House GOPers Exploit and Insult Thomas Jefferson

Are the House Republicans as paranoid as the most extreme Tea Partier?

On Thursday, House Minority leader John Boehner (R-Land of No) and his crew released a campaign manifesto called A Pledge to America, which outlined what they would do, should they gain control of the House in the coming congressional elections. The preamble to this glossy, 45-page document -- which doles out the expected: tax cuts for the rich, downsizing government, repealing the health care bill -- purposefully echoes the Declaration of Independence, noting that "America is an idea . . . that each of us is endowed by their Creator with the unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

The eloquently worded introduction goes on to state:

In a self-governing society, the only bulwark against the power of the state is the consent of the governed, and regarding the policies of the current government, the governed do not consent.

It adds,

An unchecked executive, a compliant legislature, and an overreaching judiciary have combined to thwart the will of the people and overturn their votes and their values.

Hold on, you Thomas Jefferson-wannabes. When TJ wrote the Declaration, noting that governments derive "their just powers from the consent of the governed," he was advocating rebellion -- by arms, if necessary -- against actual tyranny (as he put it, "absolute Despotism"). The present situation -- no matter what tricorn-wearing Tea Partiers might say -- is hardly equivalent. Let's start with this: There was an election in 2008, and Barack Obama and the Democrats won, after campaigning for health care reform, economic stimulus, restrictions on Wall Street wheeling and dealing, and much more. Then -- OMG! -- they implemented the policies they advocated, with majority votes in both houses of Congress. In other words, the system has worked.

If you want to consult polls, some of these polices at different times have been popular, sometimes not. But this notion that the governed do not consent, like the governed of colonial America did not consent to the repressive regime of King George III, is ahistorical and absurd. The GOPers are cheapening the United States' founding text by expropriating it for their melodramatic, foot-stomping exercise.

And they are delusional. An unchecked executive? Not at all. Just look at how often the Senate Republicans have resorted to filibusters and secret holds to check Obama. A compliant legislature? Ditto. An overreaching judiciary? The Obama administration has both won and lost cases before federal judges. (See the BP case.) And how have Obama and his co-tyrants overturned votes? Last time, I checked, the Republican-appointed majority of the Supreme Court literally overturned votes in Bush v. Gore.

All this tripe is pure pandering. And it's dangerous tripe, for such cavalier and fact-free rhetoric fuels the far right's belief that the Obama administration is not legitimate, that the president has usurped power. And what do you do with usurpers? You can try to vote them out of office, but some folks may resort to other measures. After all, our Founding Fathers and mothers were not so polite with King George.

Given such an introduction, the Pledge is difficult to regard seriously. And its substance doesn't warrant respect. The Republicans call for deficit reduction but champion tax cuts for the wealthy that will add a trillion dollars to our national credit card. The Pledge states, "we pledge to make government more transparent in its actions" and decries the fact that in Washington "the most important decisions are made behind closed doors, where a flurry of backroom deals has supplanted the will of the people." But do Boehner and his colleagues promise to reveal which corporate lobbyists they meet with and what is discussed in these backroom powwows? (Please, no laughing.) The document maintains the stimulus did not work. But economists across the board say it saved or created about 3 million jobs. The Pledge promises spending cuts, without specifying what would be slashed.

What the document leaves out is telling. It contains no mention of the following: Wall Street, banks, the environment, earmarks, education, science, technology, research, alternative energy, transportation, and infrastructure.

But it does boast a couple of pretty photos of cowboys.

For months, my free advice to the GOP has been simple: Don't do something, just sit there. With unemployment persistently hovering near 10 percent, there is justifiable rage within the electorate. The clearest target for that anger is the party in power, whether or not it's making the right policy choices. Voters are not clamoring for Boehner to rescue them by resuscitating the policies of the Bush-Cheney years. According to various polls, the GOP is not any more popular than the Democrats; in some surveys, it's less popular. Yet because people cannot vote for None of the Above, the R's stand to gain as we're-not-them political bystanders -- especially with Democratic voters apparently unenthusiastic about the elections, and Republican voters raring to kick butt. So by putting their extremism to paper, the GOPers do themselves little favor. (A reminder: A large majority of the angry voters of 1994 who tossed out the House Democrats had never heard of Newt Gingrich's Contract with America.)

The Pledge, then, is no game-changer. But it does reveal the game the GOP is playing: feed the fires of discontent and fear in order to exploit them. With this knock-off document, they are not renewing patriotic fervor. They are crassly manipulating it. You're not shocked? I know. As Jefferson might observe, this is self-evident.

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