The GOP's Race Problem

Texas Governor Rick Perry, left, speaks as former
Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, and former
Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney listen at the
South Carolina Republican presidential candidate
debate in Myrtle Beach, Monday, January 16, 2012.
(AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, Pool)

Ari Berman on January 17, 2012 - 12:28 PM ET

 

Martin Luther King Day would have been a perfect occasion for the GOP presidential candidates to express their commitment to racial tolerance and diversity. Instead, just the opposite occurred at last night’s GOP debate in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Who needs a dog whistle when you’re in a state where the Confederate flag still flies atop the statehouse grounds?

This Republican field has been marked by questionable racial assertions, as my colleague Gary Younge recently noted. Rick Perry’s hunting at a camp called Niggerhead. Ron Paul’s publishing of scores of racist newsletters. Newt Gingrich’s calling Barack Obama the “food stamp president.” Rick Santorum’s saying “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money.”

This racially inflammatory rhetoric was on full display last night, as candidate after candidate auditioned to be the next George Wallace. It started when debate moderator Juan Williams asked Perry about South Carolina’s restrictive voter ID law, which the Department of Justice found would disproportionately impact minority voters. Here’s the key exchange:

WILLIAMS: Governor Perry, last month the Department of Justice challenged South Carolina’s new law requiring registered voters to show state issued identification before they can vote. Governor Haley has pledged to fight the federal government all the way to the Supreme Court. You sided with the government.
[Applause]
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Republican Party Is Rotted and Collapsing from Within -- And We Can Thank Super PACs for Exposing It

Super PACs are an affront to the democratic process, but they are hastening the Republican Party's fall.

March 26, 2012

They are anti-democratic and turning the 2012 presidential campaign into an extreme sport for the wealthy, but they are destroying the modern Republican Party in the process. Call it the paradox of the Super PACs. 

 

These big-money operations have made a mockery of campaign finance laws and even the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling by being shadow campaigns for candidates and giving a handful of rich people an unprecedented level of power in the presidential race. But perhaps we also should thank the multi-millionaires writing outsized checks to benefit Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum because their obstinate crusades—and Mitt Romney’s erratic replies—keep reminding anyone paying attention that today's Republican Party is not just a mess, but is collapsing from within.

 

It is not as if the Democrats are a model of unity—although they may have more discipline than today’s GOP. Rather, the super PAC-funded media wars among the Republicans have brought a breach into the open that the GOP establishment can no longer contain: the fight between the Republican Party's hardened right (religious conservatives and Tea Partiers) and the party's business-first corporatists.

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Santorum: ‘People 20 years ago couldn’t conceive of a cell phone’

By David Edwards
Friday, March 2, 2012 15:33 EST

Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum says that 20 years ago people couldn’t even imagine cell phones, but now they are commonplace because Americans “recognize the rights God has given every person.”

Speaking to supporters in Chillicothe, Ohio on Friday, the former Pennsylvania senator explained that the U.S. had “transformed the world” with the a new form of government.

“In the previous 2,000 years, life did not change,” he said. “And then America came around and said, ‘No, no more dictators, no more kings, no more classes, no more nobility.’ We believe in limited government, not an all-powerful state. We believe that if we liberate people, we recognize the rights that God has given every person then the world will change.”    READ MORE

WATCH THE VIDEO:

Teen Pregnancy Due To Aspirin Myth

Credit: The Dispatch

Pregnant Teen is victim of sexual ignorance

By John Amato

Rick Santorum's mega-million dollar donor Foster Friess made news yesterday when he shared his insane birth control beliefs with Andrea Mitchell :

Mitchell: Do you have any concerns with some of his comments on social issues, on contraception on women in combat and whether or not it would hurt his viability in a general election campaign were he to be the nominee?
Friess: Well I get such a chuckle when these things come out. Here we have millions of our fellow Americans unemployed, we have Jihadist camps set up in Latin America which Rick has been worried about and people seem to be so preoccupied with sex, I think it says something about our culture and maybe we need a massive therapy session so we can concentrate on the real issues are.

This contraceptive thing, my gosh, it's such inexpensive... back in my days we used Bayer aspirin for contraception, the gals put it between their knees and it wasn't that costly.
Mitchell: Um, excuse me I'm trying to catch my breath from that Mr. Friess, frankly....

It was pretty horrifying to hear. Diane Sweet, who runs our Occupy America Blog found this Dear Abby article from July18, 2007 which puts a chilling story to this anti-choice neanderthal's words and chuckles.READ MORE

The Devil and Rick Santorum: Dilemmas of a Holy Owned Subsidiary

The father of the Investment Theory of Politics reveals what pundits are missing in the GOP's failure to lead its own electorate.

January 6, 2012

Election night in Iowa was a heavenly moment for Rick Santorum. As he marveled over the late breaking tidal wave of support that in just weeks had swept him from nowhere into a virtual tie with Mitt Romney for first place in the state’s Republican caucuses, the former Pennsylvania Senator gushed to supporters about the secret of his campaign’s success: “I’ve survived the challenges so far by the daily grace that comes from God. . . . I offer a public thanks to God.’’ 

But it was not God who saved Rick Santorum. He survived Iowa rather like a blind mole rat might someday outlive a nuclear exchange – by simply burrowing underground while Romney’s Super Pac incinerated Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry, and while Perry tried to demolish Ron Paul, whom he considered a more dangerous rival. In a state where 60% of those attending the 2008 GOP caucuses described themselves as “born again” or evangelicals, Santorum was the only ultra-conservative left for resigned evangelical leaders to swing behind.

Now, as the wall of Super Money comes down on him like a ton of gold bricks, Santorum is likely fated, like Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, and Perry himself, to flame out after a brief moment of glory and go back to working with the energy and health care enterprises that helped make him a millionaire after leaving the Senate.   READ MORE

Santorum's Plan to End Poverty: More Marriage

Rick Santorum, the GOP 2012 presidential hopeful who has seen his support triple in Iowa, laid out a plan to end poverty at a campaign stop yesterday. As the Huffington Post’s Amanda Terkel noted, one of the plan’s two components is more marriage:


“Do you know if you do two things in your life — if you do two things in your life, you’re guaranteed never to be in poverty in this country? What two things, that if you do, will guarantee that you will not be in poverty in America?” he asked the crowd.    Read more