The G.O.P.’s ‘Pledge’

[cal04]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/26/opinion/26sun1.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=all

Extravagant promises and bluster are the stuff of campaign rhetoric, but the House Republicans’ “Pledge to America” goes far beyond the norm.

Its breathless mimicry of the Declaration of Independence — the “governed do not consent,” it declares, while vowing to rein in “an arrogant and out-of-touch government of self-appointed elites” — would be ludicrous, if these were not destructively polarized times.

While it promises to create jobs, control deficit spending and restore Americans’ trust in government, it is devoid of tough policy choices. This new “governing agenda” does not say how the Republicans would replace revenue that would be lost from permanently extending all of the Bush tax cuts, or how they would manage Medicare and Social Security, or even which discretionary programs would go when they slash $100 billion in spending. Their record at all of these things is dismal.

The best way to understand the pledge is as a bid to co-opt the Tea Party by a Republican leadership that wants to sound insurrectionist but is the same old Washington elite. These are the folks who slashed taxes on the rich, turned a surplus into a crushing deficit, and helped unleash the financial crisis that has thrown millions of Americans out of their jobs and their homes.

(snip)
Americans are right to be worried and even angry about the bad economy. And they are right to demand that Washington do a lot more to revive employment now and start to reduce the deficit soon. But these are hard problems built up over eight years of mainly Republican leadership. The pledge takes the country backward — a place no one should want to go.

[NYMdaveNYI]

1. By the way, there’s not ONE picture of a minority in here!

just phony, bullshit montages of butcher shops, small town streets, horses, teachers, fat people in cowboy hats, mount rushmore, and John Boehner standing in front of things.

[TlalocW]

2. No, there are at least two that I found and another two probables

One of them is an older Hispanic/Latina woman shaking hands with someone in front of a couple of guys (I'm guessing to be Hispanic) on a stage with guitars, and there's an African-American woman in a crowd scene.

So you're wrong, and the GOP is the big tent and totally inclusive of non-white people. :sarcasm:

TlalocW

[NYMdaveNYI]

3. I meant blacks.....

But yes, I noticed the hispanics (all three of them), and the ONE African-American woman far, far back in a crowd.

That’s all though.

[opihimoimoi]

4. As usual, the GOPers are using smoke and mirrors...bait and switch....Fake Patriotism,..

They are void of LOGIC and REASON....not to mention Clarity Sanity and Reality

Empty language

Empty IDEAS & Decisions

Empty Results

and they want more

Boner said he wants a return to W Bushies thingy

Nearly all of the Pubs want to Privatize the VA, SS, and Medicare...WTF??