DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Tailgate Forum Republican Pledge to America

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There's a lot to be said for "A Pledge to America," the document purporting to lay out what voters can expect from Republicans, should they gain control of the House of Representatives.

Some of the ideas to which it pays vague homage — missile defense, border and immigration law enforcement, canceling the rest of the Troubled Asset Relief Program — are well-conceived.

But it's an election-year document, designed to maximize a short-term political advantage over the reeling Democrats, and the very best thing that can be said about it is that it can go out with the trash the day after Election Day. Perhaps then the Republicans can come up with a plan that isn't so much a statement of lost confidence in the American people.

The pledge is filled with implications that Republicans can no longer conceive of life without the welfare state. They would just prefer a welfare state that's smaller and more manageable -- which is asking the impossible, as Republicans once knew.

As columnist Andrew C. McCarthy put it, in a piece posted on National Review Online, the pledge "assumes Americans are junkies hooked on entitlement smack, incapable of going cold turkey and insensitive to the fact that we've run out of other people's money."

The pledge promises to "protect our entitlement programs for today's seniors and future generations."

But protecting entitlements — which is to say, putting both major parties solidly behind the preservation and growth of the welfare state — is precisely the opposite of what Republicans should advocate.

The pledge promises that Republicans will demand "a full accounting of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, setting benchmarks for these programs and reviewing them regularly, and preventing the expansion of unfunded liabilities."

Benchmarks?

Reviews?

An accounting?

We've been engaged in creative accounting at the federal level for decades. The result is a stack of unfunded liabilities — tied up mostly in entitlements — that make Barack Obama's a-trillion-here-and-a-trillion-there additions to the national debt look like pocket change.

But rather than getting serious about reducing and eliminating entitlements, the Republicans are talking about how to preserve them, presumably because they believe telling Americans the truth — that entitlements are destroying the nation's character today and its fiscal health far into the future — would cost them votes.

What I read between the lines of the pledge is that, deep down, even the GOP's sternest budget hawks believe the battle for limited government already has been lost. And until the country chokes to death on its IOUs, there are voters to jolly along and elections to be won.

Hence, a promise to preserve middle-class entitlements and a rap on the Democrats' knuckles for "Medicare cuts [that] will fall squarely on the backs of seniors."

So the familiar thunder about federal profligacy is followed up with a wink, a nod and a shot at heartless, benefit-cutting skinflints? It's enough to give a conservative whiplash.

I think the Republicans are wrong about Americans. I think this is a people who can handle the truth. I think this is a people who finally are waking up to the economic peril in which almost 80 years of growing government and the welfare state have put this country.

But all this pledge offers is a change of pace on our way over the cliff — a more comfortable Republican jog, rather than a flat-out Democratic sprint.

The truth is there is no money to pay for more government, and hasn't been for quite some time. There is no money to pay for new entitlements, like government-run health care. There isn't even money to pay today's federal bills.

The Democrats, the architects of big government and the political profiteers of the welfare state, won't ever admit that. For the moment, the Republicans are pledging not to admit it, either.

The people must demand better. And since this pledge is going nowhere in a Washington that probably will still have a Democratic Senate and certainly will have a Democratic president for the next two years, the Republicans will have the opportunity to offer something better.

They had better get to it, though, because there will come a point at which it's too late to tell the truth.

O'Brien is The Plain Dealer's deputy editorial page editor. To reach Kevin O'Brien: kobrien@plaind.com, 216-999-4146

© 2010 cleveland.com. All rights reserved.

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I post this not in an effort to bash republicans..
I haven't read it,, have any of you?

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Why else would you post an article so insulting of the pledge and republicans without having read it?

Personally I think the pledge is full of empty rhetoric, but this article is nothing but another libtard slamming the republicans.

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I post this not in an effort to bash republicans..
I haven't read it,, have any of you?

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Why else would you post an article so insulting of the pledge and republicans without having read it?

Personally I think the pledge is full of empty rhetoric, but this article is nothing but another libtard slamming the republicans.

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I know this is pointless but I'm gonna do it anyway.

Mac

This recession is not the worst recession in Americas history, it's not even the worst recession in the last 30 years.

Any number you want to look at (unemployment, inflation, interest rates, et. all) were all worse in the late 70s-early 80s they are now.

Got a question for ya Mac (but we all know how likely you are to answer those), well I guess its really two. Who lead us out of that recession and how did they do it?

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I post this not in an effort to bash republicans..
I haven't read it,, have any of you?

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Why else would you post an article so insulting of the pledge and republicans without having read it?

Personally I think the pledge is full of empty rhetoric, but this article is nothing but another libtard slamming the republicans.

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I post this not in an effort to bash republicans..
I haven't read it,, have any of you?

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Why else would you post an article so insulting of the pledge and republicans without having read it?

Personally I think the pledge is full of empty rhetoric, but this article is nothing but another libtard slamming the republicans.

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LOL I just haven't gotten to it.. Just saw this and decided to share it,, hope you don't mind reading something that isn't Pro-Right

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The pledge is the republican equivalent to Obama's "change we can believe in" crap.

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not since the depression have we had so many home foreclosures...

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He was thinking about buying a house and saying how great of an investment it was going to be... I merely said that don't believe that and house prices will go down eventually.. but he insisted that house prices will never go down..

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A lot of those foreclosures are not the fault of the economy..

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see Tux.,, your looking to lay blame.. this caused that, that caused this..

That's not the point.. people are losing thier homes at record numbers, you CAN'T deny that.. Banks are failing at record numbers, you can't deny that, Companies are going out of business or teetering on the edge, and you can't deny that.

I could care less what caused it for the sake of this dicussion..,

While I know and understand the reasons for it... I also understand the reasons for the Great Depression...Doesn't change the fact that the Great Depression took place....

It's like me saying thousands are drowning because the Dam broke and and you saying, it's not accurate because a plane hit the dam causing it to break........

Who cares why, until you get the people out of the water or they get themselves out of the water, they will continue to drown.

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A lot of those foreclosures are not the fault of the economy..

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see Tux.,, your looking to lay blame.. this caused that, that caused this..

That's not the point.. people are losing thier homes at record numbers, you CAN'T deny that.. Banks are failing at record numbers, you can't deny that, Companies are going out of business or teetering on the edge, and you can't deny that.

I could care less what caused it for the sake of this dicussion..,

While I know and understand the reasons for it... I also understand the reasons for the Great Depression...Doesn't change the fact that the Great Depression took place....

It's like me saying thousands are drowning because the Dam broke and and you saying, it's not accurate because a plane hit the dam causing it to break........

Who cares why, until you get the people out of the water or they get themselves out of the water, they will continue to drown.

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It's like me saying thousands are drowning because the Dam broke and and you saying, it's not accurate because a plane hit the dam causing it to break.

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No, it's like saying the Dam broke because the government decided to build it out of paper-mache, and the solution to save people from drowning is to make a new dam out of more paper-mache.

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It's like me saying thousands are drowning because the Dam broke and and you saying, it's not accurate because a plane hit the dam causing it to break.

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No, it's like saying the Dam broke because the government decided to build it out of paper-mache, and the solution to save people from drowning is to make a new dam out of more paper-mache.

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It is important to know why things happen though.

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Where did I ever say it wasn't.., I just said I don't care for the purposes of this discussion, and I don't.


Oh Look ma,, the man is drowning, should I send him a life jacket..

MA: No son, his drowning was caused by the sinking of the life boat....

As if it matters?

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2) Every political TV ad pays $10 per viewing to the national debt. ( I really like that — makes them tolerable at least when I see them for the hundredth time or so).

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This is freaking brilliant!!! Let's put a tax on every politcal ad run! I say 25% should be enough, since that's the income tax for the "middle income" bracket. Either we'll get less annoying ads, or the guys that actually get elected will have a little better perspective about wasting tax dollars.

Considering the trillions that get spent on campaign ads, we should have the debt paid down in no-time.

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not since the depression have we had so many home foreclosures...

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A lot of those foreclosures are not the fault of the economy.. and a lot of the reasons we have these foreclosures is the reason why we are in this mess... We had an economy that was built around people refinancing and taking out their equity out of houses and buying too much than what they could afford. On top of that, banks were handing out loans like candy to anyone even if they couldn't afford it. Look at Wamu, they gave one guy multiple bad loans. A lot of this was built around the farce that houses are safe investments and housing prices NEVER go down. Everyone Tom Dick, Harry and their grandmothers were buying houses on loans in order to "flip" them. The problem was that the artificial prices of houses couldn't stay up because it reached a point where the bubble just burst which left a lot of people with houses worth half of what they purchased on loan for that they had no intention on living in, not to mention the careers that were built around the industry. And with these bad loans on the books, the banks couldn't lend money out to others who could use the money to invest it in businesses and other reasons.

We had an economy built purely around credit and was artificially inflated. I was in computer sales during that time and I had countless numbers of customers coming in saying they just refinanced their house to get some equity and had some extra money to spend, so they were buying a new computer... and I had an argument with a co-worker about 6 months before everything burst about house prices.. He was thinking about buying a house and saying how great of an investment it was going to be... I merely said that don't believe that and house prices will go down eventually.. but he insisted that house prices will never go down..

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Americans have very short memories...lets put the party that created this cluster fudge* back in power.....sure makes sense, huh?

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I post this not in an effort to bash republicans

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Yes you did, but they deserve it. The only thing worse than a Republican is a Democrat.

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I post this not in an effort to bash republicans

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Yes you did, but they deserve it. The only thing worse than a Republican is a Democrat.

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LOL

EDIT,, there is one thing worse.. Tea Partier

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I post this not in an effort to bash republicans

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Yes you did, but they deserve it. The only thing worse than a Republican is a Democrat.

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LOL

EDIT,, there is one thing worse.. Tea Partier

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EDIT,, there is one thing worse.. Tea Partier

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