Republicans ought politely to decline President Barack Obama’s invitation to a summit on health care reform. It’s not just a potential “trap,” as House Minority Leader John Boehner suspects, aimed at fast-forwarding a modified health care reform bill through Congress under a smokescreen of superficial “bipartisanship.” It’s also a violation of the spirit of our Constitution’s separation of powers.

The President has no legislative authority. He can propose laws—indeed, we expect him to do so—that are then introduced by legislators in Congress. He can sign a bill or veto it once it has been passed by both the House of Representatives and the Senate. He can mediate disputes among legislators to broker agreements. But the President cannot intervene directly in the legislative process until it is over.

The discussion that President Obama has proposed with Republicans for February 25th was, no doubt, inspired by his success at a question-and-answer session with the GOP last month. However, the new event is beginning to assume the trappings of a formal legislative session. Republicans will be asked to propose changes to the Senate version of the health care bill, and the President will offer compromises.

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For the Tea Party movement, 2009 was about coming together, meeting our brothers and sisters in arms, and standing athwart socialism, yelling, “Stop!”  It worked. President Obama entered office promising socialized medicine, card check, and cap and trade all before the August recess.  He went 0 for 3 thanks a grassroots uprising that came together like spattered quicksilver.

In our desire to fix things, we also launched a lot of legislative initiatives.  These initiatives included various sovereignty amendments in the states, petitions for Constitutional Conventions, petitions for redress of grievances, petitions of right, and state laws exempting states from any national healthcare legislation.  Each of these was a bold and important step, and such laws, amendments, and petitions should continue.  Next year.

Let’s not fool ourselves. While the Tea Party movement has been very effective, it has been effective only when focused on a very narrow set of compelling causes.  Our quick responses to card check and cap and trade convinced the White House to suspend those initiatives until we weren’t looking. Our overwhelming attack on ObamaCare took the last bit of energy and time from each Tea Party patriot.  We left it all on the field.

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