Despite its stated purpose, the vague and cynical “Commitment to America” that top House Republicans unveiled with fanfare last week wasn’t actually intended to tell the country what the GOP would do if it regains power. The party’s list of platitudes revealed more about its intentions than it intended to. The manifesto provides the latest evidence that the party stands for consolidation of its own power — and pretty much nothing else.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s “Commitment” is an unabashed attempt to recapture the midterm momentum similar to what Rep. Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., did in 1994 with his “Contract with America,” which helped Republicans win the House that year.
Gingrich’s contract was a list of catchy phrases that appealed to conservative voters’ emotions (most of which, thankfully, never made it into law), but it had the virtue of specificity. For example, it promised to require a three-fifths House majority to pass tax hikes, impose the first-ever term limits on House members, prohibit welfare to minor mothers and pass a balanced-budget amendment. The plan included 10 fully written pieces of legislation addressing fiscal policy, crime, job creation, tort reform, House rules and more.
As counterproductive, short-sighted and often cruel as much of Gingrich’s policy agenda was, it was at least an actual, actionable agenda. Contrast that to most of what McCarthy and his inner circle offered last week.
McCarthy’s plan would strengthen the economy by curbing “wasteful government spending” (like what?) and passing “pro-growth” tax policies. Meaning, more tax cuts for the rich? It doesn’t say.
Its crime-fighting plan is to hire 200,000 more cops, with no word on how that would be paid for or other details. The plan’s similarly non-specific vow to “save and strengthen Social Security and Medicare” is especially insulting coming from a party that routinely threatens the stability of both.
Among the few somewhat specific promises in the plan is to promote voter ID laws and “accurate voter rolls,” which is effectively code for the kind of vote-obstruction efforts the party has already undertaken around the country. The plan’s only reference to the abortion issue roiling so much of America today is a vow to “protect the lives of unborn children and their mothers.” Does that mean a nationwide abortion ban? Anyone’s guess.
McCarthy’s game here is obvious: With Republicans no longer looking at a cakewalk to the majority in the midterms thanks to widespread fury over the party’s threat to abortion rights and its continued fealty to an increasingly unhinged ex-president, he’s looking for a way to rally the base while pretending to have a specific agenda to present to the rest of the country.
A party that won’t say, in detail, what it will do with power either doesn’t know, or doesn’t want the country to know. Either possibility should be viewed by the voters as disqualifying.
———
