The Opening Ante

Wanted to weigh in on the Republicans Pledge to America. Full text here. I like it. Now every time Obama tries to say he hasn't heard any Republicans put forth any ideas, which is just another shameful lie, of course, they can point to this. We'll hear the usual Tax cuts for the rich! line, but I really don't think that's gonna fly. As Rush says, this is a great start, but they gotta follow through. It actually goes much further than the Contract with America did, and is more specific. Here is the take of NRO's editors. Read it over and become informed, because you're going to hear a lot of spinning and misinformation from the Democrats on this. You need to be prepared to shoot them down.

JASmius adds: My post, to avoid duplication....

If you're a reader of this space, and are above the age of thirty or so, you probably remember the Contract With America, the Newt Gingrich-authored manifesto on which congressional Republicans ran in the 1994 midterm elections that helped fuel the smashing GOP victories that yielded pickups of fifty-two House seats, eight Senate seats, and majority control of both chambers of Congress.

What you might not remember are the specifics of that manifesto, which were comparatively....tame.  Most dealt with House process and procedure and other "inside-baseball" stuff.  There were ten policy planks, all of them centrist, all of them excrutiatingly focus-grouped, and not one of them pledged for passage, but merely an up or down floor vote in the first hundred days of the 104th Congress.  It was, in other words, a collective bar set very low, and not surprisingly, it was attained.  And because the GOP had the majority in the House, seven of the ten (the planks not cast as constitutional amendments, requiring a two-thirds majority for passage) did, indeed, pass.  But thereafter, Mr. Newt & the gang were left all dressed up with no place to go.  So he embarked on the well-intentioned but overly ambitious (i.e. Bill Clinton was still in the White House) plan to reform Medicare while its collapse was still years away instead of focusing like a laser beam on controlling federal spending, and the result was the Big Labor "Mediscare" campaign that got Sick Willie re-elected and nearly cost the GOP their newfound majorities.

Why did this happen?  Because entitlements reform wasn't part of Newt's mandate.  His majority hadn't run on it in '94, and it resided outside their "Overton Window".

The 2010 version of the Contract, dubbed "The Pledge to America," has that window very much front and center:

Is the Pledge a Tea Party Christmas list?  No, it isn't.  It's a lot more policy-specific than the Contract was, but it's clearly not floating every tighty-righty's boat.  But as Ace explains at great length, that's a good thing: 

As a general proposition: The candidate who, whether by media connivance or skill at obscuring policy choices, is permitted to occupy the largest section of the pie chart of political possibilities will win. At least he'll have a massive advantage -- because, if you're not sure of either candidate, might as well go with the guy who doesn't force you to make hard choices....

The Democrats have been demanding for a year that the Republicans define themselves in sharp and narrow focus. Why? Because the Democrats already are defined in sharp and narrow focus, by their own actions, and they are insisting that Republicans operate under the same burden.

They are not demanding we define ourselves in order to help us politically. They are making this demand to hurt us politically and help them.

They have a very narrow, and very unpopular, slice of the pie to run on. They cannot escape it -- what they have is worse than bad rhetoric; they have bad facts and bad outcomes.

This is why Obama keeps demanding that Republicans vow to slash Social Security and Medicare in order to prove we're serious about budget discipline. Of course he wants that -- he wants us to make the most unpopular promises imaginable. And I assure you he is not doing so with our best electoral fortunes foremost in his mind.

Indeed, Ace argues that the Pledge is TOO specific - which is a blunter version of saying, "It's as specific as it has to be given the political circumstances:

Now, bullied by Democrats and a media demanding "details" about our agenda - and, once again, when they demand this, let me assure you right off the jump they are not doing so in order to help us win elections - the Republican leadership decided to offer a bit of that, a few genuine specifics, to shut people up.

These specifics aren't all that impressive, certainly. Guess what? That's because they're poll-tested and a broad slice of the electorate has been found to be in favor of each. But that hardly means this is all we're going to do. This is just the easy stuff. The gimmes. The lay-ups.

As for the hard stuff...? The stuff that will take some convincing to get...? The stuff the electorate has a pretty solid chance of turning off of...?

Well, do you really expect that to appear in a consensus document written by dozens of hands? And a document crafted, by the way, without the input of the 50-70 new Tea Party Republicans who will soon be occupying Congress?

Prexactly.

Tighty-righties are as ideologicaly blinded to political reality as their uberLeft opposites.  They want ALL of what they want, they want it RIGHT NOW, and they don't want to hear of (ugh) politics getting in the way.  But America is still (nominally) a constitutional federal republic - or "a democracy" in colloquial terms.  The last two years are amply demonstrating how stoutly the system of governance the Founders bequeathed discommendates radical wrenching policy shifts.  The Democrats have committed political suicide by rubber stamping Barack Obama's Marxist revolutionism, and the roll-back will BEGIN with the Republican Congress that gets elected five and a half weeks from now.  But it isn't going to happen ALL in the next two years, because, first and foremost, that same L'il President is going to be standing in the way.

In reality, very little of what Erick Erikson and Phil Klein slam House 'Pubbies for not pledging would happen in the 112th Congress.  And House 'Pubbies know that.  So why should they follow in Red Barry's footsteps by vastly overpromising, guaranteeing even greater Tighty-Righty fratricidal rage against them two years from now?

As no less a "Roadmapper" than Paul Ryan (R-WI1) explained:

We designed it for a Republican Congress with Obama in the White House. It's the stuff we can do, not a bunch of promises we cannot possibly keep.

It is, in other words, the first step.  The opening ante.

Remember, my friends, we didn't get into this mess in a single electoral cycle.  The Dems first had to take Congress back in 2006 in order to build supermajorities on the coattails of The One in 2008.  In the same way, 2010 is about laying the foundation for expunging Obamunism in 2012.

But you have to get elected first, or none of our wish lists will be any more than that.

The Pledge gets that ball rolling.  And for now, that is enough.