Agenda? We don't need no stinkin' agenda!
Democrats Decide They Don’t Need ‘Contract’ to WinInteresting question.
ROLL CALL
By Morton M. Kondracke September 28, 2006
The 12th anniversary of the Republicans’ 1994 “Contract with America” came and went on Wednesday without a 2006 Democratic counterpart. And there won’t be one.
Instead, Democratic House and Senate leaders held yet another press conference to denounce the Republican Congress’ “rubberstamping the Bush administration’s misguided agenda.” Despite repeated urging from various quarters, including from former President Bill Clinton, that the party needs to make clear what it stands for and not just against, Democrats contend that off-year elections are referenda on the party in power and that a Democratic alternative agenda would only provide targets for the GOP to attack.
Just to underscore the point, the Senate Democratic leadership’s “war room” sent out an e-mail Monday declaring that “much hype surrounds the 1994 Contract with America. The Contract is often incorrectly credited with playing a large role in the Republican victory in the mid-term elections. Evidence shows that this was not, in fact, the case: Candidates did not campaign on the Contract with America, and most Americans were unfamiliar with the document’s existence.” Still, it’s a fact that then-House Minority Leader Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) gathered 337 GOP Members and candidates on the West Front of the Capitol on Sept. 27, 1994, and issued a 10-plank platform that included welfare reform, a balanced-budget constitutional amendment, tort reform, Defense budget increases, middle-class tax cuts and term limits for Members of Congress.
It’s undoubtedly true that the GOP won the election largely because of disgust with Democratic management — the failure of Clinton’s health care reform plan and Congressional scandals — but the contract did provide a legislative roadmap for the GOP once it won a 52-seat victory and had to help govern the country. This year, Democrats have issued a two-page positive agenda, “New Direction for America,” but there’s been no Capitol steps rally, and the document has all the earmarks of being just a handout designed to be an answer to the question, “But what do Democrats stand for?”
Perhaps Groucho Marx said it best:
I don't know what they have to say, It makes no difference anyway--Thus, my friends, is the democrat agenda. "If Bush and the Republicans are for it, we're against it."
Whatever it is, I'm against it!
No matter what it is or who commenced it, I'm against it.
Your proposition may be good- But let's have one thing understood
Whatever it is, I'm against it! And even when you've changed it or condensed it, I'm against it.
I'm opposed to it On general principles I'm opposed to it!
(Chorus: He's opposed to it! In fact, in word, in deed, He's opposed to it!)
For months before my son was born, I used to yell from night till morn,
Whatever it is, I'm against it!
And I've kept yelling since I commenced it, I'm against it!
Have fun crashing and burning this November, dems....
From what I hear the fall doesn't hurt. That is, until you hit the bottom.
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