I know I'm not alone, though you wouldn't know it from some of the rhetoric we're hearing from Democratic and Republican candidates here in Tennessee.
I love Nancy Pelosi. I think she's doing an outstanding job through a tremendously difficult time in American history, helping to lead America forward and helping to elect more members of Congress who put people ahead of profits.
If you don't have your reason to vote yet this fall, then vote to keep Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House.
Within less than 24 hours after the Republicans released their major policy statement - the Pledge for America - Pelosi's office had released a withering critique of the Republican Party's empty rhetoric, their desire to take the country backward, and their lack of attention to real Americans.
Sam Stein of Huffington Post has already detailed how the Republican plan was drafted (literally) by a former lobbyist who has gone through the revolving door from Congress to K Street.
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.
The insanity of this boggles the mind. Any sensible American who has been paying attention would recognize that big business interests have controlled too much of Washington for far too long. And as the Tea Party Movement has conclusively shown us, even the Republican base is mad as hell and not going to take it anymore.
Which brings us to the pitch-perfect press release this morning, reviewing the GOP's new "Pledge" in the words of pundits from across the spectrum. Let's just say that it's not two thumbs up.
Today, Congressional Republicans unveiled their ‘new’ "Pledge to America." Press reports this morning find the agenda offers little more than "recycled ideas" with the same-old Bush-GOP failed policies.
Roll Call – Republican ‘Pledge’ Includes Few New Ideas:
...it includes little that hasn’t already appeared in numerous Republican leadership talking points over the past two years.
...The appearance of recycled ideas in the agenda didn’t surprise many on and off the Hill.
Several Republican lobbyists downplayed the importance of the agenda the day before its release, saying they weren’t expecting anything new.
Ezra Klein, Washington Post – The GOP’s bad idea:
...when you get past the adjectives and soaring language, the talk of inalienable rights and constitutional guarantees, you’re left with a set of hard promises that will increase the deficit by trillions of dollars, take health-care insurance away from tens of millions of people, create a level of policy uncertainty businesses have never previously known, and suck demand out of an economy that’s already got too little of it.
...This proposal avoids the hard choices of governance. It says what it thinks will be popular and then proposes what it thinks will be popular — even when the two conflict. That’s an idea that may help you win elections, but not one that’ll help you govern a country.
The Hill – Conservatives mixed on House GOP’s ‘Pledge’:
Prominent conservative bloggers were mixed Wednesday night in their reactions to the House GOP’s new "Pledge to America" policy agenda, which will be officially unveiled on Thursday.
The loudest voice against came from RedState’s Erick Erickson, who characterized the program as a "series of compromises and milquetoast rhetorical flourishes."
...Doug Powers at Michelle Malkin was skeptical that the document could bind the GOP together long enough to pass its reforms.
On the left, key bloggers — much like establishment Democrats — described the program as a return to failed Republican policies from the past.
Jed Lewison at Daily Kos called its conservative stance on social issues a mark of the "same old GOP."
RedState – Perhaps the Most Ridiculous Thing to Come Out of Washington Since George McClellan:
...These 21 pages tell you lots of things, some contradictory things, but mostly this: it is a series of compromises and milquetoast rhetorical flourishes in search of unanimity among House Republicans...
...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.
The New Republic – The Pledge To America: Deja Vu All Over Again:
The Republican Party’s new "Pledge To America" is not what you’d call a surprise. It’s a reprise of every theme of republican economic policy-making the party has followed for 20 years...
...The Pledge To America fulminates against debt, but it should be read as a plan to explode debt through the ceiling. It would make permanent all the Bush tax cuts, at a cost of trillions. It would add new business tax cuts on top of those. It would repeal the Affordable Care Act, at massive long-term fiscal cost.
Newsweek – GOP ‘Pledge to America’ Looks Unlikely to Inspire:
...The biggest question is how Republicans will attempt to square the circle of calling for $4 trillion to be removed from the federal treasury in the next decade by making the Bush tax cuts permanent...
...The messiest proposal legislatively is repealing health-care reform and replacing it with the predictable grab bag of Republican health-care solutions: tort reform, health savings accounts, and buying insurance across state lines.
MSNBC’s First Read – First Thoughts: The Pledge:
...the GOP’s blueprint also contains obvious contradictions. How does this demonstrate the GOP has new ideas when its first policy proposal is making the Bush tax cuts permanent? How do you reduce the deficit if you make those tax cuts permanent? Why work to ensure access for patients with pre-existing conditions if you repeal a law that already does that? Why push for tax cuts for small businesses when your party has opposed similar cuts that Democrats have offered?... It also ignores what to do about Social Security and Medicare. And how do you truly address cutting government spending if you ignore Social Security and Medicare?
The Atlantic – The ‘Pledge to America’ Is Pointless, and It’s Not Really News:
The GOP’s new talking points memo/policy proposal/governing agenda is called ‘Pledge for America,’ and it seems to me decidedly un-newsworthy. That’s not because it isn’t worthy of discussion, but rather because it isn’t news, or more specifically, it isn’t new.
The GOP proposes to kill anything with the whiff of Obama’s first two years. That means: repeal health care reform, cancel the stimulus, and reclaim TARP funds...The Bush tax cuts stay where they are...
Washington Monthly – With ‘Pledge To America,’ House GOP Shoots, Misses:
...the endeavor is such an embarrassing failure. The document combines old ideas, bad ideas, contradictory ideas, and discredited ideas. The Republican Party that lost control of Congress four years ago has had an abundance of time to craft a policy vision that offered credible, serious solutions. Instead, we’re confronted with a document that can best be described as tired nonsense.
...If Republicans set out to prove that they’re wholly unprepared and incapable of governing effectively, they’ve succeeded beautifully.
...today, the House GOP will release a "Pledge" that simply doesn’t make any sense to those who take reality seriously. It’s a reminder that the Republican Party just isn’t good at this sort of thing. It excels in attack ads, smear campaigns, and media manipulation; but the GOP struggles badly, to the point of comedy, when asked to do substantive work.
Damn.
The thing that all the Chicken Littles here forget is that as unpopular and unmotivated as the Democrats are this fall, and as angry as independent voters are, the Republican Party is completely out of ideas, completely sold out to the special interests that got us in this miss to begin with, and completely splintered into factions between the libertarian Ron Paul afficionados, the lobbyist-driven Boehner-philes, and the Christianists. There is almost universal hatred among Republicans toward the neoconservatives, although neocons still hang around the Republican Party enough to make it smell like death.
In the end, the 2010 elections are all about local races. And while many voters in 2010 would say that their member of Congress doesn't deserve re-election, there is also an overwhelming sense that the Republican challengers look a lot like the Bush regime that was flatly rejected in 2008.
One more thing about Nancy Pelosi. It astonishes the heck out of me that someone like Brett Carter (TN-6) would throw Pelosi under the bus when Pelosi has been such an effective Speaker. If Brett Carter had any prayer of defeating the well-funded, experienced, Republican state Senator Diane Black, it would have been through aligning himself with the Democratic populist agenda while showing a capacity to solve problems. Instead, Carter called for Pelosi to step down as Speaker in an election cycle where she has been vilified by the right while raising $27.7 million (and rising!) for the DCCC in the 2010 election cycle.
Fundraising wouldn't be such a big issue for candidates if we passed the Fair Elections Now Act - and hopes are that we might see it happen this fall. Certainly, this is one area where Tea Partiers and independent voters can agree with the Democrats who are pushing for the bill's passage. The influence of money in politics is screwing up our electoral system and making government too much of a bloodsport.
Money is not speech and corporations are not people. Corporations can be in more than one place at the same time, they never die, and they have no soul.
But if the Republicans want to continue pretending that astroturf tastes like grass, then they can go ahead and eat it.