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The really interesting thing I noticed about all the press around The Mount Vernon Statement is that nowhere was a mention of Contract With America and how this documents echoes that bold manifesto, yadda yadda yadda. Apparently that's because Newt himself is helping to push yet another document- the Contract From America- on behalf of the Tea Party Patriots today at CPAC. This Contract has 22 "solutions" which will be narrowed to ten today by voting. The ten winning solutions will then be unveiled to the world on April 15.
Among the more interesting ones:
PROTECT THE CONSTITUTION: Require each bill to identify the specific provision of the Constitution that gives Congress the power to do what the bill does.
No doubt, an outgrowth of catcalls during last fall's town hall meetings that the Constitution does not allow for comprehensive health care reform.
ENACT FUNDAMENTAL TAX REFORM: Adopt a simple and fair single-rate tax system by scrapping the Internal Revenue code and replacing it with one that is no longer than 4,543 words -- the length of the original Constitution.
On this one, I turn to the wisdom of Barney Frank, who once wondered aloud on the House floor why Republicans think the usefulness of a bill is inversely proportional to its length.
LET US SAVE: Allow all Americans to opt out of Social Security and Medicare and instead put those same payroll taxes in a personal account they own, control, and can leave to whomever they choose.
Partying like it's 2005!
AUDIT THE FED: Begin an audit of the Federal Reserve System.
Ron Paulite fingerprints, perhaps, and something we can agree on.
I also do find it interesting that while the Mount Vernon Statement is signed by Christian fundie types and espouses the usual language on "family values", etc., but this document doesn't have anything on "values" "traditional marriage" "unborn fetuses" or the like. Of course, the Tea Party types have always been more about economic and constitutional issues, but that has drummed up some attention among the fundie types at the National Tea Party Convention:
One convention development that might have slipped past the mainstream media's coverage was a new effort by some longtime Religious Right leaders to hoist them-selves aboard the Tea Party bandwagon.
[...]
Rick Scarborough, the founder and head of a small, but disproportionately influential, Texas-based outfit called Vision America, has come up with a plan to try and fuse the Religious Right's "traditional family values" agenda to the economic concerns that have thus far mostly dominated the Tea Party movement.
At a workshop at the National Tea Party Convention given by Scarborough, the senior pastor of Harvest Point Church in Nacogdoches, Texas, unveiled what he's calling the "Mandate to Save America," a plan that might, as Devin Burghart of the Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights who attended the convention recently reported, signal "a shift taking place ... transforming the focus from bailouts and deficits to the culture war."
Scarborough is a former Southern Baptist pastor from Pearland, Texas, who in addition to Vision America, also heads up Vision America Action and the Judeo-Christian Council for Constitutional Restoration. According to Burghart, Scarborough told a crowd of 200+supporters at the Tea Party Nation convention that it was time that differences between "fiscal and social conservatives ... cease[d]."
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