Today, former Spkr. Gingrich suggested we could see another Contract appear before the 2010 midterms:
“I’ve been talking with Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, ” Gingrich said today, speaking with students at C-SPAN’s Cable Center Class.
“He is developing a first principles model that I think is a very exciting , positive step in the right direction,” said Gingrich, who has said that he will decide by February about waging his own campaign for president. “B September , it might be very, very good for the Republicans in the House and Senate to have a common ground on which to campaign, whether they call it a Contract for America or some other device.
“Having a positive set of things that say, ‘if you elect us, these are the positive steps we will take,” Gingrich said, on a program that C-SPAN3 is airing at 5 pm EST. This “may well be the key building block to really become the alternative party, not the opposition party.”…
…”We didn’t do the Contract until very late in the campaign,” he noted. “You could begin to put together a set of firs principles around which 80 percent of the country would rally… and then come Labor Day, you could begin to look a what are the five or 10 biggest things that the Republicans could offer as their contract for America.”
He’s got four ready to go:
“The No. 1 issue is jobs… The No. 2 issue is energy… The No. 3 challenge… replace the big government monstrosity that they passed on Saturday ( a reference to the Democratic-led House healthcare bill. “The No. 4 challenge is education.”
Perhaps coincidentally, the four issues Newt mentioned align well with the four areas Jeb Bush believes the party must focus on to win back voters – education, health care, the budget and energy. Of course, party leaders can easily enough draw up another Contract, but getting elected officials to follow through on the promise of the Contract is a whole other animal. Still, could the possibility of a second Contract and Republican takeover of Congress, along with a President Obama more compelled to focus on restraining spending, as he has begun to suggest (after all, the Dems did include Pay-Go in their 2006 platform), re-create or at least resemble the Clinton-Gingrich dynamic we had in the mid- to late-1990s? Hey, a guy can dream, right?
November 14th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
Smart.
November 14th, 2009 at 3:41 pm
But Obama’s no Clinton, and Boehner is no Gingrich.
November 14th, 2009 at 5:28 pm
But Obama’s no Clinton, and Boehner is no Gingrich.
No, neither is anywhere near as smart as his predecessor. Nor is Obama as good a politician. Not sure about Gingrich/Boehner in that regard. I think overall though, Obama comes off worse in comparison to Clinton because of his inability to recognize and adjust to his problems.
In regard to the idea of a CWA2.0 — I’ll vote Republican, of course, in 2010 for House and Senate, but it won’t be with any faith that the Republican Party will keep any promises it makes.
November 14th, 2009 at 7:44 pm
Utah becomes a battleground in the GOP’s civil war
Sen. Robert Bennett is under fire from those in the party who find him insufficiently conservative. His battle may be a reflection of an anti-establishment anger that could affect both parties.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-utah-senate14-2009nov14,0,4048460.story
November 14th, 2009 at 8:50 pm
I’m sorry, but Newt needs to go. His Scozzafava endorsement was just the latest evidence of why. Read Dr./Sen. Tom Coburn’s book, Breach of Trust, for the more reasons.
November 14th, 2009 at 10:02 pm
“I’m sorry, but Newt needs to go. His Scozzafava endorsement was just the latest evidence of why.” BINGO!
November 15th, 2009 at 4:22 am
they need to make the contract binding. the republicans need to have some skin in the game if they want to win the people. elected officials should sign the contract and resign if they fail to keep their promises. We can’t have any more commercial politics which looks good on paper and then fails to deliver. they need to focus on restraining government and reducing corruption and then downsizing government as their first priority. no more of this “government as the good guy” bull. make government so that we can trust it and then set it to work fixing problems.
November 15th, 2009 at 8:26 am
Speaker Gingrich and Chairman Steele are a great team. I think that Contract 2.O is a marvelous idea. The GOP and especially the House and Senate leadership need to co-opt the Tea Party movement and they need to focus on three issues: tax cuts, reducing spending especially on opposing earmark spending, and bring back term limits. They should also oppose regulation including corporate pay caps and insurance regulation. On foreign policy they should oppose withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan and support an expanded mission surge and more resources for the war and rebuilding efforts.
November 15th, 2009 at 10:56 am
What about the deficit?
November 15th, 2009 at 1:08 pm
Gingrich is becoming more and more irrelevant every day. First his endorsement of the RINO in NY-23 then his poor decision to do the education tour with the current secretary of education. I am very disappointed in the man.
November 15th, 2009 at 2:06 pm
MWS,
I agree that Newt’s outline has a gaping hole, with no mention of the deficit.