I spent the last couple of hours reading the thing, which you can find here, and I don’t have an opinion about it one way or the other.

Basically, it’s a horse designed by committee. There isn’t much in it a conservative should find objectionable, it’s a majoritarian document which shouldn’t hurt the GOP’s efforts to make a majority in the House on Nov. 2 and most of it looks like the kinds of policies the GOP should have been pursuing back when they were last in control of the House.

That said, there’s a graph in the document that everybody needs to see.

All told, that’s 2,050 federal giveaway programs.

Two thousand and fifty.

The word “bullshit” does not come even remotely close to describing the situation where the government should be administering over 2,000 separate ways to redistribute wealth.

If the Republicans don’t kill half these programs through zero-funding them in the first 100 days after taking over the House, an entirely new leadership should be brought in. If it’s necessary to keep quiet about which programs will be killed until after the election so as not to mobilize the Parasite Vote, fine. But they’d better have a plan to lance a bunch of these boils tout de suite.

Or else they haven’t learned a damn thing.

Get to it, Mr. Boehner. You brought this to our attention. Better do something about it.

UPDATE: Doug Ross offers up a different pledge, one which is short enough to excerpt here in full and TO THE POINT:

The GOP Pledge to America
We pledge that every action we take will be gauged by the answer to a single question: Does it show fidelity to the Constitution, our highest law?

With that as our guide, we solemnly pledge the following as our first actions:

• We will repeal the Democrat health care bill and, if vetoed by the President, will de-fund every aspect of that bill until such time as the American people have input into a sensible health care reform process.
• We will slash the size of the federal government bureaucracies (Commerce, Education, Energy, the EPA, Labor, etc.) by 20% in 2011 with a goal of reducing each by 50% over the next three years, thereby saving hundreds of billions of dollars.
• We will secure the border with physical fencing suitable to repel drug smugglers, human smugglers, and terrorists, while encouraging legal immigration and enforcement of the law.
• We will confront the entitlement crisis — Social Security and Medicare — by preserving benefits for those who depend upon them and moving to privatized options for younger workers. Anything less condemns future generations to mountains of debt and economic catastrophe.
• We will strengthen our armed forces, space and missile defense programs to retain our unparalleled superpower status.
• We will begin the process of paying down our debts, spending within our means every year.
• We will ban public sector unions, which exist solely to wage war against the taxpayers who fund their operations.

Put simply: we intend to adhere to a strict interpretation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Faith, Family, and the Founding. That is our creed.

And for your support and with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.

UPDATE #2: Nice Deb offers this take on Ross’ version:

It’s all good stuff….but isn’t asking the Republicans to pledge to “ban public sector unions, which exist solely to wage war against the taxpayers who fund their operations“, a bit unrealistic? I understand that we are way past the point where “baby steps” in the right direction will be enough to get us back on track, but they have to get elected, first.

I’m going to side with Ross on this one. There is absolutely no downside in the GOP declaring war against public employee unions. Public employee unions have been at war with the GOP (and, as Ross notes, the general public) for decades; to meet their fire is merely to recognize the existence of the conflict rather than to provoke it. Those unions spend hundreds of millions of dollars to defeat Republicans in every election cycle, and they’re never punished for it.

When Democrats get into office, corporate America and the various business lobby groups soil themselves in fear and race to Washington to make some sort of accomodation in the recognition that if you don’t have a seat at the table you’re likely to be the meal. One of the main problems the American people have with Republicans is that, despite the constant drumbeat of the Democrats’ media machine making Republicans out to be tools of Wall Street/Big Oil/Big Pharma/Corporate America/The Rich/Capitalist Running Dog Lackeys/Whatever, the Democrats’ special interest groups of which the public employee unions are the absolute largest never seem to have that same fear.

Isn’t it time that the GOP do something meaningful to damage unions which collect taxpayer-financed dues in order to agitate for even more taxpayer-financed dues while providing lower-quality output every year? Isn’t this, of all years, the year where a direct attack on the SEIU’s, AFL-CIO’s, AFSCME’s, teachers’ unions and others would yield a political benefit rather than harm?

Ross thinks it is. He’s right. Those unions are parasites. The public hates them. Republican politicians, like the nice guys who drew up that document, would do well to show some sand and take his advice.