49er Dweet,

The key, IMO, are the Tea Parties, 912 Groups, et. al.

The Tea Parties exposed the soft underbelly of the system: primaries. This has the Ruling Elite of both parties very, very nervous (did you see Karl Rove’s attack of O’Donnell after her primary victory? It was Olbermann-esque). Fear is in the air.

The question they all want to know is: what do the Tea Parties want? The Republican establishment is trying to tempt the Tea Party to come into a “big tent” Republican Party. If the Tea Parties “take over” the Republican Party, they will lose because they will have decided to fight on the enemy’s territory.

Instead, the Tea Parties should tell the Washington Ruling Elite of both parties, “Here’s what we want: unconditional surrender. We want you to return the authority you have taken back from the states and the citizens over the past 100 years. You go back to defending our nation against foreign threats, protecting our interests abroad, and the Constitutionally-enumerated powers. That’s it. The rest comes back to us.”

ICs are simply a mechanism for calling this question. Because Congress is a monopoly, they control the agenda in Washington. But ICs are a way to put issues on the table; smart bombs, to go with the nuclear weapon of a Constitutional Convention.

Some of the questions they could call:

Why not have the Gulf Coast states create an Offshore Drilling Compact?
Why not have the Western states create a Federal Land Use Compact?
Why not have all of the states create a separate regulatory regime for cancer drugs, so that promising new drugs for really lethal cancers can get to the clinic faster?
Why not have the border states create a Border Enforcement Compact that creates rules and accountability for protecting our borders?
Why not have states create their own environmental regulatory framework, and get rid of the EPA?
Why not have states develop their own securities regulation system, or banking system?

The possibilities are legion. They are limited only by the competence of the Federal Government and the tolerance of the citizenry for Federal incompetence.

In other words, they are practically without limit.

Cheers,
L3