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Jamie Dupree's Washington Insider

Posted: 8:13 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 22, 2010

2010 GOP Contract 

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By Jamie Dupree

The 2010 campaign will start to feel a little more like 1994 today, as House Republican leaders lay out their "Pledge to America."

Unlike the 1994 Contract With America event, which took place out on the West Front of the Capitol in late September of that year, this time Republicans will travel to a small business in Virginia to offer up their goals for a GOP Congress.

The plan is pretty basic Republican stuff - lower taxes, smaller government, reforms in Congress and more.

Just like the first time around in 1994, Democrats have been openly mocking the GOP effort, as Speaker Nancy Pelosi led the kitchen sink barrage.

"Congressional Republicans are pledging to ship jobs overseas; blow a $700 billion hole in the deficit to give tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires; turn Social Security from a guaranteed benefit into a guaranteed gamble; once again, subject American families to the recklessness of Wall Street; and take away patients' rights," said Pelosi.

The back and forth does remind me of 1994.  Republicans said Democrats were out of touch on spending and more, while Democrats scoffed at GOP plans.

One big difference is in how the details will get out to the public.

In 1994, soon-to-be Speaker Newt Gingrich proudly announced how people could read the GOP agenda in the era before the internet.

"We have not only put them in writing today," Gingrich said of the Contract's main points, "but they will be in a full page ad in TV Guide."

TV Guide probably wouldn't mind the advertising in 2010, that's for sure.

Will this "Pledge" make any difference?  Well, the 1994 Contract did pretty well, if I remember correctly.

We'll see in five and a half weeks.

 
 
 

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