The Republicans show their hand

What happened

House Republicans unveiled a “Pledge to America” last week, a policy road map that they say will unify GOP candidates this fall and provide a blueprint for legislation if, as many analysts expect, Republicans gain control of the House of Representatives. The Pledge promises to freeze federal hiring and spending, permanently extend all Bush-era tax cuts, repeal health-care reform, cancel unspent stimulus funding, roll back regulations, and end deficit spending. “To create jobs, we need to end the uncertainty for job creators and the spending spree in Washington,” said House Republican leader John Boehner.

The Pledge recalls the “Contract With America,” which the GOP unveiled in advance of its massive 1994 midterm election victory, in which Republicans flipped both houses of Congress from Democratic to GOP control. With the election nearing, President Obama hit the campaign trail this week, rallying young voters at the University of Wisconsin and seeking to inspire a dispirited Democratic base. He derided the GOP’s Pledge as an election year gimmick. “They propose $4 trillion worth of tax cuts, and $16 billion in spending cuts,” Obama said. “And then they say we’re going to somehow magically balance the budget.”

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What the editorials said

The Pledge is “less specific” than the 1994 Contract, said The Wall Street Journal, but that’s because Republicans understand that this election is less about grand proposals than putting a brake on “runaway government and wretched liberal excess.” GOP promises to “roll back spending to pre-stimulus, pre-bailout levels” show that the party has learned its lesson on spending. What’s more, the focus on fiscal restraint rather than contentious social issues “fits the country’s mood.” The Pledge is a step in the right direction, even if it is “light on details.”

Actually, it’s a “profile in cowardice,” said The Washington Post. The Pledge combines proposals for “irresponsible” tax cuts and unrealistic spending cuts with no “credible plan” to reduce the staggering debt that would result from GOP profligacy. The Pledge makes the usual “extravagant promises and bluster” of a campaign year seem positively restrained, said The New York Times. It promises to “shield seniors, veterans, and the troops from spending cuts,” and give even the rich a tax cut, yet somehow cut hundreds of billions in spending so as to balance the budget. There are no “tough policy choices”—just blatant pandering to Tea Partiers.

What the columnists said

It’s wrong to view the Pledge as the “sum total of the Republican agenda,” said Jonah Goldberg in National Review Online. It’s merely “the opening bid.” Returning the Republicans to power without a “clear mission is like sending teenagers to Vegas for a school trip without a chaperone.” To govern, political leaders “need to know what their mandates are.” Is the Pledge specific enough? No. But with the Democrats self-destructing, “why get in the way?”

I’d feel better if Republicans could pass “eighth-grade arithmetic,” said Eugene Robinson in The Washington Post. They were better off issuing “froth and foam” about socialism instead of releasing a plan that so clearly doesn’t add up. Why is it that “one of our two major political parties isn’t even trying to make sense?” said Paul Krugman in The New York Times. Because Republicans are willing to say “whatever it takes to gain power.” Their only specific—albeit “implausible”—budget cut is to cancel the remainder of the TARP bailout, which would save a mere $16 billion. If the GOP gains power, “banana republic here we come.”

It’s the Democrats who’ve nearly ruined this Republic, said William Kristol in The Weekly Standard. “As the Democratic Congress has dithered, the Obama White House has crumbled,” with senior staff now leaving in droves. The Pledge—an even more impressive document than 1994’s Contract—offers a necessary corrective to Obama’s vast expansion of government. In language appropriately influenced by the Tea Party, the Pledge promises to move forward “in the cause of solvency, liberty, and self-government.” With 2010 looking like an even “bigger electoral landslide than 1994,” Republicans will get their chance to make good on those words.