Update to House GQP’s So-Called ‘Commitment to America’ Accidentally Leaked By Kevin McCarthy.
The Arizona Mirror reports, U.S. House GOP outlines agenda in bid for control in the midterms.
Shorter version: “All culture wars, all the time.” Scare the GQP crazy base of White Christian Ntionalists into frothing at the mouth. This is not a “Commitment to America.” It is more red meat for the GQP crazy base that tried to ovethrow the U.S. government on January 6, 2021, and that is promising to do it again.
UPDATE: What’s worse than using Russian stock footage in your GOP promise to America? Let’s see:
When you’re the Republicans and are trying to really hard to convince America to give you another shot at being in power, it would be a very good idea to stay far away from anything Russia. Particularly right now.
Oops.
NEW: House Republicans just rolled out their official "Commitment to America” plan for 2023 with an inspirational video chock full of scenes presented as exceptional imagery of America — but that are actually stock footage from Russia and Ukraine. https://t.co/xtQm52WWNp
— Jennifer Bendery (@jbendery) September 23, 2022
Or how about misattributing a quote to Abraham Lincoln that actually came from an 1980s Lehman Brothers TV ad? You remember them—the massive financial services firm that went bankrupt in the 2008 financial crisis. How much more perfect does it get than that? So much more.
Like in that same promo video with the Russian oil rig, where the narrator says, “We salute those who paid the ultimate sacrifice in defense of our freedoms,” and they show footage from World War II.
The war where America defeated the Nazis.
Awkward.
This part is good, too. From the “Future that’s built on freedom” part of the platform where they shout, “U.S. life expectancy has decreased for two straight years, representing the biggest drop since 1943.” Gosh, why would life expectancy have fallen in the U.S. during a global pandemic?
It’s also nice that they put the health care portion, such as it is, of their plan in the “Future built on freedom” part when in the future, they plan on a national abortion ban.
Defund Social Security & Medicare & return the US to the Great Depression?! Hey Republicans! That's not a commitment to America, it's a #ContractForCruelty pic.twitter.com/dIs65OFHu6
— Rachel Bitecofer 📈🔭🇺🇲🇺🇦 (@RachelBitecofer) September 23, 2022
[Y]ou really couldn’t make this more ridiculous than it already is. Thanks for the laugh, Kev. But, damn, these people can’t get control of the House back.
MSNBC’s Chris Hayes breaks down this GQP “agenda” for you.
Bloomberg reports, Biden Assails House GOP Leader’s ‘Commitment to America’ as Threat to Women:
President Joe Biden criticized the agenda House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy promised if voters return control of the chamber to his party next year, warning that a GOP Congress would try to ban abortion nationwide and weaken social programs.
“We didn’t hear a mention of the right to choose. We didn’t hear a mention of Medicare. We didn’t hear a mention of Social Security,” Biden said Friday at a Democratic National Committee event in Washington, referring to McCarthy’s rollout of an agenda he called the “Commitment to America.”
“But look at what they’ve actually done,” Biden added. “The MAGA Republicans just cheered and embraced the first Supreme Court decision in our entire history that just didn’t fail to preserve a constitutional freedom — it actually took away a fundamental right that had been granted by the same court to so many Americans.”
(Remarks by President Biden at a Democratic National Committee Event at the National Education Association Headquarters, Washington, D.C.)
Biden’s comments at the National Education Association headquarters were the latest from the president to seize on the high court decision ending nationwide abortion rights, and part of a broad Democratic effort to paint Republicans as extreme ahead of the November midterm elections.
Democrats are seeking to make issues such as abortion and former President Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn his 2020 defeat central to the election to improve their chances of holding onto razor-thin majorities in Congress. Biden has hammered Trump and GOP lawmakers as “MAGA Republicans,” a reference to the former president’s “Make America Great Again” slogan, claiming they are pushing policies out of step with the American public, including on abortion.
“I don’t believe the MAGA Republicans have a clue about the power of American women. Let me tell you something — they’re about to find out,” Biden said.
While [the GQP agenda] does not outline specific policies – [the GQP does not do policy, only propaganda] – the White House and Democrats have said the agenda plus other Republican legislative proposals show the party wants to drastically curb abortion access and other women’s health services on the national level.
Biden said that 166 House Republicans had already signed onto legislation to ban abortion nationwide, and vowed to veto such a bill if it reached his desk.
“But if you give me two more Democratic senators in the United States Senate, I promise you we’re going to codify Roe,” he added.
Render Sens. “Manchinema” Mr. & Mrs. Irrelevant, and elect real Democrats to the Senate who will finally rid us of the Jim Crow relic Senate filibuster rule, so we can finally get some shit done for the American people.
And for God’s sake, reject these 147 Republican lawmakers who still objected to the election results even after the Capitol attack on January 6, 2021. These same Republicans this week voted against reforming the Electoral Count Act, because they intend to steal an election again. Every one of them should be disqualifed from office under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. It is up to you, the voters, to hold them accountable for their traitorous insurrection against the United States, and elect more Democrats to the House.
Paul Waldman writes, “Republicans offer their Commitment to Vapid Sloganeering”, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/23/republicans-commitment-to-america/
[Traitor Kevin McCarthy] knows that regular folks across this great land have said to one another: Which party is in favor of freedom? Is it the Democrats or the Republicans who are pro-prosperity? Will any take the bold stance of supporting our troops? It’s just so hard to know. If only they would produce a brochure full of vaporous pablum in bulleted form so we can understand what they want to do!
So on Friday, McCarthy and his colleagues traveled to a factory outside Pittsburgh to unveil the Commitment to America, a stirring document that enumerates the GOP agenda should Republicans take control of Congress after November’s midterm elections. The objectives range from defending the United States’ national security to lengthening life spans to, for some reason, eliminating proxy voting in the House. The whole thing fits on a single page.
As one of dozens of Americans who watched the entire Pennsylvania event on C-SPAN, I can testify that it was as simultaneously vapid and revealing as the Commitment itself. It featured a number of doubtlessly pre-screened questioners who served up softballs for the assembled lawmakers.
My favorite was the small-business owner who had very specific criticisms of Small Business Administration loans (before she got sidetracked on anti-vaccine conspiracy theories). Her chief complaint was that the loan the government gave her isn’t being administered effectively. And it’s true that the SBA has a poor reputation when it comes to efficiency and effectiveness. So are Republicans advocating an increase in its budget, allowing it to hire more staff and update its systems?
Of course not. Their “plan” says not a word about the SBA, or much about any government agencies whose operations they might want to improve.
The same is true of the IRS. At Friday’s event, Republican members and audience questioners repeated the lie that the Inflation Reduction Act will fund 87,000 jackbooted agents to terrorize regular people and small-business owners. In fact, the funds are desperately needed to enable the agency, which has been the target of relentless GOP budget-cutting, to go after wealthy scofflaws who cheat the government out of hundreds of billions of dollars every year.
But to Republicans, nothing is more important than making sure the IRS is outmatched by the rich and that it remains incapable of providing customer service and enforcing the law. One of the first things McCarthy said at the event was: “On our very first bill, we’re going to repeal 87,000 IRS agents.”
Which is a pretty good summary of Republicans’ approach: We’re going to (1) lie to you about what Democrats have done, (2) in order to make you feel angry and afraid, (3) so we can undermine government and make it work poorly, (4) for the benefit of rich people.
Most of what they promise in their Commitment is about the outcomes that will magically be produced by a Republican House: no more illegal immigration, crime eliminated, children well educated and prosperity for all. Indeed, according to The Post’s reporting, part of the reason the Commitment is so empty is that there are internal disagreements about exactly what policy course Republicans ought to follow.
“It’s hard to get everybody’s wishes in a document that fits on a card,” said Rep. Scott Perry (Pa.), the chair of the hard-right Freedom Caucus, explaining the bottom line of the GOP message to voters.
Republicans also understand that while the idea of having ideas is appealing, you don’t want to get too specific. It sounds great to say you’ll “curb wasteful government spending,” but once you explain which programs you actually want to cut, voters tend to say something like, “Hold on there, I said I wanted you to curb wasteful government spending, not take away the spending that helps me!”
As Republicans know, when Sen. Rick Scott (Fla.), the chair of the GOP’s Senate campaign arm, released his own policy plan, it got savaged for its promise to raise taxes on low-income Americans. It quickly became an embarrassment that Scott’s colleagues couldn’t disavow fast enough.
This is symptomatic of a broader problem: Many of the core Republican policy positions are spectacularly unpopular. That includes outlawing abortion and cutting taxes for the wealthy. Little surprise, those are hinted at only obliquely in their Commitment to America.
This whole enterprise is an attempt to duplicate the alleged success of Republicans’ Contract With America in 1994; former House speaker Newt Gingrich even advised McCarthy on the creation of the Commitment to America. Back then, with help from the news media, Gingrich constructed the myth that the Contract was so compelling it caused voters to stampede to the GOP in that midterm election.
In fact, surveys showed only a small number of voters had even heard of the Contract With America. The idea that it was politically potent during the campaign was a post-hoc fiction concocted to justify the Republican agenda and claim a mandate for change.
Perhaps we won’t get taken in the same way should Republicans win the House this year. After all, the only real “commitment” they have made is to continue saying everything is terrible and it’s all President Biden’s fault. If that’s what you’re looking for in the next Congress, fine. But don’t expect anything more from the GOP.
E.J. Dionne, Jr. writes “The GOP’s ‘Commitment’ is to total political warfare”, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/25/commitment-america-gop-midterms-dionne/
While they were trumpeting their “Commitment to America” on Friday, House Republicans might have told Americans more than they intended about what a GOP majority would mean and the forces it would answer to. But they also gave Democrats some tips about what’s coming their way.
Some of the awkward revelations during an event at a factory outside Pittsburgh came from friendly questioners, including a vaccine skeptic who won loud cheers. Even Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), a hero to the Trumpist far right, thought it wise to take a pass on that one, saying, “I’m not against the vaccines.” He pivoted quickly to boilerplate conservative victimhood, declaring that “the left may control everything,” but not “we the people.”
Rep. Lisa C. McClain (R-Mich.) made you wonder why she serves in government at all. “What does government produce?” she asked. “Nothing.” I guess we can forget about roads, bridges, schools, universities, water systems, health research, national parks and airports, among other things.
And lest anyone miss the fact that no extremist would be left behind in a new Republican order, the festivities were graced with the presence of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.) — of QAnon, Jewish space lasers and charges about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s “gazpacho police” fame.
But her presence also explained why House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) is quite proud of his Commitment to America. It’s so short on specifics that everyone in his caucus could sign on, and it brushes aside anything that might hurt a Republican House candidate.
You have to squint to find the only reference to abortion. It’s beneath a subhead of a subhead and amounts to nine vague words: a pledge to “protect the lives of unborn children and their mothers.” Somehow, I don’t think that’s a promise of universal prenatal care.
[D]espite its reputation, Gingrich’s [Contract with America] did not win him his majority. But it did create some discipline in the ranks, keeping his candidates on more or less the same page. That’s what McCarthy is trying to do with a tense and obstreperous GOP caucus.
He might also have done his opponents a favor by signaling where his party spots Democratic weak points. What became clear as McCarthy and his colleagues spoke on Friday is that the GOP plans to wrap three issues — fears about China, problems at the southern border and fentanyl deaths — into one scary package. The logic: The fentanyl precursors go from China to Mexican criminal groups. Fentanyl crosses an allegedly porous border. It kills Americans.
Democrats should take the fentanyl crisis very seriously, even if McCarthy and his friends conveniently evaded the explosion of synthetic opioid deaths during Donald Trump’s presidency, from 19,413 in 2016 to 56,516 in 2020. The fact that the GOP is demagoguing the issue doesn’t make it any less of a problem.
And the Commitment’s promise of a “Parents’ Bill of Rights” in the schools suggests that the GOP’s surveys show a persistence of parental frustration with the difficulties created for kids during the pandemic.
Lori McRoberts, a mother of three and a self-described “Mama Bear,” complained to McCarthy about covid-19 protocols in the schools during the pandemic that, among other things, required children to wear masks and sit in a line. “They sat like prisoners during lunch,” she said, and then moved on to the dangers of “Marxist-style programs targeting our children.”
“Mama Bear to Mama Bear, I hear you,” Rep. Julia Letlow (R-La.) reassured her. Out of nowhere, just to make sure he got the unrelated issue of how to handle transgender students on the table, McCarthy used the question to blurt out a promise that no doubt polls well. “We should ensure women only compete in women’s sports,” he said.
Still, Democrats should note that you don’t have to be worried about “Marxist-style programs” or who competes in sports to be alarmed by falling test scores.
Here’s another thing the Republicans made clear: If they take the majority, they plan to use their power to harass the Biden administration with one hearing after another. [Coup Plotter] “Gym” Jordan [who has defied an invitation to speak to the January 6 Committee] was positively gleeful in describing the long list of subjects the GOP would investigate, urging voters “to make a change in our government so that we can hold those people who’ve been coming after us [the seditious insurrectionists], and hold them accountable like we’re supposed to.” [So Stalinist show trials of political opponents.]
If you don’t think our politics are partisan enough now, just wait for Jordan, McCarthy and their friends. They really do have a commitment — to making Washington a pitiless battlefield.
-Just say NO to this dystopian future.