Gingrich: It's Not There Yet. Will Sign Pledge Only If There Are Changes

Damocles

Accedo!
Staff member
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/...riage-vow----from-iowa-conservative-group.php

Newt Gingrich has decided not to sign -- at least, not sign as of yet -- an Iowa conservative group's controversial 'Marriage Vow' pledge for Republican presidential candidates to personally and publicly uphold heterosexual monogamy and sexual morality.

"We're happy to work with you to sharpen it so people understand where we're going with it," Gingrich told Family Leader head Bob Vander Plaats, according to Gingrich spokesman R.C. Hammond, in a National Journal report. "It's not there yet."

Two candidates, Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum, have already signed the document -- and then when called on it, walked back just a bit from the resolution's original preamble language on slavery, which has since been edited out -- stating, quite contrary to the facts, that African-American families were more secure under slavery than they are today. (But they only walked back just a bit -- for example, Team Bachmann declared, "In no uncertain terms, Congresswoman Bachmann believes that slavery was horrible and economic enslavement is also horrible" -- thus likening modern economic and welfare policies to chattel slavery.)

More at link...
 
The only people who care what Newt signs these days are jewelry store clerks.
 
No, so far only Michelle Bachmann and Santorum signed. IMO foolishly. The Preamble (since removed) would have been enough to make me keep far away.
 
The Steady Stream of Empty Conservative Pledges

We have become a nation of pledgers, a steady harangue of forced allegiance to one drill or another. Newly elected legislators rush around the halls of Congress signing up supporters of everything from a defense of marriage to deficit reduction to a balanced-budget constitutional amendment. It's enough to make one's head spin, a rash of promises forged into a meaningless jumble of partisan talking points.

The act of signing on to one of these pledges is an indication that we have given up trying to find logical solutions to the country's problems and that economic hucksters have been able to freeze intelligent thought wherever it occurs. Grover Norquist has rallied his supporters behind a pledge not to raise taxes. There's another calling itself the "pro-life" pledge. And candidates are expected to sign on or lose right-wing support in the primary and general elections. Bob Vander Plaats of The Family Leader says, "We believe that ...candidates' positions on core values such as marriage correlate directly to his/her moral stances on energy issues, sound budgeting policies, national defense and economic policies." How anyone could buy into such an irrational conclusion is hard to imagine, but that's the fractured political world in which we live.

It fits perfectly with the way Republicans have gone about addressing the debt-ceiling which has become so intertwined with ideological conservative themes that the task of putting the pieces back in their proper order has become almost insurmountable. With conservative leaders in the House insisting there's a connection between the debt limit and spending curbs the way back to fiscal sanity seems ever more elusive. Perhaps it hasn't been said often enough that the debt limit needs to be raised in order to satisfy debts the country has already incurred not to allow the government to increase spending. That is a basic truth the right wing chooses to ignore when it preaches fiscal austerity and tries to attach entitlement-killing provisions to legislation intended to adjust the economy in less draconian fashion.

Why do Democrats allow Republicans to continue saying that putting an end to tax subsidies, for example, is in fact raising taxes? And why hasn't the practice of hiding profits off-shore to avoid taxes been more vociferously condemned? When conservatives assert that markets should be allowed to set financial parameters with as few regulations as possible where are the voices of reason asserting even more loudly that poor regulation and a tax code that countenances a precipitous tilt in the direction of the rich and corporate interests do irreparable harm to our economic condition?

Evidence suggests that the behavior of investment firms played a major role in the financial debacle that has wreaked such havoc in our economy. Why then haven't our legislators worked more diligently to reinstate the Glass-Steagall act, a provision that kept banking and investment transactions at arm's length from each other? When the repeal of this law was announced several years ago, it should have been clear where our financial institutions were headed. Conservatives like to rail against Fannie and Freddie and surely both have some serious debt on their books. But, placing huge resources at the disposal of banks and investment firms was an invitation for those parties to engage in the most insidious kind of market manipulation.

Let the markets decide and indeed they did and we still suffer from the recalcitrance of market wheelers and dealers. Of all the pledges making their way into the mainstream one contract worthy of attention would be a promise to stop playing politics with our future. Conservatives have nullified the goals of environmental purists, quashed aspirations of a future based on real moral values and built instead a flimsy political edifice that relies on promises that lack substance and ethical validity.

Remember the fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me adage? We've turned into an electorate that allows itself to be fooled repeatedly and seems to think that changing course no matter how ill-charted is a change for the better. That's the choice voters made in 2010 and that's the choice we're stuck with now - - a partisan divide that shows no sign of finding a better way forward.

Conclusion: All current pledges should be scrapped immediately and more meaningful pursuits undertaken.

By Ann Davidow
 
No, so far only Michelle Bachmann and Santorum signed. IMO foolishly. The Preamble (since removed) would have been enough to make me keep far away.



Perhaps Bach-to-Mom's male master Marcus ordered Michele to sign, and she submitted.
 
We have become a nation of pledgers, a steady harangue of forced allegiance to one drill or another. Newly elected legislators rush around the halls of Congress signing up supporters of everything from a defense of marriage to deficit reduction to a balanced-budget constitutional amendment. It's enough to make one's head spin, a rash of promises forged into a meaningless jumble of partisan talking points.

The act of signing on to one of these pledges is an indication that we have given up trying to find logical solutions to the country's problems and that economic hucksters have been able to freeze intelligent thought wherever it occurs. Grover Norquist has rallied his supporters behind a pledge not to raise taxes. There's another calling itself the "pro-life" pledge. And candidates are expected to sign on or lose right-wing support in the primary and general elections. Bob Vander Plaats of The Family Leader says, "We believe that ...candidates' positions on core values such as marriage correlate directly to his/her moral stances on energy issues, sound budgeting policies, national defense and economic policies." How anyone could buy into such an irrational conclusion is hard to imagine, but that's the fractured political world in which we live.

It fits perfectly with the way Republicans have gone about addressing the debt-ceiling which has become so intertwined with ideological conservative themes that the task of putting the pieces back in their proper order has become almost insurmountable. With conservative leaders in the House insisting there's a connection between the debt limit and spending curbs the way back to fiscal sanity seems ever more elusive. Perhaps it hasn't been said often enough that the debt limit needs to be raised in order to satisfy debts the country has already incurred not to allow the government to increase spending. That is a basic truth the right wing chooses to ignore when it preaches fiscal austerity and tries to attach entitlement-killing provisions to legislation intended to adjust the economy in less draconian fashion.

Why do Democrats allow Republicans to continue saying that putting an end to tax subsidies, for example, is in fact raising taxes? And why hasn't the practice of hiding profits off-shore to avoid taxes been more vociferously condemned? When conservatives assert that markets should be allowed to set financial parameters with as few regulations as possible where are the voices of reason asserting even more loudly that poor regulation and a tax code that countenances a precipitous tilt in the direction of the rich and corporate interests do irreparable harm to our economic condition?

Evidence suggests that the behavior of investment firms played a major role in the financial debacle that has wreaked such havoc in our economy. Why then haven't our legislators worked more diligently to reinstate the Glass-Steagall act, a provision that kept banking and investment transactions at arm's length from each other? When the repeal of this law was announced several years ago, it should have been clear where our financial institutions were headed. Conservatives like to rail against Fannie and Freddie and surely both have some serious debt on their books. But, placing huge resources at the disposal of banks and investment firms was an invitation for those parties to engage in the most insidious kind of market manipulation.

Let the markets decide and indeed they did and we still suffer from the recalcitrance of market wheelers and dealers. Of all the pledges making their way into the mainstream one contract worthy of attention would be a promise to stop playing politics with our future. Conservatives have nullified the goals of environmental purists, quashed aspirations of a future based on real moral values and built instead a flimsy political edifice that relies on promises that lack substance and ethical validity.

Remember the fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me adage? We've turned into an electorate that allows itself to be fooled repeatedly and seems to think that changing course no matter how ill-charted is a change for the better. That's the choice voters made in 2010 and that's the choice we're stuck with now - - a partisan divide that shows no sign of finding a better way forward.

Conclusion: All current pledges should be scrapped immediately and more meaningful pursuits undertaken.

By Ann Davidow

how did your party leader's pledge to take public financing work out?
 
So what are you saying Damo, that Bachmann and Santorum endorsed slavery?

I think it is a mistake for any candidate to associate with anything that can be construed that way, let alone something that quite literally suggested that people under abject bodily slavery were in any way better off than those with freedom. Winning in Iowa isn't important enough to sign documents that will make you lose elsewhere.
 
I would say he did........he said it could be construed that way, and you can rest assured the liberals will make every effort to do so.....
 
I'm glad the Bach-to-Mom obeyed her male master Marcus and signed the Pledge...and I look forward to reminding people of that fact while she and her male master pray away the gays...

rant.gif
 
You didn't answer my question. :)

The question was nonsense. So I restated what I am saying rather than just saying "no" with no explanation. I'm reasonably sure that you are capable of understanding that are are just being deliberately obtuse for humor, but just in case, I'll say it again.

I think they were foolish to sign something that even remotely could be seen as saying that black people were better off as slaves. I also think that there is no reason to mention race at all in something like this and that should have set off flags in a reasonably intelligent candidate, and lastly I think they still shouldn't have signed it as it is a state issue and not one for the President anyway.

There is nothing wrong in saying, "That's a state issue."
 
Perhaps Bach-to-Mom's male master Marcus ordered Michele to sign, and she submitted.

Of course I always have to obey my male masters or else they penetrate me too hard and I wind up with a sore ass. If I try to return the favor I just get beaten and raped. Sad day.
 
Bachman can just claim that she personally did not want to sign, but her husband told her to.
 
The question was nonsense. So I restated what I am saying rather than just saying "no" with no explanation. I'm reasonably sure that you are capable of understanding that are are just being deliberately obtuse for humor, but just in case, I'll say it again.
"

Here's one you were beaten in. It's amazing how many times your name came up under "obtuse", btw.
 
Back
Top