Contract FROM America

Those of us who remember the 1994 elections remember the Contract With America that united GOP candidates throughout the country and effectively nationalized the congressional elections. It helped lead to a sweeping victory for the GOP and a takeover of both Houses of Congress.

Another Contract is in the works, but this one coming from the people instead of the politicians:

In 1994, Newt Gingrich presented the "Contract with America." It was a "contract" from Republican politicians to voters concerning what legislative action the new majority would take in its first hundred days. In 2010, the People are preparing a "Contract from America," which establishes what the voters expect from their legislative representatives. The "Contract from America" is what the "Contract with America" should have been but wasn't.

The "Contract from America" (CFA) is a grassroots, bottom-up document created by hundreds of thousands of people who are part of the Tea Party protests and Glenn Beck's 912 Project. It began in September 2009 with TheContract.org, where individuals provided and debated thousands of ideas for this new "contract."

I had the opportunity to speak with Ryan Hecker, a Houston area Tea Party activist, full-time attorney, and father behind the Contract from America.

Hecker stated that the CFA "has been an idea I've had since the November 2008 elections." He felt that our elected representatives, especially among Republicans, "lost their legitimacy" as fiscal conservatives and proponents of limited government. Hecker believes that this document will be a strong step forward in obtaining "real economic conservative and good governance reform in Congress."

Hecker noted that what drives the people involved in putting the CFA together is "a desire to push and demand accountability" from our elected representatives.

CFA, at this point, is a work in progress. Online activists pared thousands of ideas down to twenty-one. I asked Hecker about the process by which the CFA came to be. "After narrowing the document down to twenty-one items, through a series of tedious surveys filled out by thousands of mostly tea party local coordinators and grassroots activists, the Tea Party Patriots enlisted sixteen scholars to write two-hundred-word statements in support of one of the twenty-one ideas." Hecker's fellow activists "are in the process of posting these statements on the website."

Currently, visitors to the CFA's website can debate and vote on these twenty-one ideas. Those behind the CFA are hard at work building a list of solid positions that activists can present at upcoming Tax Day Tea Party rallies across America.

Those familiar with Gingrich's "Contract with America" will note a significant difference between that document and the Tea Party Patriots' "Contract from America." Gingrich's document listed specific reforms intended to pass "on the first day of the 104th Congress." In addition, it listed several acts that Republicans brought to the House Floor "within the first 100 days."

The CFA does not list specific legislative acts, which follows from its grassroots nature. Instead, it is more akin to a list from voters telling their representatives and senators, as Hecker noted in our conversation, that "this is what we expect from you." Hecker added, however, that it would not be difficult to translate the "Contract from America" into specific legislation. Some, in fact, already exists.

You can read the rest of it at the link.

The Contract With America was a great idea, but Congress quickly lost their way and didn't follow through. A Contract from the voters has the potential to keep politicians in line much better than anything the pols can come up with. I haven't seen the final version yet, but I like the idea.