House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy's new “Commitment to America,” intends to reassure voters of the GOP's intentions if they win the majority in Congress in the midterm election. Instead, it reveals a party of commitment-phobes.
The unveiling of the document, with McCarthy surrounded by a contingent of GOP members and candidates in Monongahela, Pennsylvania on Sept. 23, was meant to recall a similar event nearly three decades before. On Sept. 27, 1994, 368 Republican candidates gathered on the steps of the US Capitol behind then-House Minority Whip Newt Gingrich to lay out a 10-point “Contract With America. The contract promised Republicans would fulfill an ambitious agenda within the first 100 days if they won the House majority (for the first time in 40 years).
It’s convenient to say that the contract “nationalized” midterm elections. But that's not the whole story. I was working for one House Republican as the contract was announced, and then for Gingrich’s communications shop as the contract was enacted under his leadership as the new speaker, and the contrast between that document and today’s “Commitment” couldn’t be starker.
