Washington Post: Top Republican challengers support Contract with America

Top Republican challengers support Contract with America

The Washington Post
By Chris Cillizza

A group of touted Republican House candidates expressed support for a 1994-style “Contract with America” in advance of the coming midterms elections during a sitdown with reporters today in Washington.

“I would very much would like to see a ‘Contract with America Two’,” said former Ohio Rep. Steve Chabot who is seeking to reclaim his Cincinnati-area 1st district and was a signer of the original “Contract” in 1994. A second “Contract” would lay out “core principles we’ll live up to,” he added.

Allen West, who is challenging Rep. Ron Klein (D) in Florida’s 22nd district, added that Republicans needed to “have a basic roadmap that shows people where we are going.”

The ten candidates, who hailed from districts in Alabama, Idaho and everywhere in between — were in Washington as part of the National Republican Congressional Committee’s “Young Guns” program — a group aimed at rewarding top fundraising performers.

Their support for a new “Contract” comes amid an active, behind-the-scenes debate within Republican ranks about whether releasing a broad set of party principles in advance of the 2010 election is a smart strategy or a strategic blunder.

The argument for a new “Contract” centers on the idea that in a national election, which almost everyone believes this fall’s midterm to be, Republicans need to be singing from the same song book — if you will — in order to maximize their gains.

“In the months ahead we’re going to tell the nation exactly what we’d do differently if we’re entrusted with power,” promised House Minority Leader John Boehner (Ohio) during a speech last week at CPAC. “But it won’t be a document handed down from on high by politicians, because something like that would land with a big thud. It’s going to be built by listening.”

Boehner has already appointed California Rep. Kevin McCarthy to begin constructing a second “Contract” in advance of the fall election.

Among the tenets outlined by Boehner include: a 72-hour “reading period” (our words, not his) to examine legislation before votes, cameras in the Rules Committee, which, in the House, determines the way in which debate will proceed, and more transparency in the earmarking process — during his CPAC speech last week.

The biggest argument against such a move is that voters are looking for the minority party to stand against what they believe to be President Obama’s wrong-headed agenda rather than offer an entire alternative set of policies and, by unifying behind a “Contract”, Republicans will be handing Democrats something to shoot at this fall.

“I wouldn’t have a party agenda at this stage of the process,” said Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, one of the architects of the original “Contract”, said in an interview last week.

Our guess on who wins the debate? Momentum within the Republican party appears to be moving toward some sort of broad statement of principles. The “what” and the “when” of that second “Contract” remain very much up in the air, however.