Appearing Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” Senator-elect Rand Paul (R-KY.) told host Christiane Amanpour he would push for a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

This is an idea whose time has come. In 1994, Republicans campaigned– and won — on a balanced budget amendment (as part of the Contract with America). Back then; the deficit was just $203 billion. Today, the national deficit is at $1.4 trillion (that’s roughly $3,500 for each American, and some $14,000 for each family of four in deficit spending just this year alone).

Most states require their elected officials to balance their budget each year, but no such requirement impedes the reckless spending of the United States federal government. A constitutional amendment would bar the federal government from spending more money than it brings in each year — and require a supermajority in order to raise taxes. This is not a radical idea, but the consequences of failing to enact such a measure cannot be overstated.

Fortunately, as evidenced by the Tea Party movement, there appears to finally be the political will required to get this done. Newly elected Republicans simply must realize they weren’t elected to merely “trim” spending or “slow down” the rate of government growth, but rather, to cut, de-authorize and balance the budget. (If they fail to grasp this fact, it will be a short and depressing two years).

It is also worth noting that the conservative movement is united behind this cause.

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When I think of a “Pledge” I’m reminded of my fraternity days and being hazed and lightly humiliated.

House Republicans are offering their “Pledge to America” on Thursday morning, the 23rd of September. The country has been hazed enough by politicians; so a pledge to back off from some of them can be welcome.

I’m happy to see Republicans offer a “Plede to America”; I even confer a “Least Objectionable Legislator” Award occasionally when I notice a nod toward limiting government in some usually tentative, and not very bold, fashion–regardless of party. But for the time being, it’s refreshing to see politicians bring something to the table besides an appetite for power.

We need to carefully examine this Pledge program, to look not only at what it challenges, but at what it protects (are term limits in there? does it seriously question entitlements? does it root out regulation?).  Every program—every program–I say it a third time; every program, must be challenged; it’s not clear that’s where this document really goes, but let’s look and see, and encourage.  It’s not enough to cut “entitlements” back to 2008 levels as drafts indicate; today’s situation is too serious to warrant accepting a two-year-old status quo. That’s worrisome, but the jury’s out.

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In 1994, GOP Leaders managed to release a “Contract with America” just days before voters swept them into office. Establishment types sitting in DC continue to believe that the “Contract” was somehow relevant to their victory. One of us was in the field during that election and can confirm that, at least where we were working, not a single voter had heard of the “Contract.” It was a DC thing.

37958976-GOP-Pledge-to-America –

Within hours, the DC GOP Establishment, desperate to show that they “get it,” will unveil their new “Contract.” They document is out now and is included here.

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Talking heads, pundits and bloggers have been buzzing for months now at the prospect of Republicans in Congress releasing a new version of the Contract with America, the set of legislative proposals Newt Gingrich and other Republican leaders cobbled together in the lead up to the 1994 election. While that election saw Republicans sweep into control of the House for the first time in 40 years, and take the Senate, 2010 is not 1994. Nationalizing that election made sense, nationalizing this one reeks of opportunism and a desperation for the Washington establishment to claim relevance.

In 1994, everyone knew Republicans were going to do well, but they didn’t know how well. The battle with President Clinton and liberals over Hillarycare, Congressional corruption and other issues soured a large portion of the nation on Democrats. It was a harmonic convergence of events that set the ball on a tee for Republicans. No one can say whether or not the Contract was the straw that broke the camel’s back, but it is given so much credit that logic dictates that at least some of it is undeserved.

While the ideas in the original Contract were put on paper by people from inside Washington, they had been outsiders their whole careers. None in the House had ever served in a Republican majority. Those drafting the new “Contract” have, and lost it by becoming what they ran opposing. It hasn’t been released yet, but the rumors are circulating about its content and release date, possibly as soon as this Thursday. Regardless of what it says, the message it will send, and the trouble for campaigns, campaigns doing quite well without it, is that it this election is about Washington. It could be the unforced fumble as the clock is running out of the 2010 campaign.

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A year ago, in a blogpost entitled The Great Awakening, I argued that conservatives “should be grateful to Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Rahm Emanuel.” After all, I wrote, they had unmasked “the Democratic Party as a conspiracy on the part of a would-be aristocracy of do-gooders hostile to the very idea of self-government in the United States,” and they had done so by making “the tyrannical propensities inherent within the progressive impulse visible to anyone who cares to take notice.” This is a theme to which I have returned repeatedly in a series of posts – some of them linked here, others archived here and here, and the most recent found here – arguing that, with the proper leadership, the Republican Party could seize this occasion and effect a political realignment.

The heart of the matter is simple. What Franklin Delano Roosevelt falsely claimed in 1936 is now demonstrably true: “A small group” of individuals – lead by our current President, his Chief of Staff, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and the Majority Leader in the United States Senate – really is intent on concentrating “into their own hands an almost complete control over other people’s property, other people’s money, other people’s labor – other people’s lives.” If they wish to effect a realignment, all that the Republicans have to do is to complete the task of unmasking begun by Obama, Pelosi, Reid, and Emanuel and make it clear that they really do intend to repeal Obamacare, to balance the federal budget without enacting permanent tax increases, to roll back the scope and size of the administrative state, and to restore within these United States limited, constitutional government.

They face two great obstacles. First, as I argued last year in my book Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift, the administrative state has been growing for almost a century now, and it has become entrenched. Moreover, its growth has been fueled not only by the ambitions of a self-styled progressive elite proclaiming its expertise and its desire to manage our lives for us. It has also been supported by the political psychology to which – the baron de Montesquieu, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Alexis de Tocqueville contended – commercial, liberal, democratic societies, such as our own, generally give rise. Put simply, men in liberal democracies tend to fall prey to what these thinkers call inquiétude, and under the influence of this uneasiness – this vague, unfocused fear lacking a defined object – they are apt, especially in times of economic distress, to be willing to trade independence for a promise of security. The Americans whom Tocqueville met in the early 1830s had the resources, institutional and moral, with which to resist this propensity. But we can no longer boast that, in the United States, local self-government is vigorous, private associations do much of what was allocated to government in Europe, the Christian religion provides us with a moral anchor, and marital fidelity and family solidarity afford us a haven from the upheavals that typify life in a dynamic, commercial society.

Second, no one really trusts the Republicans in Congress.

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The parallels to 1994 are all around us.  A Democrat president is elected.  He pushes big government agenda items like health care.  His presidency gets mired by scandal and circumstances.  His poll numbers begin to drop quickly.   In 1994 Republicans rallied around a set of principles and won a congressional majority.  Today, unfortunately, those principles often appear to be missing.

The Contract with America was a critical piece of the Republican victory in 1994 because it let voters know there was an alternative to the big spending ways of the Democrat Party.  Today, not so much.

Republicans appear to be all over the map and the clear principled default lines are missing.

Nowhere does that appear more evident than on the Financial Reform legislation.  The bill passed the Senate after the Democrats broke the Republican dam.  Sen. Scott Brown joined others in moving the bill to a House Senate Conference where things are going from bad to worse.  Republicans didn’t help make the bill “better” by voting for amendment’s like the Durbin price control amendment.

The time has come to for Republicans to begin to draft distinctions between Democrats and their big government policies.  The Financial Reform legislation is a good place to start.  The bill contains bailouts, takeovers, and price control schemes — via the Durbin Amendment — that is corporate welfare at it’s worse.

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One thing our founding fathers could not foresee… was a nation governed by professional politicians who have a vested interest in getting reelected.  They probably envisioned a fellow serving a couple of hitches and then looking forward to getting back to the farm.” — Ronald Reagan

The energy of 1994 led to the Contract with America, and the huge Republican victory of that year.  It was a victory for Republicans, but was it a victory for America?

The Contract with America had an inherent flaw.  It was a political party bargaining with Americans:  give us power and this is what we will do for you.  The Freshmen 50 is different:  it is Americans telling the federal government what it will do.

We are citizen-candidates united on a platform of six simple and realistic reforms for our government:

• Apply the Law Equally: All laws that apply to all citizens also apply to Congress
• Term Limits: Limit terms in Congress to no more than 12 years in the House and Senate, respectively
• Enforce Congressional Ethics: Yearly tax and expense audits, former Congressmen and their staff cannot be lobbyists, allow the ethics committee to do their job
• Read the Bill: Prior to final vote, the entire bill must be read out loud on the floor of the House; if a representative is not present for the entire reading, he cannot vote
• Tax Reform: Repeal our current tax code in favor of one that taxes only once, at one rate, and require a 2/3-majority vote for any new tax
• Balance the Budget: Amend the Constitution to require a balanced budget

We are unique.

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The retirement of Evan Bayh is the latest heralding of difficult 2010 election year for the Democrats.  It is also a symptom of Obama’s mid 40s approval rating.  Smart Democrats know that the average midterm election year losses for the President’s party, when his approval rating is below 50%, is 41 seats in the House.  Three Presidents in the modern era suffered such a fate – Johnson, Ford and Bill Clinton.  Of those three, only Clinton went on to win a second term.  While it is likely Obama will suffer huge mid-term losses, it is more than unlikely that he will enjoy Clinton’s revival.

Clinton suffered the loss of 54 House seats in his first midterm election, despite a growing economy, because he broke his middle class tax cut promise – and the Republicans were smart enough to unanimously oppose that and run on the Contract With America.  Despite the loss of the House for the first time in 40 years, Clinton won reelection.

Clinton was able to win reelection in part because Bob Dole was not an effective candidate for the Republicans on the tax issue.  Clinton also famously triangulated in 1995 and 1996 with the help of longtime strategist Dick Morris.  Dropping ideology for practicality, in 1995 and 1996, Clinton pushed a national campaign to prevent teen pregnancy, issued an order clarifying the rights of religious expression in schools,  supported uniforms for public schools, banned human cloning, signed Megan’s law and welfare reform to name a few less than ideological triangulations.  Even before that, Clinton incurred the wrath of unions by pushing the ratification of NAFTA.

Of course, as the Governor of a swing state, Bill Clinton leaned an early lesson in pragmatism after he was defeated in his bid for a second term.  After apologizing for the policies that led to his reelection defeat, he regained the governorship and went on to enact mandatory competency testing for teachers and granted tax breaks to businesses – again with triangulating guru Dick Morris by his side.

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The Scott Brown triumph heralds an enormous opportunity for Republicans this fall.  As I posited in Part 2 of this series, The Top 4 Things Congressional Republicans Must Do in 2010, in order to make the most of the 2010 elections, Republicans must run on a defined Agenda for the Fall Elections.  That Agenda needs to be Clear, Practical and Limited.  Here is what I mean:

Clear.  In the wake of the Brown election, the Democrats most certainly will have a messy 2010.  The Pelosi wing of the Democrats, driven in part by Moveon.org, Emily’s List and others, will continue to push their views and legislation on issues like Health Care, Cap and Trade, Taxes, Afghanistan and more.  The Evan Bayh wing of the party, located in swing districts and states and fearful of the message of the Brown election – in order to survive – will have to push back on those Left Wing plans.  At worst, that inter-party warfare will be politically very ugly.   At best it will portray a Democrat Party with no clear vision for the future.  Similar to the fate that befell the warring and splintered Democrat Party in 1968, the Democrat infighting in 2010 will hamstring their election efforts.

That lack of clarity on the Democrats part must be contrasted by a clear governing vision on the part of Republicans.  The beauty of the Contract With America, beyond its content, was that it provided a concise and clear Agenda.  It told the voters exactly what Republicans intended to do if they won.  This Fall, Republicans, in a unified fashion, must do no less than that if they want to take back the House.

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The 2010 elections represent an enormous opportunity for Congressional Republicans.  As I pointed out in Part I of this series,  The Lessons of ’66 and ’94 Loom Over the Democrats, the average loss for the President’s Party, when the President’s approval rating is below 50%, is 40+ House seats. The past, however, is no guarantee of the future – just a possible guide.  If Republicans are to realize the full potential of this election, they will need to overhaul their recent election strategies.

The Top 4 changes they should employ are:

4.  Oppose.  It has long been said that the first duty of the opposition is to oppose.  Given that the outset of 2010 will be dominated by the health care bill which will then give way to a pork barrel “jobs” (read government jobs) bill and then on to cap and trade, immigration/amnesty and then taxes – Congressional Republicans will have ample opportunity to oppose the Democrats’ bad policies.  More than merely oppose them, however, the magnitude of the “Change” being pushed by the Democrats requires the Congressional Republicans to demonstrate valor and determination in defeating those measures as if the Constitution depended upon it – because it does.

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From the Washington Times:

Charles Rangel (D-NY) was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1970.

Sen. Jim DeMint says Washington politicians are like fruit on the vine: the longer they hang around, the more rotten they get.

The South Carolina Republican – hearkening back to the days of the party’s “Contract with America” – on Tuesday offered a fix to the corrupting influence of “permanent politicians,” introducing an amendment to the Constitution that would limit Senate members to three six-year terms and House members to three two-year terms.

“As long as members have the chance to spend their lives in Washington, their interests will always skew toward spending taxpayer dollars to buy off special interests, covering over corruption in the bureaucracy, fundraising, relationship building among lobbyists, and trading favors for pork – in short, amassing their own power,” said Mr. DeMint, who is running for a second term next year. (more…)

The 2009 elections have come and gone.  New Jersey elected a Republican governor.  That is more of a surprise than the fact that Virginia now has a Republican governor (for the first time in 8 years) and less of a surprise than the Democrats winning House seats in New York and in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Mixed results you say?  If so, is there anything to be learned from these elections?  The answer is no, because we should have learned these lessons already.   In case they have been forgotten, however, here they are:

5.   Off year Elections Are Hard on the President’s Party.  The President’s party loses 20 seats, on average, in the House in the mid-term elections.  When President’s approval rating is below 50%, that number doubles.  So it can be of little surprise that voters dealt the Democrats losses this November.

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