The Gop Is Doing The Right Thing Pro ‘Contract’ Republicans Kept Most Promises.

Not since Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first year in the White House have Americans seen a 100-day whirlwind like the one that launched the 104th Congress. We’re surprised. We admit it.

When this newspaper endorsed Tom Foley last fall, it seemed a safe bet Democrats would keep their majority and the widely respected Speaker would offer the best hope for fixing a dysfunctional Congress. It seemed a sure bet that the pledges in “Contract with America” would go the way of all campaign rhetoric.

Times change. Today, the voters’ verdict commands respect.

The refreshing breeze of political revolution has blown away 60 years of federal presumption. It has challenged our dependent society to accept personal responsibility again, and to halt 30 years of accelerating social decay.

In just 100 days, House Republicans did the unheard-of: Working together for national rather than provincial purposes, they systematically kept most of their campaign promises. In doing so they lifted a cynical, apathetic nation’s faith in government.

Certainly, the “Contract With America” is producing some bad legislation. Republicans propose undue favors for the privileged, reckless attacks upon the weak.

Overall, however, the GOP is leading, in a coherent direction Americans support. Democrats, bereft of ideas, merely snipe from the sidelines - or vote for the Contract’s best reforms.

As for the GOP’s wilder ideas, the Senate and the presidential veto will round the edges off the radicalism.

Radical pressure, democratically applied, is the peaceful way for a country to change direction. The GOP performed a huge service by guillotining political correctness and opening serious debate on questions of profound significance.

For example: If federal bureaucracy is wasteful and unresponsive and its programs unsuccessful, can Americans trust the states to experiment with new approaches to the public’s goals? If bureaucracy, entitlements and lawsuits haven’t solved our social ills, should we call on individual initiative and private charity to take back some of the responsibility?

Yes. We can. We should. The next goal, one Newt Gingrich never promised to achieve in 100 days, is to convert the rough ideas in the Contract into laws the Senate, the president and our diverse country will accept.

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