Tonight, CNN contributor Erick Erickson of RedState, The Republican's answer to the Daily Kos and its founder Markos Moulitsas just tore apart and ripped into shreds the House GOP's new plan to be unveiled tomorrow... "Pledge To America." This is the GOP's pathetic attempt to recapture Newt Gingrich's 1994 "Contract With America" which failed miserably and has been aptly renamed "Contract On America."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
Perhaps the Most Ridiculous Thing to Come Out of Washington Since George McClellan
A+ Rhetoric. C- Ideas.
Posted by Erick Erickson
Wednesday, September 22nd at 6:47PM EDT
The House Republicans’ “Pledge to America” is out. A thrill will run up the leg of a few Chris Matthews’ types on the right. As Dan noted on Twitter, the Contract with America was 869 words and this is 21 pages. The Contract told you everything you needed to know about how a Republican Congress would be different from a Democrat Congress after 40 years of Democrat control.
These 21 pages tell you lots of things, some contradictory things, but mostly this: it is a serious of compromises and milquetoast rhetorical flourishes in search of unanimity among House Republicans because the House GOP does not have the fortitude to lead boldly in opposition to Barack Obama.
I have one message for John Boehner, Eric Cantor, and the House GOP Leadership: If they do not want to use the GOP to lead, I would like to borrow it for a time.
Yes, yes, it is full of mom tested, kid approved pablum that will make certain hearts on the right sing in solidarity. But like a diet full of sugar, it will actually do nothing but keep making Washington fatter before we crash from the sugar high.
It is dreck.
The pledge begins by lamenting “an arrogant and out-of-touch government of self-appointed elites” issuing “mandates”, then proceeds to demand health care mandates on insurance companies that will drive up the costs of health care for ordinary Americans.
The plan wants to put “government on the path to a balanced budget” without doing anything substantive. There is a promise to “immediately reduce spending” by cutting off stimulus funds. Wow. Exciting.
There is a plan to cut Congress’s budget, which is pretty much what was promised in 1994. Seriously? In 4 years did the Democrats really blow up the Congressional budget? No — the GOP did that too.
There is no call for a Spending Limitation Amendment or a Balanced Budget Amendment. It is just meaningless stuff the Democrats can easily undo and that ultimately the Senate GOP will even turn its nose up at.
The entirety of this Promise is laughable. Why? It is an illusion that fixates on stuff the GOP already should be doing while not daring to touch on stuff that will have any meaningful longterm effects on the size and scope of the federal government.
This document proves the GOP is more focused on the acquisition of power than the advocacy of long term sound public policy. All the good stuff in it is stuff we expect them to do. What is not in it is more than a little telling that the House GOP has not learned much of anything from 2006.
I will vote Republican in November of 2010. But I will not carry their stagnant water.
http://www.redstate.com/...
Ummm...Mr. Erickson...if you're voting Republican in November after completely disemboweling their new plan, you are indeed carrying their "stagnant water." You're just completely clueless and dishonest.
The Republicans are really not unlike like a law firm (Dewey Cheatham & Howe immediately comes to mind) for corporate liars, corporate and political thieves and corporate and political whores. They have no soul and no conscience. It's all about the money. Tax cuts for the top 1% of the wealthiest people with borrowed money from China. No help for the middle class, just slash and burn and continued war.
The new Republican pledge should be named "No Billionaire Or Corporation Left Behind".
The Republican Party's 21-page blueprint, "Pledge to America," was put together with oversight by a House staffer who, up till April 2010, served as a lobbyist for some of the nation's most powerful oil, pharmaceutical, and insurance companies.
In a draft version of The Pledge that was being passed around to reporters before the official release, the document properties list "Wild, Brian" as the "Author." A GOP source said that Wild -- who is on House Minority Leader John Boehner's payroll -- did help author the governing platform that the party is unveiling on Thursday. Another aide said that as the executive director of the Republican leadership group American Speaking Out, Wild's tasks were more on the administrative side of the operations.
Until early this year, Wild was a fairly active lobbyist on behalf of the firm the Nickles Group, the lobbying shop set up by the former Republican Senator from Oklahoma, Don Nickles. During his five years at the firm, Wild, among others, was paid $740,000 in lobbying contracts from AIG, the former insurance company at the heart of the financial collapse; $800,000 from energy giant Andarko Petroleum; more than $1.1 million from Comcast, more than $1.3 million from Exxon Mobil; and $625,000 from the pharmaceutical company Pfizer Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
This whole Republican horror story is like Bush 2.0!
Tonight the White House also responded to the new House Republican propaganda ploy:
Tonight, we learned more details about the Congressional Republican agenda – their “Pledge to America.” With this plan, they have made clear that they want to take America back to the same failed economic policies that caused this recession. Instead of charting a new course, Congressional Republicans doubled down on the same ideas that hurt America’s middle class.
Here’s what they made clear:
Tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires by borrowing $700 billion we can’t afford;
Tax hikes for 110 million middle-class families and millions of small businesses;
Cutting rules and oversight for special interests like big oil, big insurance, credit card and mortgage companies and Wall Street banks;
Doing nothing to stop the outsourcing of American jobs or to end tax breaks that are given to companies that ship jobs overseas;
All while adding trillions to our nation’s deficit.
Their plan is also notable for what it doesn’t talk about: protecting Social Security and Medicare from privatization schemes; investing in high-quality education for our nation’s children; growing key industries like clean energy and manufacturing; and rebuilding our crumbling roads, rails and runways.
This is the same agenda that caused the deepest recession since the Great Depression, costing 8 million jobs, wiping out trillions in family wealth and setting middle-class families back. Instead of a pledge to the American people, Congressional Republicans made a pledge to the big special interests to restore the same economic ideas that benefited them at the expense of middle-class families.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/...