April 21, 2016
Mark Schmitt wrote for Vox about the current Republican presidential candidates talking points:
Broken promises: That's a theme at the center of the campaign rhetoric of the two leading Republican candidates for president, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, and a plausible explanation for the failure of the establishment candidates.
At the center of Cruz's stump speech is a series of absolute promises, culminating in a pledge to "utterly demolish ISIS" — and he has four different Super PACs that bear the name "Keep the Promise" (the original, and I, II, and III, named like financing rounds in a hedge fund).
Congressional Republicans promised in 2014 that they would repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act; defund Planned Parenthood; abolish the IRS; and humiliate, if not convict, Hillary Clinton over the Benghazi tragedy — all pledges they were unable to come even close to meeting.
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