Restore the Republic 2012

Introduction
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Barak Obama’s healthcare legislation is widely regarded as his greatest liability, but in itself, this conclusion misses the point. The real point is that the country spoke by a strong, loud, persistent majority all summer long that they did not want that legislation, and the Democratic Congress shoved it down our throats anyway. They were unresponsive to the voice of the people. They ceased to be the servants of the people and became adversarial. They moved in an open, naked way to subjugate us and wrest away our liberties. This is the real issue, and healthcare is simply the application.

Nevertheless, healthcare served a unique role in their power grab. About one-fifth of our economy is tied up in the healthcare industry, so for the government to absorb so much raises a fundamental question: was it their goal to socialize medicine, or were they actually using healthcare as a way to socialize our government? Combining that with the entitlements that already exist draws us far over the line into becoming a socialist country, and the rest becomes a matter of time. It is now or never. It is no longer a question of protecting our liberties, but of regaining them, and this should be a central theme to the 21st Century Contract with America. The following initiatives would be grouped under a major sub-category called 'Restore the Republic". 
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Presidential Reform

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The first major area is to reform the presidency. The author of this blog endorses Newt Gingrich for president, with his intention to issue numerous executive orders, on his first day in office, to dismantle about 40% of President Obama’s changes. However, some of those actions will require follow-up. For example, President Gingrich may issue an executive order banning white house czars, but a future president could simply overturn that decision when it suited him. Therefore, the executive order is the first step, but new laws must be passed to make the initiative permanent. President Gingrich should also move quickly in conjunction with the new Congress to dismantle more of the damage that the previous Democratic Congress has caused, in each case, through repeal or through other appropriate legislation (beginning with repealing Obamacare).
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Congressional Reform

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The second major area to reform is Congress, which would occur through a new voting procedure called line-item legislation. Voting is where funds are appropriated, so that is where the rubber meets the road in most forms of Congressional corruption. Therefore, the strongest efforts to reform the Congress must focus there. Line item legislation is discussed at length elsewhere in this blog (see the right hand column).  

In fighting corruption, our founding fathers would have sought a systemic solution. They would have harnessed the political ambition and self-interest that are present within that corruption, and morphed it into a competitive form to establish a new balance of powers within each house. That way, even if some legislators remained corrupt at heart, they would hold each other in check as a new institutional safeguard, and that is what Line-Item Legislation does. As a result, legislation would move further from a partisan basis and closer to a healthy, sound American basis. This raises the question of applications for the new system, which would be expressed through the other items in the 21st Century Contract with America, as well as the other normal business of Congress. It would be nice, for example, to finally have a federal budget.
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The Statehouse Initiatives

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Both areas of reform, mentioned above, would be reinforced through a companion initiative by the state legislatures, which would bypass Congress in order to pursue four constitutional amendments on their own. This would be a new and unprecedented branch of the national, presidential campaign, as an allied initiative, as the third major part of this solution. These initiatives would include a balanced budget amendment, which would enhance the effectiveness of line-item legislation, and an amendment for term limits, to further reign in the national legislature. But the states would also acquire new tools to compensate for the balance of powers that was disturbed through the 17th Amendment, plus the ability to check the abuse of the presidential pardon where applicable and necessary. Combined, these initiatives would restore the state’s voice in national affairs as should properly be.

Links to the 'statehouse’ initiatives are found in the left-hand column of this blog. These initiatives could be added to the work that Governor Rick Perry is already undertaking in conjunction with Speaker Gingrich over tenth amendment rights. Since the statehouses made huge Republican gains in the 2010 election, this is the ideal opportunity; but in truth, the items suggested would be in the best interest of the states and the nation even if Democrats were in control of those states.
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Judicial Reform
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The fourth major area to reform is the judiciary, by reigning in activist judges. Newt Gingrich already offers a well thought-out plan for this, and another article in this blog suggests a further common sense step (which happened to be based on an earlier Gingrich idea).
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Summary

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The ideas described on this blog should be completely compatible with the 21st Century Contract with America. Together, they should form a major sub-group called 'Restore the Republic'. The author envisions two other major sub-groups: 'American Enterprise' and 'American Citizen', which should be self explanatory. Most of the initiatives in the 21st Century Contract with America would naturally divide into one of these sub-groups anyway, but packaging them as three big sub-groups would help make the whole Contract more comprehensible to voters everywhere.