Conservatives and the TEA PARTY begin to coalesce around the BIG TICKET items.

[PHILIP SCHNEIDER]

The process is obviously slow with different parts of the country having other issues higher on their list of priority's. My own list contains issues that define a bigger picture and are more basic to making additions and amendments to the constitution IE: Term Limits, Third Party, English Language, Presidential Qualifications, Repeal of Law and others.

Tea Party Unveils 'Contract From America' Planks

Thursday, 01 Apr 2010 11:58 AM

You won't find many surveys that involve over 365,000 respondents, but
that's how many online forms were completed to determine the top three
planks of the tea-party movement's platform released Thursday as part
of the new "Contract From America."

Leading the list as issue No. 1: "Protect the Constitution: Require
each bill to identity the specific provision of the Constitution that
gives Congress the power to do what the bill does."

That proposal won the approval of 80.7 percent of the survey responses
collected so far. Voting will continue through Monday at
ContractFromAmerica.com.

The second most popular of the 21 issues that are up for a vote:
"Reject cap and trade: Stop costly new regulations that would increase
unemployment, raise consumer prices, and weaken the nation's global
competitiveness with virtually no impact on global temperatures."

The goal of that plant, tea party officials say, is to block any
imposition of the cap and trade tax, whether by congressional fiat or
by the Environmental Protection Agency, which has threatened to act
unilaterally if Congress fails to do so. The issue won the support of
70.8 percent of respondents.

Issue No. 3 was unveiled Thursday based on the survey responses:
"Demand a balanced budget: Begin the Constitutional amendment process
to require a balanced budget with a two-thirds majority needed for any
tax hike." That plank received the approval of 69.9 percent of
respondents.
Issue No. 3 was unveiled Thursday based on the survey responses: "Demand a balanced budget: Begin the Constitutional amendment process
to require a balanced budget with a two-thirds majority needed for any
tax hike." That plank received the approval of 69.9 percent of
respondents.

Ryan Hecker is the 29-year-old Houston attorney who came up with the
Contract From America concept even before the tea-party movement was
launched in February 2009. He says the ultimate objective is to
influence the outcome of the midterm elections the way the Contract
With America did in 1994, only more so:

"My dream, my hope," Hecker tells Newsmax, "is that economic
conservative candidates and those who want to be economic conservatives
in the future will sign on, and that we get a bunch of blue-dog
Democrats and tons of elected officials onboard, and that they
recognize that any document they craft themselves won't be as powerful
as one coming from the people.

So I'm hoping this will be the legislative agenda, coming from the people, for the 2010 elections."

The Contract From America proposal first emerged at CPAC in February,
promising a legislative agenda bubbling up from the grass-roots rather
than down from legislators. Since then, Hecker his colleagues at the
Tea Party Patriots and other grass-roots organizations have sifted
through a small mountain of proposals submitted from voters across the
United States.

Using more than 5,000 surveys mostly completed by members of the
grass-roots movement, they winnowed the ideas down to 21 proposals.

Next they posted the list online in the form of an extended survey, and
directed voters to the ContractFromAmerica Web site to select the top
10 ideas.

The 10 proposals that the grass-roots voters deem the most important
will be included in the full ContractFromAmerica proposal, which will
be unveiled on April 15 during the massive Tax Day Tea Party rally
being conducted in the Nation's Capital. Reflecting the widespread,
de-centralized power of the tea party movement, the Contract From
America also will be simultaneously revealed in Houston, Austin,
Atlanta, and 80 other locations in the country.
Hecker, who sits on the national leadership council of Tea Party Patriots, gives many others due credit for helping to make his vision a
reality. He tells Newsmax that the Contract From America is intended
"to help turn the tea party movement into more than just a protest
movement. One of the major criticisms, which I is think is unjustified,
is that they're just 'anti.' This is offering powerful ideas from the
people."

The Contract From America concept has received the backing of former
Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, one of the architects of the
original Contract With America, which helped frame the political debate
that preceding the Republican takeover of the Congress in 1994.

It’s not the handiwork of me or any public official," Gingrich wrote
regarding the new Contract in a February column. "It is the genuine
voice of the American people. Unlike the current political dynamic, in
which the will of Washington is forced on America, this is the voice of
America coming to Washington."

Heckler is careful to emphasize he has deep respect for the original
Contract. But he says this one should be even more effective.

"The Contract From America was a great document," Heckler says, "but
what this says is it's not top down, it's bottom up… It comes from the
people, and it's how representative government should work."

What got Heckler, a young attorney fresh out of law school, interested in promoting a new political covenant in America?

"It was my frustration with the Republican Party's lack of legitimacy
on economic-conservative issues," he explains. "They no longer
represented for me a proxy for my beliefs on the economic front. So
this idea came from that. I thought, 'How do we move this country back
into an economic conservative direction if that's not where it seems
either party is headed. And then it just fit perfectly within the tea
party movement."