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The Republican Party, at its core, does not favor the government doing anything about anything unless it is to make life a bit easier for their paymasters. They do not want health care reform by any description, but they cannot say that, otherwise they are easily attacked about not being interested in rising health care costs or the plight of the uninsured. They never wanted Medicare, and have tried on at least two occasions -- Gingrich in the 1990s, and Ryan in 2011 -- to change its fundamental structure. In both cases, their orwellian word guru, Frank Luntz, told them to say they were "strengthening" Medicare.
They do not want immigration reform of any stripe. Maddow's 8/19 program referenced Republican insistence on improved border control as a prerequisite for voting on the 'path-to-citizenship' that is the only solution other than mass deportation of 11 million people to the problem. The Obama administration was snookered as well -- having beefed up border security by 3-fold, and by deporting more undocumented workers than "W," they thought they had 'earned' a vote on comprehensive reform.
As these conservatives saw it, the agreement paved the way for the entire planet to be controlled by a central bureaucracy: Humans would be cleared out of vast swaths of settled areas—like the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, for example—and instructed to live in "hobbit homes" in designated "human habitation zones" (two terms embraced by tea party activists). Public transportation would be the only kind of transportation, and governments would force contraception on their citizens to control the population level. A human life would be considered no more significant than, say, that of a manatee. "Sustainability," the idea at the heart of the agreement, became a gateway to dystopia.
In Minnesota in the 1990s and early 2000s, the loudest opposition to sustainability came from the Maple River Education Coalition (later EdWatch), the nonprofit that gave Bachmann her start in politics. Under the group's banner, Bachmann toured the state with an anti-Agenda 21 activist from the Twin Cities suburbs named Michael Chapman. Together, they spoke to church groups about the creeping "state-planned economy" that was instilling un-American values in children. (Bachmann's office did not respond to a request for comment.)
Agenda 21, opponents feared, would require government and industry to work in concert to find a way to get future generations to stay in line. One of the result, they argued, was a little-known federal program known as "school to work," which helps introduce students to various career options before they graduate from high school. But Bachmann and her allies insisted that, through this program, government bureaucrats would determine which industries to promote and funnel public-school students into those fields. They believed that public schools, meanwhile, would use the state's new curriculum standards, which they claimed were rooted in UN principles, to foist globalism and sustainability on students.
When she arrived in St. Paul as a state senator, Bachmann brought those views with her. In a committee hearing in 2003 to discuss a clean energy bill, Bachmann broached the subject of Agenda 21. The term "sustainability" can have radical connotations, she warned, in the "brave new world of energy conservation," and she voted for an amendment to remove the language.