Last Thursday House Republicans met up at a hardware store in Virginia, first and foremost to fix John Boehner’s broken tanning bed, but to also unveil their grandiose Pledge to America. The pledge, a nonsensical 21-page dictum of the Republican Agenda, was supposed to be a powerful rebuttal to Democratic accusations that Republicans were the Party of No and John Boehner and gang were incapable of actually creating a meaningful piece of legislation. Well, it was cute that they tried. I hope Boehner’s Sunquest Wolff was repaired at least.

The Pledge contained a lot of the usual party lines—tax cuts forever, spending cuts, no more Obamacare. No one should be surprised to learn that it is also filled with contradictions and numbers that don’t add up.

More surprising, however, was the collective dump many right-wingers took on it for typifying the political pandering of “establishment” Republicans. For example on RedState, a conservative blog, one blogger called it a “Pledge to Nowhere” while another wrote, “I’m very glad we will soon be seeing a number of these House Republicans replaced—most likely with true conservatives.” Erik Erickson said he “would like to borrow” the GOP, please. Apparently reasoning here was that Boehner and buds weren’t even using it and if he could have it just this very once he would make it so much better. Or something. (Erickson was, naturally, lampooned by Wonkette for this).

And even though NRO’s editors gave the pledge a glowing review as a very good “beginning to the lengthy task of providing conservative governance,” it also added that it included some “misguided policies” and “could have been bolder” in some areas.

So we’re now seeing the “Republican establishment” being dismissed by the right, while the actions and convictions of the Tea Party—however extreme and repugnant—are not only forgiven but actually lauded. Erickson compared the pledge to Brussels sprouts with butter, saying that he liked butter but hated Brussels sprouts and most of the stuff in the pledge was like Brussels sprouts because it wasn’t delicious enough. (By the way, he really should look into healthier eating habits and less embarrassing metaphors.) His commenters of course took it a few steps further and called for either a “3rd party” or a “real revolution” in 2012.

Thankfully, not all conservative reactions have been like this. Some people, like Republican Rep. Devin Nunes from California, actually warned that the pledge would make the deficit worse, underscoring how comically terrible the Pledge to America is. It talks at length about the virtues of cutting spending to control the deficit, but conveniently forgets to factor in the effects of tax cuts. For instance, extending tax cuts for the top 2 percent would cost $700 billion more than the Obama plan, plus another $25 billion for a special “small business tax deduction” (which wouldn’t actually create jobs anyway). But the pledge vaguely discusses saving $100 billion in unexplained phantom spending cuts, plus a few more here and there with plans such as ending what’s left of the stimulus ($31 billion) and privatizing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac ($25 billion)—cuts to the military, who’s budget swelled enormously over the past decade, were conspicuously absent. Newsweek’s Ben Adler channeled Bush to call it “fuzzy Washington math.” Quite a royal example of that by the Boehner gang here.

Even if we ignore the fact that indiscriminately slashing government spending would be terrible for the economy and make a lot more people lose their jobs, what House Republicans have in mind will do nothing to actually lower the deficit. What’s more is that they would like to immediately repeal the healthcare reforms, but keep the most popular provisions such as getting rid of spending caps. This would probably make healthcare reform much more expensive, since they’d be getting rid of the measures that actually lower medical costs, while hurting a lot of people who could benefit from the reforms.

It’s abundantly clear that the Republicans spared little thought to the actual consequences of their agenda, and whether their plans are any good for the country. It’s obvious that the intent was purely political, to channel the 1994 “Contract with America” and provide some kind of rhetorical frosting for their anticipated takeover of the House this November.

But that’s alright, since the Pledge to America was meant to be nothing more than a dumb PR campaign. This is an unrealistic agenda, and I think everyone—including the writers—get that. But the prospect of what Republicans will actually do should they take over the over is still very much up for speculation and, frankly, a little bit frightening.