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Rationing our Elephant Intake

I was recently perusing the Tea Party’s Contract from America site and I have to say that I really like the way the movement is allowing the common man and woman to vote in order to decide what the final ten priorities will be within the contract expected to be unveiled on April 15th.  Seeing the list of proposed priorities as well as reading the multitude of great ideas circulating the Tea Party forums, I think the Tea Party movement needs to keep one thing in mind at all times:

You can’t eat the whole elephant at once.

I understand the excitement and energy behind the Tea Party movement.  As a long-time Republican, it disturbs me to see how many within that party are acting no different than the Democrats we helped them defeat.  Both parties have been spending out of control and leading us down a road to ruin.  The “silent majority” is now becoming quite loud and the Tea Party is providing the voice.

With that said, I fear that the Tea Party may become drunk on its own momentum and start believing that anything and everything they want to fix is possible right now.  Now, while I believe in the power of positive thinking, I also know that with poor planning comes poor performance and some things will take much longer than many of us would like.

To the Tea Party organizers credit, and to many evangelicals chagrin, the Tea Party has stayed focused on fiscal issues.  This is absolutely the right strategy.  A huge majority of Americans support the need to get our country’s fiscal house in order, but as soon as lines start to get drawn in the sand related to social issues, the support for a comprehensive platform will begin to wane.  In my opinion, this is big reason more Americans claim to be Independents rather than Republicans or Democrats.  At this point, Conservative Christians need to realize that for the Tea Party movement to be successful, it must remain focused on the topics that will rally the greatest support from the general public and out-of-control government spending and regulating is the one issue that can unify the largest base at this time.

With that said, I still believe that the message of fiscal conservatism could be in danger of getting spread too thin.  To avoid over-reaching or overshadowing many of our achievable ideas with those that are much more controversial, I would suggest a singular focus as we begin the long march to real fiscal change in the government.  That singular focus needs to be on fixing Congress first.

The public’s belief and trust in Congress is at an all-time low and this body not only controls the purse-strings of the country but passes legislation and regulations that intrude more and more each day into our lives.  We should be laser-like focused on improving this great albatross on our democracy.

I suggest packaging many of the great ideas posed in the forums related to Congress and make that the nucleus of the Tea Party platform.  Ideas such as term limits, citizen funding of elections, transparency of the legislative process and elmination of unrelated amendments attached to bills would be just a few of the sound and Congress-changing type actions that the vast majority of Americans will support.  With this focus, I believe we could begin to elect candidates that would be supportive of these changes or we would garner enough fear and attention of the incumbents that they will be compelled to make these changes for their political life.

Once we begin to fix Congress we will begin to take down an enormous obstacle to many of the more “radical” changes we have in mind – a flat tax or FairTax, reduction or elimination of the IRS, the elimination of Department of Education, entitlement reform, etc.

All of this will take time of course and I would like to think that the Tea Party movement has the patience and the intestinal fortitude for a long battle.  To win the battle we need a focused plan of action and I believe the first step of that plan is to fix Congress.  Three-fourths of America will support us.