meant, since constitution is right there in their title. Dylan Rattigan on MSNBC:

Video is here, just click start to watch:


Think Progress posted this great interview from CPAC regarding the movement to impeach Obama, demonstrating just how powerful their "constitutional" message is:

Google needs to fix video thumbnails, click start to watch:


At CPAC, ThinkProgress spoke with the Western Center for Journalism’s Caleb Heimlich, who was advocating on behalf of the “Impeach Obama” campaign being run by the Policy Issues Institute:

HEIMLICH: Basically the gist of our case is that Gerald Ford said “an impeachable offense is anything that Congress says it is.” And so our argument is that…Obama is not living up to the Constitution and therefore if you can prove that, he can be impeached."

Heimlich cited the auto bailouts, health care reform, and the stimulus as the specific reasons for impeaching President Obama, arguing that the Constitution does not give that authority. ThinkProgress then pointed out that it would be Congress, not the President, that would pass health care reform (and passed the Recovery Act). “That is a good point,” Heimlich conceded. He later acknowledged that he and his supporters want to throw Obama out of office based on policy disagreements:

TP: So basically, what you’re saying is your grounds for impeachment is based on your differences in – the policy differences that you have with the President and the Democrats in Congress.

HEIMLICH: Partially. It’s based on the policy differences with regards to the Constitution … We believe that if you’re not following the Constitution then you’re not fulfilling your oath of office and you shouldn’t be there.