Sadly, our party leaders have moved away from its values over the last few years. And I agree with Doug Ross that the time has come for us to remind them that we, the grassroots, are the GOP -- and to push for the reestablishment of the party based upon our principles.

The tenets:

STRENGTHEN NATIONAL DEFENSE - increase the size, capability and efficiency of our Armed Forces, bringing back our defense spending to historical levels as percentage of GDP.

GAIN ENERGY INDEPENDENCE - open up ANWR and the OCS to exploration; aggressively pursue nuclear energy and green technologies; and incent private industry to aggressively pursue clean, renewable energy sources.

SECURE THE BORDERS - build physical barriers immediately as a precursor to an overarching, sensible immigration policy. If the boat's sinking, you plug the holes first.

DEATH TO EARMARKS - zero tolerance for earmarks.

DEATH TO CORRUPTION - zero tolerance for corruption.

ENGLISH AS NATIONAL LANGUAGE - national unity requires a national language. That language is English.

IMPLEMENT FLAT TAX OR FAIR TAX - simplify the tax system by eradicating a tax code gone mad.

REDUCE SIZE OF GOVERNMENT - provide "whistleblower-style" awards for reducing the size of government and task the IRS (which will no longer have to worry about enforcing the tax code) with achieving the reduction goals on an annual basis

SPUR HEALTHCARE COMPETITION - Address health-care deficiencies - with competitive, free-market solutions, not Government largesse.

ADDRESS ENTITLEMENTS - engage a bipartisan consortium to create a multi-million dollar competition to incent teams from private industry and academia to create solutions for our social security and Medicare liabilities.

This should not be a platform. It should be a promise -- an ironclad commitment -- to voters.

Now we can argue and dispute over how best to implement some of these points. And we can even disagree among ourselves about the relative importance of some of them. And yes, some of us may disagree on a point or two, while holding to the overall thrust of this plan of governance. But it is important that we have a clear platform and policy commitment within our party -- much as we did 14 years ago with the Contract With America. That is the recipe for success.

Posted by: Greg at 10:56 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 382 words, total size 3 kb.