In new book, GOP 'young guns' take on Obama and their own party

By Perry Bacon Jr.

Aggressively looking to distance themselves from their party's past, three top Republican House members are using a new book to repeatedly and often scathingly criticize former GOP leaders.

In "Young Guns," due for release in the next couple of weeks, Reps. Eric Cantor (Va.), Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) and Paul Ryan (Wis.) cast the Republican congressional leaders who preceded them as a group that "betrayed its principles" and was plagued by "failures from high-profile ethics lapses to the inability to rein in spending or even slow the growth of government." Cantor specifically says Republicans became "arrogant and "out of touch."

"Under Republican leadership in the early 2000's, spending and government got out of control," McCarthy writes. "As government grew, there were scandals and political corruption. The focus became getting reelected rather than solving problems and addressing pressing issues."

This critique and the release of the book are the latest attempt by GOP leaders to cast themselves as a changed party since they controlled Congress four years ago, Cantor, the No. 2 Republican in the House, has been a leading figure in this effort, even though he himself was a party leader then as now.

McCarthy is heavily involved in the House Republican campaign effort, while Ryan is one of the leading voices on policy in the GOP and would become the chairman of the budget committee if Republicans won control of the House this November.

The title of the book comes from a program Cantor, 47, and McCarthy, 45, have created to encourage young Republicans to run for office. Each congressman wrote individual chapters of the 190-page book.

In "Young Guns," the trio's rhetoric against their own party is frequent even as it is vague on identifying the actual culprits. Former House speaker Dennis Hastert (Ill.), former majority leader Tom DeLay (Tex.) and former President George W. Bush are almost never named, even as the congressmen suggest the Republican Party must be recast from the Bush era. President Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) , meanwhile, are blamed for problems in Washington on nearly every other page.

The book is in some ways similar to one written by then-Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) in 2006, when he was trying to lead his party to control of the House. Like Emanuel's book, which was not written with Pelosi, who was the Democrats' top leader, House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio.) did not participate formally in this project.

And like Emanuel, who has watched as White House chief of staff as the GOP has borrowed much of his 2006 election approach, the three include a number of policy ideas, although many of them are vague promises to cut spending or "listen to the American people." In his section, Ryan describes his controversial "Roadmap" proposal, which would radically overhaul the tax code, Social Security and Medicare, but his colleagues don't endorse the idea in the book. (And fewer than two dozen congressional Republicans have said they support the plan, which has come under heavy attack from Democrats)

The timing of the release of "Young Guns" around this fall's elections could help race the profile of these three Republicans, who have largely been overshadowed by figures such as Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck in the GOP's recent resurgence. And the authors are not shy in suggesting they want to be viewed as power players in the party.

"As I traveled around the country in 2007, some Republican candidates were saying to me that the party had lost so much trust with the people that they didn't want the party leadership coming to their districts to campaign for them," McCarthy writes. "They were interested, however, in having rising Republican leaders like Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan come to their districts."