House Minority Leader John Boenher (left) isn't sure yet where he stands, while Whip Eric Cantor (center) and Rep. Mike Pence say they want the document tied to specific legislation. GOP split over terms of new 'Contract'

Republicans are salivating over the prospect of winning back the House in November, and they’re planning to produce a new “Contract With America” in the hopes of sealing the deal.

The catch: They don’t agree yet on what should be in it.


House Minority Whip Eric Cantor wants a document, akin to Newt Gingrich’s 1994 Contract With America, that identifies specific pieces of legislation Republicans could pass if they win back the House. He thinks Republicans should “put up or shut up,” an aide close to the process said.

So does Indiana Rep. Mike Pence, the House Republican Conference chairman. The party doesn’t need “sloganeering,” someone familiar with his thinking said, and he favors an approach that “tells people what [the party] want[s] and how you’re going to do it.”

But Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the California Republican who is leading the effort to craft the document, says that including specific legislation in the contract would smack of the backroom deals the GOP accuses Democrats of making, so “you won’t see it written out.”

There’s peril in both approaches.

If the Republicans include too many specifics, especially on hot-button social issues important to their base, they risk turning off moderates and independents. And that’s assuming that they can get the entire House Republican Conference to agree on specific bills in the first place; not everyone, for example, would support a proposal to “repeal and replace” the Democrats’ health care bill.

“When you are being specific and making a commitment, you got to make sure you’re responsive to what people are saying; you have to have buy-in from your conference,” said Minnesota Rep. John Kline, the top Republican on the Education and Labor Committee, who favors specificity despite his concerns. “Otherwise, if it splits the conference, that’s not something we can make a commitment to.”

But skip the details, and the Republicans risk producing a document that comes off as something less than serious.

“You can’t just make blanket statements without backing them up with something,” said lobbyist Robert Walker, a former Republican congressman from Pennsylvania who was involved in authoring in the 1994 Contract With America, which was chock full of legislative language. “That’s how you get credibility. You’re no longer saying “no”; you have a specific agenda out there. You’ll take heat, no doubt; you’ll have the administration stand up and criticize you.”

The Republicans have recent experience with both kinds of problems.

When Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan released a specific “Roadmap for America’s Future” earlier this year, Democrats dug into the details and accused him of wanting to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits. In the ensuing flap, Ryan was forced to stand by and watch as other Republicans — including House Minority Leader John Boehner — distanced themselves from his plan.

Boehner and other Republican leaders suffered the opposite problem last year when they released a long-promised GOP alternative to President Barack Obama’s budget proposal. The slim, 19-page GOP blueprint contained few numbers and fewer specifics and left the party open to mocking from both the left and the right. “It took me several minutes to read it,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs sneered. “I will note that there is one more picture of a windmill than there is of a chart of numbers. Just for your knowledge, there is exactly one picture of a windmill.”

Republicans say they are still weeks — if not months — away from a final decision on what will be in their new Contract With America, which they’re tentatively calling a Commitment to America.

An aide said Boehner supports a “substantive document” but has not decided if he thinks the party should be tied to specific legislation.

Rank-and-file Republicans, who spoke privately so as to not be seen usurping their leadership, said they fear tying themselves to specific bills, as the party did in its original contract in 1994, because it doesn’t take into account the political reality. Should the Republicans win the majority and fail to pass the legislation they’ve promised, Democrats could paint them as either ineffective or insincere.

“Political winds shift,” said one Republican member who’s wary of including too much specificity.

Underscoring that point, McCarthy showed a reporter Gingrich’s portrait off the House floor — and noted that what’s in his hand is not a list of legislation promised in the Contract With America but, rather, a checklist of what Republicans hoped to accomplish.

While Gingrich’s House Republicans were able to move on much of the Contract With America measures in 1995, most of it died in the Senate.

One Republican directly involved in the process this time around said the new Republican manifesto will be based on the “power of the idea, which will be so strong it will go beyond committee chairs and party politics” — a suggestion that the new contract won’t be overly specific.

National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Pete Sessions said he wants four things in the document: “process, competition, accountability and results.” As for whether specific bills should be included, Sessions said he’s still unsure.

But Cantor spokesman Brad Dayspring said voters will want specifics from the GOP.

“Responsible leadership requires the development of serious and deliverable solutions to the real problems facing families, small businesses and workers,” Dayspring said. “When it comes to a commitment with the American people, Congressman Cantor believes that Republicans must listen, lead and deliver — and that will stand in stark contrast to the actions and agenda of [House] Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi and other out-of-touch Democrats.”

Democrats worked through similar squabbles over what to promise in the run-up to the 2006 midterms, eventually producing “A New Direction for America,” a document that featured “Six for ’06” priorities but no specific legislative text.

For now, the Republicans say they’re focused less on the specifics of what will be in their new contract than on the process for getting there. In the next several months, they plan to set up social networks to solicit opinion from voters across the country and hold town hall meetings to hear “directly from the American people” — a process meant to convey the sort of transparency they say the Democratic Congress has lacked.

“Knowing what has gone on here, people have crafted legislation people haven’t seen — I’d never want that to happen,” McCarthy said.