The Republicans’ ‘Pledge to America’ UPDATED
Today, the House Republicans released their Pledge to America. David Frum, the Republican whose claim to fame these days is bashing other Republicans, is already panning it, which tells me that it’s probably praiseworthy.
In fact, the very idea that Frum is trying to position himself as the Tea Party’s advocate, as he does in his post on the Pledge, is risible. He has no demonstrated connection to the Tea Party’s priorities, and is in fact their enemy in a way: his “compassionate conservatism” is big government, of the very kind that is bankrupting the nation and that the Tea Party despises. In many ways, the Tea Party is a revolt against the Beltway-captive Frums of the world. But enough about him.
The “Pledge to America” name is obviously intended to invoke the 1994 “Contract with America” that the Republicans used to centralize and nationalize their message that year en route to taking both houses of Congress for the first time in decades. As a historical allusion, it’s good. Republicans unified and rode to victory in 1994, and are on the verge of doing the same thing in 2010. I would have preferred something bolder, and in fact proposed a “Freedom Agenda” to the RNC several months back when I was still inside the party structure. But the “Pledge to America” is solid.
It tells the voters that the Republicans in the House, who can be expected to walk point in opposing President Obama’s threatened “fundamental transformation of America” after November, understand the task that’s before them, are mindful of the history that’s behind them, and mean business. They will stop the Obama agenda and replace it with a better set of priorities that will help restore fiscal sanity and a healthier relationship between the people and our government.
The document begins with a paraphrase of the Declaration of Independence, but changes course over the question of ending tyrannical government: the Pledge calls for changing the agenda of government rather than changing the government itself. As for its goals, they can be summed up this way:
Jobs:
- Stop job-killing tax hikes
- Allow small businesses to take a tax deduction equal to 20 percent of their income
- Require congressional approval for any new federal regulation that would add to the deficit
- Repeal small business mandates in the new health care law.
Cutting Spending:
- Repeal and replace health care
- Roll back non-discretionary spending to 2008 levels before TARP and stimulus (will save $100 billion in first year alone)
- Establish strict budget caps to limit federal spending going forward
- Cancel all future TARP payments and reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
Reforming Congress:
- Will require that every bill have a citation of constitutional authority
- Give members at least 3 days to read bills before a vote
Defense:
- Provide resources to troops
- Fund missile defense
- Enforce sanctions in Iran
The pledege is a start and lets hope that it is just that a start. You need to start somewhere when you have a huge mess to clean up and it isn’t like they will have 60 seats in the Senate or a Republican President to work with. They will have to fight with delaying tactics to bleed the Democrats until 2012 and then retake additional seats in the Senate and White House. Then we can really push for true lasting reform and maybe a couple of sorely needed amendments. Let’s not flog the weak kneed in Congress just yet as they will need to show some true backbone over the next two years or face pink slips. We just need to prevent anymore damage and roll back what we can. It would be nice to have a budget and even better to force restrictions on bills, so we don’t have to pass it to see what is in it. I give the Pledge a nice reserved golf clap.
“The pledge is a start and lets hope that it is just that a start.”
Exactly so.
Just as Rome wasn’t built in a day, neither will we be able to reform and reconstruct Washington DC in a day, either, (unless DC becomes “Ground Zero” for one of those terrorist attacks that the Alleged Hawaiian thinks “we” can absorb).
What the Pledge DOES do, like the Contract With America before it,is lay out a verifiable and public set of policy goals that the public can vote up or down upon…and more importantly, hold Congress accountable to.
Contrast that with the nebulous slogans of “Hope” and “Change”.
So first we vote them back into the majority, and then we see how they actually implement their mission statement, given the present partisan limitations.
Indeed. As a wise man (can’t remember who right off the top of my head) said, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
This is a good first step. It’s by no means the last step. But in order to make it work, we need to actually elect good candidates… otherwise it’s just another scrap of paper, because there won’t be enough supporters of these reforms in Congress to do anything about them.
I’ve said it before that we must hold our elected representative accountable and this will be one of those items against which they will be measured. If the fail at this very simple task then they cannnot be trusted with the full keys to the kingdom and need to be removed from office in 2012. I am sick and tired of the pols telling us what they think we want to hear to get to Washington then ignoring us while they are there. That mentality ends now! If this group of pols thinks they are being returned to power and it is business as usual then the GOP will cease to exist in 2012.
No, it does not.
A principle is a rule of right action: a moral partition of actions into acceptable and unacceptable, not a policy position or direction. “Stop job-killing tax hikes” is not a moral stance; it’s merely a concealed syllogism about a utilitarian posture: “These tax hikes kill jobs, and that’s bad for the economy; therefore, stop them.” It says nothing about the morality of tax increases, nor of taxation in general.
Neither party has any principles worth mentioning. A politician hates to foreclose any possibility by saying it’s morally wrong. After all, that very thing might be just what he needs to reward a high-dollar supporter, some day.
I don’t really care what the motivations are behind a right action. Those who make a big deal of it are the primary obstacles to right actions being taken. I think it’s called looking a gift horse in the mouth. Nobody wants to give you a horse if you’re gonna bitch about him not going to church.
Hm, let’s see: I took issue with the inaccurate and misleading use of the word “principles.” You then teed off on me as if I’d objected to the policy directions themselves. Did you never finish grammar school, or are you not feeling all that well today?
Confucius, when asked what he would do first if given the power of the State, replied that he would command that all things be called by their right names. I concur. If you don’t mind being misled with deceptive language, remind me not to bother arguing with you; the liars of the world will have you eating out of their trough the moment I walk away.
The Pledge to America is good but incomplete.
If the Republicans want to regain their credibility as proponents of limited government and capitalism, they must include in this plan — as one of its TOP PRIORITIES — the repeal of every single law signed into existence by George W. Bush that increased governemnt spending or increased government’s size or power or increased government’s regulation of the economy. Every one of these Republican-passed and Republican-approved mistakes must be repealed.
That means repealing the “No Child Left Behind” law, repealing the expansion of Medicare Part D and every other ridiculous law approved by Bush that helped to increase annual federal spending by nearly a trillion dollars a year.
Now, with Obama still in office, it is likely that he would veto every such repeal and the Republicans aren’t likely to hold enough congressional seats to override that veto. But that is okay. By vetoing the repeals, Obama and the Democrats — and not the Republicans — would then “own” the entire Bush big-government agenda as well as Obama’s own big-government agenda. The Democrats would be alone in pushing the big government agenda — they Republicans would stand in clear contrast as the party willing to roll back the state.
Then the Republicans can move on to repealing all of Obama’s monstrosities, including Obamacare and the so-called financial reform bill.
But by correcting their own most recent, egregious mistakes FIRST, it would make it very clear to the American people that the Republicans have indeed had a sincere, genuine change of heart — and that if we can get enough such Republicans in office, they will indeed begin to dismantle the monstrous welfare state they helped create.
Regarding Erick’s rant on RedState:
There’s an old adage about not making the perfect the enemy of the good. Erick seems in danger of violating that common-sense rule, if indeed he hasn’t done so already.
Speaking as a proud Reaganite (my first Presidential vote was for Ronaldus Magnus), I see nothing wrong with the Pledge, and I am sick and tired of people, whether on TV, radio, online, or in print, trying to tell me what I must believe or whom I must support to be a “true conservative.” Lefties play those kind of ideological purity games, and I see no reason to emulate them.
The Pledge is a sensible move by the GOP. It allows them to say they have a platform which is not a re-run of the Bush years. Now, every time the left bellows/whines/mewls/snarls that the GOP wants to return to the Bush years they can point to the Pledge and say “no we don’t”.
It is general enough that they won’t get caught defending straw-man specifics that might be dreamt up by the Democrats. It’s simply a ticket to a good seat at the game in the November mid-terms.
It is not a predictor of their actual behaviour if they do regain power. Only constant pressure over a decade or so from fired-up citizens can affect that, or better yet, fired-up citizens might take over the GOP and renovate it.
The GOP and fired-up citizens need to recognize that the constitution doesn’t have any of that extreme religious/social stuff in it. Religious/socially extreme stuff belongs in debates about religion and social liberties/constraints, not debates about self government. As long as people have the freedom to express their religious and social beliefs that should be enough. I don’t think the framers of the constitution wanted any religious or social groups to ram their ideas or behaviour down the throats of everyone else. Neither did they want such groups to ram their specific beliefs and behaviour down the throat of government.
Of course I might be wrong, being a foreigner and all but I think the framers had individual liberty and self government on their minds. We inheritors of the Anglosphere all need to head back over to that part of the scenery. The Pledge doesn’t stand in the way.
westerncanadian wrote:
It allows them to say they have a platform which is not a re-run of the Bush years. Now, every time the left bellows/whines/mewls/snarls that the GOP wants to return to the Bush years they can point to the Pledge and say “no we don’t”.
But it would be far more convincing — and far, far more energizing to those of us desperate to find politicians willing to actually REPEAL and ROLL BACK at least the most odious portions of the welfare/regulatory state — if the Republicans publicly repudiated the Bush years by explicitly promising to repeal ALL of its mistakes.
I will vote Republican across the board this November — the Democrats must be punished for daring to empower an empty-headed looter like Obama and he horde of fellow power-lusters and creeps he’s brought to Washington — but I won’t beleive a word of the Republican party until I see them actually start repealing legislation.
Michael, I agree with you about the wobbliness of the Republican Party. Even if the Pledge said all the right things about dismantling the suffocating apparatus of the state it wouldn’t mean that they would do it. The first step is to stop the progressive juggernaut. After that the GOP won’t roll back and repeal unless they are pushed by the voters, or unless the GOP is taken over by the voters and changed from the present Big Government GOP into a Small Government GOP.
As a card played in the short term political game, I think that the Pledge is necessary and sufficient.
The pledge is utter crap cliches that
a) sound good until you give them more than 3 seconds of thought
b) realize they don’t constitute an actual working plan, and
c) aren’t an answer to the left’s stance on ANYTHING.
Part of how the left got in was promising jobs via addressing energy concerns. The pledge offers bandaids to existing jobs, not a path to prosperity nor a roadmap to job creation of high paying work. It certainly doesn’t address anything on issues that over 50% of the voting population was casting a vote for!!!
One dirt simple way of addressing a REAL issue — enery — is to propose the construction of 400-500 new nuclear plants. This would cost less than Obama’s “stimulus,” create jobs, and solve much of the near term energy quandry. Pledge THAT. Pledge a real solution to a real problem. Pledge a plan, one that works. Pledge something meaningful, not vacuous politician talk designed to rally the very troops who will already vote republican.
Contrary to popular belief here in this echo chamber, the left offered up plans (energy, war, etc.) Their plans were crap. But at least they had them. The GOP’s answer? We’re against their plans. Oh, and we have Saint Palin.
This is more of the same.
The pledge is a great start, one thing that isn’t covered in enough specific detail is “reform congress”. We need much deeper congressional reform, our congress operates in a bubble of entitlement the isolates them from the average family. Congress needs to be subject to the same healthcare, retirement plans, social security and severance packages as mainstream America. Congress is predominately made up of lawyers which doesn’t give it a well rounded perspective. The legal mind is fine for legal issues but falls by the wayside when dealing with technical issues (gulf oil spill), natural disasters (Katrina) or any type of geo-political issue (Iran, Afghanistan, Israel,China et al). I don’t know how to do it but the professional mix of congress needs to be adjusted to obtain some balance in viewpoint and experience beyond just political ideology. A friend told me “our current congress is much like having a panel of electricians decide on what a healthy diet should be”.
Sandy Salt and Michael Smith.
I must be living on another planet. Grateful for a “pledge” from “representatives of the People”, I’m perplexed.
Isn’t an oath to UPHOLD AND DEFEND THE US CONSTITUTION, which ALL members of Congress must take on accepting representation a pledge ? And of those who have now signed this newer, NOT BINDING, pledge how many of them, by omission and commission, have been faithful to what I assumed WAS / IS a binding pledge? Benefit of the doubt ?
As part of that benefit, the citizens’ job is clear: watch them like hawks with Eagle Eyes, and raise hell if necessary, to see that the “pledge” is not as temporary and flexible as that earlier one on which their “contract with America” was made.
Be fun to see how much neck sticking out there’ll be in the NECESSITY of REPEAL of not only the mocking “Healthcare” but other bills passed by Congress and to ROLL BACk infringements on the Rights of Americans protected in that Constitution Without much noise from those “pledge” makers.
Too many Republicans in too many administrations kept their heads down didn’t make waves. HOPE that’ll CHANGE.
do you remember 2007 all they what to do is go back to the failed polasies of George bush that almost cost us our whole econmic system that lost us over 1 million jobs and gave millionaire and billionaires tax breaks and of course the bail outs because or the deregulation of the financial system that he could have avoided during his 8 years in the white house. 2 wars the borrow and spend from china no health care reform or wall street reform and they want to privatize social security giving your retirement money to those crooks on wall street. and if that wasn’t enough. quess who gives the specail interest groups a blow job and sold there soul to the lobbist if you say the Republicans your right why would we want to trust a bunch of whore like them with the power to sell us out like the have in the past?
For anyone who hasn’t noticed or hasn’t read it, the so-called “Pledge to America” is a pathetic, pragmatic, unprincipled attempt by the neocons in the Republican party to pander simultaneously to the libertarians of the Tea Party and the social advocates of the Religious Right with platitudes, cliches and nearly empty rhetoric. (And let’s be serious — Paul Ryan is a neocon’s neocon. A RINO in sheeps clothing who will say anything to get elected to promote the Bush legacy.)
The “Pledge” makes only *one* clear statement of principle — that we all have rights to life/liberty/pursuit of happiness — and then does everything possible to undermine that principle by defending it in terms any member of the Democratic Party could sign up for: like “sacrifice” and service to the “common good” and the “social fabric”. Not just rhetoric, but Marxist rhetoric, because folks, that’s where it started.
For anyone who doesn’t know: for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to mean *anything*, it has to mean *something*. It doesn’t mean a litany of concrete issues like “balancing the budget”, “restoring trust”, or “funding missile defense”. That all sounds nice, but in the grand hierarchy of really important priorities, they are *so* far down the list, and deserve no more than a footnote in this so-called “Pledge” — if that. (Seriously, if we sent the right kind of people to Washington to defend *rights*, we don’t have to worry that they’ll balance the budget, restore trust or fund missile defense.)
If you have a *right* to your life, liberty and happiness then there is one and only one proper function of government: **to protect your individual rights**. (There is no such thing as a “group” right.)
In a properly delimited government, the *only* power politicians should have, besides budget authorizations, is the power to protect individual rights — freedom of human action in a social context — meaning: the right of individuals to act in any way they damn well *choose* without having to seek the permission of a government bureaucrat — so long as they don’t violate the rights of others in the process.
That is a principle you can get your teeth into. *That* is what the Tea Party is groping to understand about itself — what it is trying to defend. *That* is what this Pledge should be pledging. It is the most important underlying meaning of our Constitution, and all else follows from it.
What individual rights?
- The right to free speech. To advocate your ideas, beliefs, convictions, observations, or judgments without interference or fear of persecution (of which “freedom of religion” and “freedom of the press” are two forms, and what “campaign finance reforms” so grotesquely violate).
- The right to own property without it being indentured to the State for any kind of tax, or stolen from you for any kind of so-called “public good”.
- The right to defend oneself when the government can’t (of which the right to guns is one form).
That’s only a start. Those rights not enumerated in the Constitution are reserved to the *People* — not the government.
Here’s another principle that the old-guard GOP missed entirely in their attempt to usurp the power of the Tea Party: that power corrupts absolutely, and powers not dedicated to protecting individual rights, like the power to tax, regulate and dictate “social policy”, are absolute powers corrupting everything about the principle of “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness”, not to mention Washington D.C.
(Taxation is the power of a blank check in direct contradiction to the principle of individual rights — it is the power to destroy lives for undefined ends. A proper government, delimited to its essential functions, can very easily be funded by charging fees for services actually rendered — police, courts, defense. Taxes, on the other hand, become carte blanche for the government to give your money to others while you get nothing in return.)
You will notice the so-called “Pledge” didn’t make *one* single statement renouncing government’s right to tax, regulate or dictate social policy.
- It offered to “stop tax hikes”, “provide tax deductions” — but not end taxes.
- It offered to “repeal job-killing mandates” — but not mandates as such.
- It offered to limit federal spending — but not *end* federal spending for functions the federal government has no business doing.
- It offered to “put people back to work” — somehow. Meaning, via more federal programs, tax incentives, TARP incentives, regulatory “tweaking”, ad infinitum — but not get the federal government out of the business of interfering with business.
So what you see in this so-called “Pledge” is this: some chicken bones with a little gristle, thrown out for people to gnaw on, to fool them into thinking they are being fed, while the essential power of the politicians is preserved — the absolute power to offer handouts to a people starved for real freedom. Let them eat cake.
If you have a right to your life, then *no one* (most especially the government) has a right to tell you how to live it. No one has the right to tell you how much of your life, your earnings, your possessions they have a right to. No one has a right to *sacrifice* your life for any “good” cause, not for the “poor”, nor the “disabled”, nor the destitute in Africa or the con-artists in Washington. That is for *you* to choose.
What does sacrifice really mean? The renunciation of a greater value to a lesser one. A person with a right to his life *must* hold the power to choose how he will spend it — or it means *nothing*. To tell him he *must* sacrifice is to abrogate the very principle of life.
Note: if *you* chooses to help someone he loves that is *not* a sacrifice! If *you* choose to fight to defend your country, *that* is not a sacrifice! — it is giving your highest value *for* your highest value. But the altruist advocates of self-sacrifice and duty to the collective don’t want you to realize that. They want you to believe that you are *nothing* but a serf to the feifdoms of their ends.
*No one* has a right to tell you what social policy or “cause” you must support, who you must help, what “common good” you must serve, or how much wealth you can accrue on the way to your happiness. *No one* has a right to tell you *how* to live by imposing regulations of **any kind whatsoever** to “guide” your actions. The government’s job is only to punish actual *violations* of rights, not to presume you are guilty before proven innocent and tie you up in a straightjacket of rules.
So what should a proper “Pledge” uphold? As a start for the next legislative session of 2011 – 2012, we resolve to:
1. Pass a resolution asserting that the government’s only function is to protect the rights of the individual and that we will work to end all government functions not dedicated to that principle.
2. Resolve to work towards a plan for a complete Separation of State and Economics, on the principle that the government has no proper function “guiding” the economy or “fixing” it.
3. Commit to repeal the Health Care Act of 2010, and repeal *all* government regulation of the health care industry.
4. Develop a plan to fully privatize Medicare, medicaid and social security.
5. Commit to eliminating all “economic stimulus” programs, including TARP, and resolve to prohibit any future Federal bailouts for private businesses or any state in the union.
6. Resolve to place the United States on a gold standard, and prohibit issuance of any more debt by the U.S. Government.
7. Commit, as a necessary measure in the current economic crisis, to eliminate all funding for non-essential government functions, including: HHS, Transportation, Foreign Aid, HUD, Education, Agriculture, Commerce, Labor, EPA, and the “Corporation for National and Community Service”. (Savings: $311 billion)
8. Pass legislation eliminating “Fannie Mae” and “Freddie Mac” on the principle that the government has no business dictating housing policy.
9. End “nation building” as a function of the Department of Defense or any other branch of government, and de-fund all activities dedicated to that end.
This is just a start. But it is a start based on solid principles. I would call it that: A New Start for America.
I like the new buzz word the Communist Media of America (CMOA) has come up with; “specifics”!
Needless to say, there’s a ‘Buzzword for the Day’ club that the CMOA subscribes to, and they all use the exact term within 24 hours of each other.
Boehner should have replied; “Specifics? Specifics? You want ‘specifics’? Where are the specifics for your Candidate Obama? ‘Specifics’ on ObamaCare? ‘Specifics’ on where the ‘stimulus money’ is? Boehner is not a good debater, or good at de-baiting.
If I were the Republican Party, I would shut out the CMOA entirely, and publish press reports for anyone to read on the internet. Boehner going to speak to the CMOA is just like Colbert going to speak to Congress; What did you expect?
Thanks for helping savage your own party so that my leftist politicians can continue to dominate American governance. You’ve obviously thrown off the shackles of that idiot Reagan and his so-called “Eleventh Commandment,” and are well on your way to learning your proper place in My new Obamamerica… the only safe people to attack are REPUBLICANS!
Congratulations! You’ve just saved yourself a trip to a Sebellius Re-Education Camp.