Paper trail

The right-wing is clamoring to elaborate a set of principles that will guide it to electoral victory in 2012. And in good, palingenetic fashion, each casts itself as a founding document of a new movement. Behold the right-wing intellectuals’ “Mount Vernon Statement,” the Tea Party’s “the Contract From America,” and Gingrich’s “new Contract With America." Just like the Constitution, only nobody agrees on any of them.