GOP Pledge is Nothing New

GOP Pledge is Nothing New

This column originally appeared in the Williston Observer on September 30, 2010.

As Yogi Berra said, "It's deja vu all over again."

In 1994, with Bill Clinton two years into his first term as president, Republicans presented a Contract with America to the electorate. The Contract was a list of legislative priorities that the Republicans promised to turn into bills within the first 100 days of the 104th Congress. It was a ploy that played to the angers and frustrations of the American people at the time.

The ploy worked. The House of Representatives had a Republican majority for the first time in 40 years. Though many of the bills based on the Contract failed to become law either because of presidential veto or because the Senate failed to pass them, the Republican majority in the House lasted from the 104th Congress through to the 109th. The Democrats were not able to wrest control until the 110th Congress, almost four years ago, in January, 2007.

The legacy of that Republican control includes government shutdowns, tax cuts for the richest Americans, authorization of an unnecessary war, and the worst recession in decades.

More recently, Republicans have released their Pledge to America. The GOP is pledging to right all the wrongs that they see in American government and society, a good and noble sentiment, but forgetting that it was they who were the root cause of many of these woes.

President Obama came to office promising change, change that many of us, Democrats, Republicans, and independents, were eager for. It is change that we have not seen in many cases, change that we still wait for. But even as we await more of the president's promises to come to fruition, we cannot allow ourselves to be blinded to the fact that change has, indeed, already happened.

To me, the Pledge to America is more about undoing the good that has already been done and thwarting any possibility for more good to be done in the next two years.

Just last week, some of the most important provisions of the health care bill came into effect:

• Children can no longer be denied coverage because of a pre-existing condition
• Health care policies must cover children up to age 26
• Health care policies may no longer include lifetime limits on coverage

These features and protections are all important and have real impact on people's lives today. And if Republicans had had their way six months ago, none of these provisions would have taken effect. Because of the staggered implementation of the health care bill, even more changes will be taking effect over the next few years.

Another major accomplishment of the President and his congressional allies is the end of combat operations in Iraq. This war, the wrong war to have spent blood and treasure on, was authorized by a Republican Congress. Ending it was one of Obama's top priorities, and though it took two years, he was able to accomplish the goal without putting undue risk on our troops or the Iraqi people.

Though Republicans use it as a selling point for their own agenda, calling it a "government take-over", the government's support for General Motors and Chrysler saved an American industry and all the jobs that go with it.

According to Recovery.gov, the Recovery Act, put in place by the Democratic Congress, has brought over $250 million to Vermont through June 30, and another $500 million has been awarded to Vermont. This money represents real jobs, held by your neighbors.

The Republican leadership would have you forget about all of these accomplishments. Is there more to be done? Of course there is, but the way to get things done is not to take a step backwards, back to Republican majorities in the House and Senate.

As he introduced the latest Republican ploy, the Pledge to America, House Minority Leader John Boehner said that if they are placed in the majority, the American people can expect Republicans to "not be any different than we have been". I don't think that America can afford, nor stomach, "not different" from the Republicans, because they have been combative, obstructive, and contrary ever since the new Congress was sworn in.

What we need is a new Republican party that is willing to work with Democrats to come up with solutions, not create more problems. In lieu of that seeming pipe dream, our best bet is to maintain the Democratic majorities in Congress, and for all Democrats to work diligently toward that goal.

Advice for the Tea Party

This column originally appeared in the Williston Observer on April 22, 2010.

Advice for the Tea Party

The Tea Party movement has been active for about a year now, and with the movement's rise comes a lot of questions. Despite the fact that I don't agree with most of the Tea Party's message, they are a continuation of the great American spirit of dissent and protest.

The common use of the Gadsden Flag by Partiers, with its yellow field, coiled rattlesnake, and "Don't Tread on Me" message, is the group's own attempt to link back to our revolutionary heritage.

The Doonesbury cartoon series has noticed, too: When perpetual hippie Zonker attended a Tea Party rally, he heard Partiers chanting "Down with the Tyrants!" Zonker noted they had the same "outasight" message his generation had. Zonker also found common cause with a Partier who was out to "stick it to the man."

The Tea Party, though, has image problems it needs to deal with. I'm sure you've heard these stories:

At a January rally in New Mexico, news reports said that "many" of the Partiers showed up with loaded semi-automatic weapons and holstered pistols. All perfectly legal, but the image this sort of thing projects to the average American, who supports gun rights but is wary of guns, is one of aggression and conflict.

Charges of racism in the Tea Party have also come up again and again. Many examples I cannot repeat here, but this is one: Calling the health care act "white slavery" senselessly and callously belittles the actual slavery the ancestors of some of our black citizens had to endure.

Finally, a common scene depicted at some rallies has the face of President Barack Obama placed over the image of Adolph Hitler. Aside from the fact that nothing Obama's administration has done approaches Nazism, there is Godwin's Law, which states that if you start comparing people to Hitler, the discussion has, by default, gone on too long.

Has the discussion gone on too long?

Last month, my colleague on the right-hand page, Mike Benevento, noted that the Tea Party movement was fragile. The movement, he wrote, "risks fizzling out." Mike noted that the movement had to not only grow from the grass-roots, but it also had to unify nationally. Otherwise, it risked being just a local phenomenon, with no national influence.

I agree with Mike, but his advice must be only part of the movement's long-term survival plan. If it continues to appeal to the fringes of the right wing, the ones who insist on screaming "baby killers!" and "socialists!" and even "Nazis!" at every turn, they will lose any hope of wide appeal.

I've seen this sort of thing happen before, up-close, and on the left. When I was a student at UVM, because of my work on the Vermont Cynic, I was asked by a far-left campus group to help produce their own alternative newspaper. It was called ?The Gadfly, and it contained a fair number of good stories about students working with organizations in Burlington to help the city's poor and down-trodden.

These stories had a real shot of getting more students involved in social action. However, the stories were buried between reprints from Granma International (an English-language newspaper from Cuba, which extolled the virtues of Castro and his Revolution) and the People's World (a communist weekly from New York City). The Gadfly was largely ignored.

The lesson is that a good, positive message of change can easily be derailed by being connected too closely to extreme messages that the common man has no interest in hearing.

The Tea Party's raison d'etre now is to be against the health care law. If that's all it has to hang its hat on, then I don't think the Party has much life left in it. They may help Republicans pick up a few seats in November, but I also think that for every negative message about the law the Republicans and the Tea Party have to offer, there are (at least) two positive stories about how the law will make the average American's health better and more secure.

The movement's other major issue, the raging deficit, is a big concern; but the only way to stop that now would be to leave our troops in a lurch or to allow the bottom to drop out of the economy. Obama has plans to bring our troops home and hopes with the rest of us that the economy is rebounding, bringing us back to the surpluses of the Clinton years.

The Tea Party might be a force for change over the next few years; they just need to be sure what they want to change is worth changing, and that they do it with rational arguments and tempered words.