10 y after GOP Contract w/ America - Term limits/ethics/deficit red tossed

[papau]

The ABCNote refers to this as the GOP being "more comfortable with budget deficits, leaving behind term-limit promises, and weakening the ethics enforcement process". LOL :-)

But will the broadcast folks ever mention this!

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2005/01/10/house_gop_seen_straying_from_pledges_in_contract/

House GOP seen straying from pledges in 'Contract'
By Rick Klein, Globe Staff | January 10, 2005

WASHINGTON -- They stormed into Congress a decade ago, a fresh-faced band of Republican candidates brandishing a Contract with America that promised balanced budgets, ''citizen legislators" who would serve and return to the private sector, and a restored trust in the nation's elected leaders as the GOP took control of the House for the first time in 40 years.

But after 10 years of Republican control of the House, members of the majority party appear to have strayed from some of the promises that got them there. The nation is running up record budget deficits, term-limit pledges are being jettisoned, and House Republicans voted last week to weaken the ethics-enforcement process in Congress.

Now, the Contract with America is relevant again -- as a reference point for growing disagreements among Republicans about how far they have strayed from their core principles.<snip>

''The first thing we were asked to do was to raise the ethical standards, and the first thing that this new <2005> freshman class was asked to do was to lower the standards," said Representative Zach Wamp of Tennessee, who was one of 73 newly elected Republican House members who took office in January 1995.<snip>

[Eloriel]

1. Well, who's surprised? The Contract with (or "on") America was never

anything they truly believed in. It was a gimmick. Term Limits especially were simply an effort to try to break what Newt Gingrich and other neo-fascists saw as the Democratic Party's stranglehold on Congress.

[Mountainman]

2. They never meant a work of it. They were after power and like always

republican voters fell for it. Just like the fundies do now. If you are a republican and want to get elected, pander to the ignorance of the red state masses.

[papau]

3. Only the media can inform - and it never does regarding GOP lies

:-(

[DaedelusNemo]

4. Perhaps the Dems ought to pick it up

some of it, anyway, maybe add a bit. It could be a good way to simultaneously try to convey to voters that they agree on the issues and to highlight the repub abandonment of said issues.