Kevin McCarthy’s House Republicans tried to propose actual policies. Guess how that went

In 2020, for the first time in the 166 years since its formation, the Republican Party failed to propose any official national policy in a presidential election year, a turning point in its capitulation to intellectually vapid, cult-of-personality authoritarianism.

It’s easy to forget this unprecedented development now, perhaps on account of all the smoke, blood and pepper spray filling the air at the culmination of that campaign. Leading a violent attempt to overthrow the constitutional order has a way of making everyone foggy on the details of one’s platform — or, in this case, lack thereof.

This recent history is newly relevant because California’s own Kevin McCarthy has decided to pretend to return his party to the business of policymaking. The goal is to have an answer of sorts to all the people asking what exactly he and his fellow Republicans plan to do if, God forbid, the voters restore them to power. But they have been on a long vacation from this kind of work, and it shows.

We already knew McCarthy, the House minority leader, would do anything to be speaker, including kowtow to the former president who could have had him killed. So trying his hand at a discipline in which he has little skill or interest, even if it means falling on his face on the national stage, is a comparatively light lift.

Still, the failure is bracing to behold.

The Bakersfield Republican calls his plan a “Commitment to America,” accidentally invoking a difficult talk about a fraught long-term relationship. America has been involved with the GOP in some capacity for a century and half, but are we really ready to commit — even if it means giving up all the other possibilities, like democracy?

The allusion McCarthy intended, of course, is to Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America,” the Platonic form of reactionary policy programs because it’s widely fabled to have rocketed a right-wing agitator to the speakership in 1995 — and forced the country to listen to him ever since.

That detailed document encompassed eight specific reforms of congressional operations and no fewer than 10 full-fledged bills that the Republicans promised to roll out within their first 100 days in the majority. Whatever one thinks of Gingrich and his contract, it had substance.

McCarthy’s “Commitment” ... doesn’t. In fact, it all fits on a page — or a handy “pocket card” if a whole piece of paper is just too much commitment for you.

It’s not that there’s anything wrong with the broad aims to which McCarthy and company commit, namely “An Economy That’s Strong,” “A Nation That’s Safe” and other Goals That Are Innocuous. The trouble is that they have all the specificity of a horoscope, contriving to please almost everyone who bothers to read them while committing the party to almost nothing.

Look beyond the section headings, and it doesn’t get much more illuminating. How exactly will congressional Republicans give us An Economy That’s Strong? Why, they will “Make America Energy Independent and Reduce Gas Prices”! And how will they do that? Well, they will “Maximize production of reliable, cleaner, American-made energy and ... lower the cost of gas and utilities.” OK, then!

When McCarthy’s “Commitment” does stumble into anything more specific than patriotic platitudes and reheated Reaganism, it’s either wrong or weird or both. The Republicans will “Curb wasteful government spending that is raising the price of groceries, gas, cars and housing” — except that is not at all what is raising the price of groceries, gas, cars and housing. They will “protect the lives of unborn children and their mothers” — which is not at all what their judicial appointees have done by unleashing all manner of abortion restrictions without regard to the repercussions for women.

While the GOP may have forsaken women through the Supreme Court, however, the party’s House candidates commit to being their fiercest defenders on the nation’s basketball courts, promising to ensure “that only women can compete in women’s sports.” This ugly attack on transgender Americans comes under the supposed goal of “A Future That’s Built on Freedom,” which is the biggest lie of all from a caucus that voted overwhelmingly to overturn the last election and exonerate the president who fomented the insurrection.

And yet the Republicans are evidently so pleased with McCarthy’s approach that their campaign to expand their legislative micro-minority in Sacramento has unveiled an even more nebulous “California Promise,” which includes an unidentified “Solution for Homelessness” that will “get people off the street and into programs that address addiction and mental illness” ... somehow.

All of this is particularly awkward in the wake of a remarkably productive stretch of Democratic-led legislation on climate change, the economy, public safety, housing and homelessness in the state and national capitals. Whatever you think of these policies, they are policies.

The Republicans, meanwhile, have dispensed with so much as presenting a national policy to the public for the first time since they nominated California Sen. John C. Frémont for president on an anti-slavery platform in 1856. That’s because their only real commitment — to their own power — supersedes any other, up to and including democracy, country and Constitution. If we willingly give them that power, we ought to be committed.