I agree. But, I'm not so convinced that we can will or pray ourselves out of it.
At least 50% of Americans want big government and like the current system. It's not *all* grifters and welfare cheats, there are a lot of people employed directly by the Govt. at all levels, and their are lots of private sector employees working for companies that feed off them.
There is the US Military, too. Per Wikipedia our active military is 1.2 million. Per the Constitution only the Navy is permitted to be a full-time outfit. How many patriotic military people would vote to end their own jobs, in the name of Constitutional Fidelity?
The Heritage Foundation writes on this:
Army Clause. The Congress shall have Power To ...raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years.... For most Americans after the Revolution, a standing army was one of the most dangerous threats to liberty.
So, even if you limit the "restoration team" to non-government dependent, not Democratic supporting Americans you have tremendous fracturing and difference of opinion, and a huge contingent that wants, at best, small changes only.
Even at Free Republic the last election was brutal. I know more than one long-time Freeper who left the site, at least temporarily, because they supported a candidate who was disfavored (this changed over time, too, obviously).
I just don't see the basis for some large groundswell of return to the Constitution, I see those of us who feel that was as being a marginal group, similar to the Libertarians.
Were the Founders efforts charaterized as "praying their way out of it"?
No, but they did what they did by faith in God, not man.
The patriots were a minority at our founding. Most people, then as now, don't know what they think. It takes a determined core of faith-filled freedom lovers who are willing to do whatever it takes to wrench their God-given rights and freedoms from the tyrants.
I just don't see the basis for some large groundswell of return to the Constitution
That is why it takes faith to gain and maintain freedom. Faith is not "what is". Faith does not rely on facts which are changeable in a millisecond. Faith is what changes things. Faith CHANGES fact. Many didn't see how Trump could win. But God has taken a hand.
Put your trust in the love of God and the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and keep at it until you too have "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" (Hebrews 11:1).