Lip service to America

Oh look, House Republicans finally have an agenda. Well, sort of:

House Republicans offered their “Pledge to America,” a combination campaign platform and legislative agenda, on Thursday morning, saying that jobs will return if spending slows and tax rates are kept from rising.

Funny, they've been saying that for the last twenty months. Is there anything new in these twenty one pages that we haven't heard before?

“We are here today to put forth a new governing agenda built by listening to the American people and offer a new way forward,” Mr. Boehner said. “Our pledge to America is that Republicans stand ready to get it done.”

In other words... no. Nothing new to see here.

The American Prospect's Paul Waldman has already come up with a fitting adjustment to the agenda's title: The Pledge to Whine at America. That's pretty good, although I'd say Lip service to America is also accurate in describing the shallowness and hollowness of the document.

Republicans aren't ready to do anything except pick up where they left off under Bush. They desperately want to continue running this country into the ground. If they were honest, an outline of their plan would look something like this:

Contract on America: The Republican Pledge

• Shredding the Social Safety Net: Goodbye Social Security, goodbye Medicare, goodbye Medicaid, goodbye Head Start, goodbye Pell Grants!
• Deregulating Markets: Rules are for losers. They put a crimp on profits. Let's just let dishonest traders and brokers do whatever they want. If they break the economy, taxpayers can foot the bill.
• Generous Subsidies for Already-Wealthy Corporations: Our common wealth must be used to help fatten the bottom lines of the likes of Exxon and Wal-Mart. Working families can fend for themselves!
• Destructive Exploitation of Natural Resources: Drill and mine like there's no tomorrow, and don't worry about the consequences. Conservation and environmental protection are nothing more than personal virtues.
• No Privacy: Americans have no reasonable expectation of privacy. It's okay for our government to spy on us without our knowledge, invade our homes at will on any pretext, and prevent American women from making their own reproductive decisions.
• State Religion: Freedom of religion means the freedom to practice only Christianity. Any faith that is not an established denomination of Christianity doesn't count. Especially Islam.
• Schools: Until the public schools system can be dismantled, fundamentalists should be able to decide what is taught or not taught to our children. "Science" must never conflict with conservative dogma.
• War on False Pretenses. Any country that is home to natural resources we might want to exploit can be preemptively attacked and invaded at will. We are justified in occupying any place on Earth that we want to occupy because we're the adult. All other nations are subservient to us.

That's the real right wing Republican agenda.Now, if you take a look through Lip service to America, you won't find any of the clauses comprising the list above. That's because Republicans know if they're brutally honest, they won't win. People aren't willing to vote for an agenda that will result in America's eventual implosion.

So Republicans pay a lot of lip service to basic ideals that sound appealing. But there's nothing useful or sensible underneath. And that's because the Republican Party is firmly under the control of the right wing. They are against pretty much every conceivable progressive policy direction that there is.