They gotta get this Pledge to fit on a baseball cap if they really want to reach Joe the Plumber.
Think Progress » GOP ‘Pledge’ Embraces Radical ‘Tenther’ View of Constitution
Today’s release of the Republican “Pledge to America,” however, eliminates any doubt regarding the GOP’s stance on tentherism. As two passages from the Pledge make clear, the constitutional lunatics are now in charge of the GOP’s asylum. The first passage is a pledge to read the Constitution as a tenther document:
We pledge to honor the Constitution as constructed by its framers and honor the original intent of those precepts that have been consistently ignored – particularly the Tenth Amendment, which grants that all powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
This notion that the framers had some special understanding of the Tenth Amendment which is being “consistently ignored” is classic tentherism.
Think Progress » GOP ‘Pledge’ Embraces Radical ‘Tenther’ View of Constitution
Here, I don’t just tip my hat, I doff it and say ‘bravo’ to Garrett:
”An arrogant and out-of-touch government of self-appointed elites makes decisions, issues mandates, and enacts laws without accepting or requesting the input of the many.” Are they talking about Congress during the Bush years? If they’re apologizing, I’m listening.
As the Huffington Post’s Sam Stein reports, the GOP’s new “Pledge to America” was directed by a staffer named Brian Wild, who until early this year, was a lobbyist at a prominent DC firm that lobbied on behalf of corporate giants like Exxon. Moreover, the insurance industry is the leading contributor to Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), the Republican who led the effort. Consistent with its desire to placate lobbyists, the 21-page “Pledge” omits any mention of a key Republican mantra: a ban on earmarks.
Eugene Robinson – The GOP’s Hooey to America
Friday, September 24, 2010
The Republicans were doing pretty well as the Party of No. So why did they decide to rebrand themselves as the Party of Nonsense?
All right, I’m being slightly disingenuous. Inquiring minds demanded to know just what the GOP proposed to do if voters entrusted it with control of one or both houses of Congress. But if the "Pledge to America" unveiled Thursday is the best that House Republicans can come up with, they’d have been better off continuing to froth and foam about "creeping socialism" while stonewalling on specifics.
The problem with the pledge is that the numbers don’t remotely add up. The document is such a jumble of contradictions that it’s hard to imagine how it could possibly pass muster with anyone who survived eighth-grade arithmetic — unless, perhaps, the Republicans have something in mind that they’re not prepared to talk about quite yet.