Union-Basher Rick Santorum Has A History Of Voting To Protect Unions
GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum’s unexpected finish in Iowa has thrust his record into the spotlight. Naturally, his anti-choice, homophobic, and patently outrageous positions only help shore up his right-wing credentials. As he said in Sioux City, “A track record is a pretty good indication of what you’re going to do in the future.”
However, some of his votes in the past will certainly put a dent in his conservative credentials. As Bloomberg News points out, Santorum spent a lot of his 16-year congressional career fighting alongside labor advocates to protect striking workers, increase the minimum wage, and ensure that the law requiring employers to pay the prevailing wage stayed on the books:
In 1993, Santorum was one of 17 House Republicans who sided with most Democrats in backing a Clinton administration bill to protect striking employees from being permanently replaced by their employers.
Santorum’s Senate service shows a clear track record of supporting the Davis-Bacon Act, the federal law that requires government contractors to pay workers the local prevailing wage (USMMMNCH) and a perennial target for elimination by the business community and anti-union Tea Party activists.
In 1996, Santorum voted in effect for an amendment by former Massachusetts Democratic Senator Edward M. Kennedy that said the 1931 law shouldn’t be repealed.
In 1999, the Senate accepted a Santorum amendment that said it should consider “reform” of Davis-Bacon rather than repeal. Later that year, Santorum was one of 15 Senate Republicans who sided with Democrats in rejecting an amendment that would have limited the application of Davis-Bacon in federal disaster areas.
Of course, Santorum’s fight for the middle class and low-income Americans may merely reflect that he first ran in “a democratic-leaning, working class congressional district” in Pennsylvania. But in seeking national office, Santorum is throwing those same people under the bus. Now, he compares programs that help America’s workers — the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid, or food stamps — to fascism, even going so far as to say, “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better” with taxpayer funds. He also advocated for the elimination of all public sector unions.
Santorum’s convenient rejection of his previous efforts may not be enough to maintain the right-wing veneer he is aggressively pursuing. After all, if he is to be believed, his track record is a good indication of what he’ll do in the future.
By: Tanya Somanader, Think Progress, January 4, 2012
Indecision 2012: In Iowa And The GOP
Just a few hours before the Iowa caucuses opened, Don Acheson, a general contractor from West Des Moines, remained as he had been for months: wracked by indecision.
First, he had been for Rick Perry, then Newt Gingrich. When I caught up with him, he was preparing to give Rick Santorum a hard look, but Mitt Romney was “not far behind” in Acheson’s esteem.
“This late in the game I’ve never been undecided before,” he lamented. “A lot of people are going to walk into the caucus and say, ‘I’m not sure’ and just pick one. This probably is the most bizarre caucus I’ve been to.”
His drift is typical, and revealing. In a Des Moines Register poll published three days before the vote, fully 49 percent of likely Republican caucus-goers said they had not firmly made up their minds. This is what caused the extraordinary volatility in the polls and a parade of seven different front-runners, culminating in Tuesday’s virtual tie between Santorum and Romney, with Ron Paul just behind them.
Much of the political world has come to regard Iowans as a bit flaky. The prospect that the indecisiveness could allow a gadfly such as Paul to win prompted many commentators to write Iowa obituaries: It could “do irreparable harm” (Politico), “discredit the Iowa caucuses” (Fox’s Chris Wallace) and perhaps bring about “the demise of Iowa” (handicapper Stuart Rothenberg).
I disagree: The Iowa Republicans’ indecision captures perfectly the existential struggle within the GOP nationally and within conservatism. They don’t know what they want — or even who they are. Are they Tea Partyers? Isolationists? Pro-business? Populists? Moralists? Worried workers? Do they want the corporate caretaker (Romney), the oddball isolationist (Paul) or the cultural warrior (Santorum)?
Tuesday night’s returns indicated that Iowans never did make up their mind, as the three men carved up the vote almost evenly. A poll of voters entering the caucuses found that nearly one in five said they hadn’t chosen a candidate until Tuesday.
In their internal conflicts, Iowans fulfilled perfectly their first-in-the-nation status, by faithfully acting out the Republican fissures. “The jumble at the top is very reflective of the Republican Party nationally,” argued David Yepsen, the longtime Register political writer now with Southern Illinois University. “It’s activists here reflecting activists all over the country: Who are we? What are we for?”
“This is a fight for the soul of the party,” former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele told me this week.
The final events before the caucuses convened neatly demonstrated this. Romney, suffering from chronic awkwardness known as Al Gore’s disease, took the stage in jeans and penny loafers, with a phalanx of lawmakers behind him to show support. He spoke as if lecturing (“output per person is the highest in the world”), which induced audience members — even the officeholders onstage — to scan their smartphones.
To affect passion, Romney read a few lines from “America the Beautiful.” To affect jocularity, he said his kids refer to his wife as “The Mitt Stabilizer.” This produced laughter — from members of the press corps, who couldn’t picture Romney requiring extra stability.
Like their candidate, Romney supporters are a pragmatic if uninspired bunch. There were only about 100 of them on hand for the final rally in Des Moines, leaving many seats empty at the event’s start time. Those who applauded their man did so for a grand total of six seconds. The one passionate Romney supporter I found (“I love Mitt!”) was a London School of Economics student who admired Romney’s electability.
The Paul supporters, by contrast, were all heart. Not allowed inside to see the candidate’s final speech (to a group of students), they stood in the cold for hours, waving signs and waiting for a glimpse of their man. They shouted: “We love you, Ron!” And: “Forty-fifth president!” When Santorum left the same event, they heckled him.
“I took the day off work for this,” said insurance salesman Justin Yourison, a Paul precinct captain. “If he doesn’t get the nomination, I’m not voting for anyone else. . . . If the GOP doesn’t let us in, they can do without us.”
If the Romney supporters were cerebral and the Paul supporters passionate, the Santorum supporters didn’t know quite what they were. At one of Santorum’s final appearances, he buttonholed one undecided voter, Sue Koch, and asked her, repeatedly, to caucus for him. She finally told him she would.
When the candidate walked away, Koch gave a shrug. “I had to say something,” she said.
By: Dana Milbank, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, January 3, 2012
“Racist Undertone”: Nobody Likes To Talk About It, But It’s There
Talking about race in American politics is uncomfortable and awkward. But it has to be said: There has been a racist undertone to many of the Republican attacks leveled against President Obama for the last three years, and in this dawning presidential campaign.
You can detect this undertone in the level of disrespect for this president that would be unthinkable were he not an African-American. Some earlier examples include: Rep. Joe Wilson shouting “you lie” at one of Mr. Obama’s first appearances before Congress, and House Speaker John Boehner rejecting Mr. Obama’s request to speak to a joint session of Congress—the first such denial in the history of our republic.
More recently, Representative Jim Sensenbrenner, in a conversation overheard at Reagan National Airport in Washington, said of Michelle Obama: “She lectures us on eating right while she has a large posterior herself.” He offered a lame apology, but as Mary C. Curtis put it on the Washington Post’s new blog She the People: “Can you imagine how the incident would play out if an African American congressman made a crude remark about First Lady Laura Bush’s body? It certainly would have taken more than an insincere apology to wash that sin away.” This ugly strain was crudely evident in the “birthers” and their ridiculous demands that Mr. Obama produce his birth certificate to prove that he was American, and not secretly an African Muslim.
Just the other day here in Iowa, Mitt Romney’s son, Matt, said his father might release his tax returns “as soon as President Obama releases his grades and birth certificate and sort of a long list of things.” The younger Mr. Romney later backtracked, either because he was sincerely chagrined, or, perhaps more likely, because he recognized that it could hurt his father.
Sometimes the racism is more oblique. Newt Gingrich was prattling on the other day about giving “poor children” in “housing projects” jobs cleaning toilets in public schools to teach them there is an alternative to becoming a pimp or a drug dealer. These children, he said, have no work ethic. If there’s anyone out there who doesn’t get that poor kids in housing projects is code for minorities, he or she hasn’t been paying attention to American politics for the last 50 years. Mr. Gingrich is also fond of calling Mr. Obama “the greatest food stamp President in American history.”
Is Mr. Romney playing the same chords when he talks about how Mr. Obama wants to create an “entitlement society?” The president has said nothing of the sort, and the accusation seems of a piece with the old Republican saw that blacks collect the greatest share of welfare dollars.
Mr. Obama’s election in 2008 was a triumph of American democracy and tolerance. He overcame incredible odds to become the first president of mixed race, the first brown-skinned president. It’s pathetic that some Republicans are choosing to toss that milestone into the garbage in their blind drive to destroy Mr. Obama’s presidency.
By: Andrew Rosenthal, The Loyal Opposition-The New York Times, January 3, 2011
Top Tea Party Republican Admits To GOP Hostage Strategy
GOP Rep. Steve King of Iowa is one of the leading spokespeople for the Tea Party wing of the House GOP. With the national press continually asking King whether he’ll be making an endorsement in the Iowa caucuses, he has been built up into something of an important GOP figure.
So it’s good to see that King is candidly admitting that the House Tea Party wing has been employing the threat of a government shutdown as nothing more than a deliberate hostage strategy designed to wring maximum concessions from Democrats.
King made the concession in an interview with Laura Ingraham. Dems are highlighting the interview because King bashes House Speaker John Boehner for his weak leadership, but the bolded portion below is the real news here:
KING: We have not lead in a clear way. American people don’t know what House Republicans believe in, and they surely don’t know what we’re willing to fight for. And I am as disappointed as the public is…
It’s clear to me that Speaker Boehner made a decision, either before, but I am convinced it was at least shortly after the election last November, a year ago last November, that we would not be in a position where we would be blamed for shutting down the government … that’s the only place where you bring the leverage to this Congress, to take on Harry Reid and Barack Obama, is you have to be willing to face a shutdown and you have to have the debate among the American people.
INGRAHAM: You think that would have helped the Republican Party and you guys would be in a better position today if the government had been shut down?
KING: The shutdown isn’t the point so much as, I don’t want the shutdown either. But if you are afraid of the shutdown you can’t have the confrontation and you lose every negotiation along the way.
And there you have it! During each impasse — the first government shutdown fight; the debt ceiling debacle; the payroll tax cut showdown — we keep being told that Tea Partyers really are crazy enough to allow the worst to happen. During the government shutdown fight, we were even told that Tea Partyers viewed that outcome as a positive. Their willingness to take us over a cliff is why Dems simply must make the concessions they’re demanding.
But now a top Tea Party leader has given away the game, admitting that not even Tea Partyers want a shutdown. Creating the impression that they’re willing to let it happen is only about winning maximum concessions in negotiations. Let’s hope Dems keep this in mind the next dozen times this happens.
By: Greg Sargent, The Washington Post Plum Line, January 3, 2011
What Newt Gingrich And The History Channel Have In Common
The Republican candidate Newt Gingrich and the cable channel History have both followed the same formula for success, by elevating fantasy over actual history. The difference, however, is that Newt wants to carry his sensational vision of a bygone age into office.
Newt is the most prominent self-described “historian” in the United States. If he were elected in 2012, he would be only the second president after Woodrow Wilson to hold a PhD. Indeed, according to Newt, his gifts at decoding the past are so illustrious that Freddie Mac paid him $1.6 million, not for lobbying, but for his historical skills. Meanwhile, over on cable, the History Channel is rising in popularity with the mission statement, “History: Made Every Day.” With practitioners and purveyors of the past soaring so high, these might seem like giddy times for the historical profession.
But neither Newt nor History shows much interest in the serious study of human experience. Newt has never published any scholarly history at all. And the lack of real analysis on History has become so absurd it was skewered by “South Park” in the episode, “A History Channel Thanksgiving”.
What motivates these peddlers of yesteryear is not history but fantasy. Newt’s staple is the alternate history or the counterfactual. What if Robert E. Lee had won at Gettysburg in 1863? What if Hitler had not declared war on the United States in 1941? His other books include historical novels, as well as prophetic visions like “Winning the Future,” which opens with the line, “In the twenty-first century, America could be destroyed.”
On cable, History has followed in Newt’s footsteps with a cocktail of conspiracy theories, counterfactuals, religious hokum, and science fiction. Many of its shows are entirely fictional, like “Ancient Aliens” and “The Bible Code,” or summon future possibilities like “Armageddon” and “Life After People.” The channel has a particular fascination with fortune telling, including “Seven Signs of the Apocalypse” and “Nostradamus 2012.”
What History adds to the mix that Newt has resisted, so far at least, is reality television, with hit show like “Pawn Stars” and “Ice Road Truckers.”
For both the candidate and the cable channel, what actually did happen seems less interesting than what might have happened, or what could still happen — with History throwing in some ice trucks for good measure.
Focusing on alternatives to history has proved to be a recipe for success. Newt’s eight counterfactuals and historical novels are bestsellers. By avoiding the actual past, History has become the fifth most popular cable channel.
Of course, there’s nothing inherently wrong with writing, or reading, fantastical stories. And Newt and History could be the gateway drug that lures people into a more substantive engagement with the past. Alternatively, their rise may reflect, and reinforce, a national dumbing down of history.
In any case, the real problem is that Newt is unwilling to keep the fantasy and reality separate. For the candidate, the past is a succession of sensational moments where civilization is at risk, until one man steps forth to hold the barbarians from the gates, whether it’s Washington, Lincoln, Churchill, FDR, Thatcher, Reagan, or Newt himself. “I have an enormous personal ambition”, said Newt back in 1985, “I want to shift the entire planet. And I’m doing it.”
The historical parallels that Newt draws are telling. When he failed to collect 10,000 signatures required to qualify for the Republican primary ballot in Virginia, he reached into the grab bag of history and pulled out Pearl Harbor. “Newt and I agreed that the analogy is December 1941,” scribbled campaign director Michael Krull on the Gingrich Facebook page. Here was an alternative universe, where the deaths of 2,400 Americans in a Japanese sneak attack were comparable to routine signature collection in Virginia. As Krull put it: “We have experienced an unexpected set-back, but we will re-group and re-focus with increased determination, commitment and positive action.” As a candidate, this kind of fantastical thinking is absurd, but as president it would be hazardous.
Newt and History are on the same page. If the Republican primary doesn’t pan out for Newt, he can always work for the cable channel. One of their upcoming shows is “Full Metal Jousting,” about a bunch of guys on horses smashing into each other. The problem with the show, of course, will be clearing all of the muck from the stables. It’s here that a solutions guy like Newt can think outside of the box — by employing poor kids as janitors.
By: Dominic Tierney, The Atlantic, January 3, 2011
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