House GOP Leadership Colluded With National Review To Blunt Criticism Of ‘Pledge To America’

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http://thinkprogress.org/2010/09/25/house-gop-national-review-pledge/

The Daily Caller’s Jon Ward reports that there is “pretty widespread” discontent inside the GOP caucus with the recently-released “Pledge to America,” citing the document’s omission of an earmarks ban and its regurgitation of many health reform elements contained in the Affordable Care Act. But, Ward reports, the House GOP leadership was able to restrain much of the internal consternation among its members by circulating a positive editorial written by the National Review.

In the editorial titled “We’ll Take The Pledge,” the National Review editors lauded the document as being “bolder” than the Contract for America. The editorial also called the Pledge “compelling,” “praiseworthy,” and “a shrewd political document.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Republican sources told the Daily Caller that the GOP leadership colluded with the National Review in prearranging the editorial:

Two high-level Republican sources said that the National Review editorial had been prearranged, however, by Neil Bradley, a top leadership aide who is close to April Ponnuru, the executive director of the National Review Institute, and Kate O’Beirne, NRI’s president.

“It was a political blowjob,” one Republican aide said of the National Review editorial.

Bradley denied the accusation: “The assertion that I ‘prearranged’ the National Review editorial, or any editorial, is 100 percent false,” he said.

O’Beirne also denied the allegation, calling it “absolutely, categorically false.

In his weekly address, President Obama ripped the “Pledge to America.” “It is grounded in the same worn out philosophy: cut taxes for millionaires and billionaires; cut the rules for Wall Street and the special interests; and cut the middle class loose to fend for itself. That’s not a prescription for a better future. It’s an echo of a disastrous decade we can’t afford to relive,” he said.


http://dailycaller.com/2010/09/24/conservatives-denounce-gop-pledge-as-sellout-inside-job/print/

[Wounded Bear]

1. Surprise, surprise.....

RWers will fill in the blanks. When this is said, they will hear "Pledge to (take back) America. Carefully worded, isn't it? Typical dog whistle crap that the fundie sheep will fall for again.

I prefer Norman Goldman's take on it.....the "Pledge to "finish off" America." That's what it really is, and that's what I hear.

[opihimoimoi]

2. Ya Noes when the GOPers say anything series...it somehow stinks for Blue Collars

We should not them Breed

[gratuitous]

3. Thank God the Republicans are not in disarray

See, it's always the Democrats who are fractious and in disarray. Republicans are united (UNITED, I tell you) behind their new Plague, and there's no dissension in the ranks anywhere.

[DJ13]

4. Some things I never want associated in the same article

Kate O’Beirne and blowjobs.

:scared:

[Cirque du So-What]

5. National Review? Who reads that rag anyway?

Other than dyed-in-the-wool conservatroids, nobody makes reference to that dreadful publication - unless it's to point & laugh, as we're doing here.