Former Republican Senator: The GOP Presidential Field Is ‘Embarrassing’
Republican John Danforth, who served as a senator from Missouri for nearly 20 years and later as George W. Bush’s ambassador the United Nations, is not happy with the slate of Republican presidential candidates. “I’ve been watching some of these Republican debates and they’re just terrible. Terrible,” he told KTRS in St. Louis yesterday. “It’s embarrassing for me as a Republican to watch this stuff,” he added, calling out audiences for applauding the candidates’ morbid boastings. Via Fired Up Missouri:
DANFORTH: What have been the big applause lines in these debates? Well, a statement that the governor of Texas is responsible for killing 234 people on death row. Or that we favor torture. Or that we’re creating a fence on the Mexican border that electrocutes people when they try to cross it. Or when people show up at the emergency room at hospitals and they’re not insured don’t treat them. And that, I mean these are the big applause lines, people just hoop and holler when they hear all that. […]
It doesn’t have anything to do with the republican party that I was a part of. This is just totally different. And all of these people who are saying this, y’know, and claiming that, y’know, they’re for all this stuff, they also sort of ostentatiously say, “Oh, we’re very religious people. We really, we’re just very pious, Christian people.” They were for torture, and electrocution of the people on along the border and all of that. That doesn’t have anything to do with, is contrary to the Christianity that I understand.
Danforth is an ordained Episcopal priest.
Since leaving public office, Danforth has often publicly criticized the Republican party, of which he remains an active and influential member, for drifting father and farther to the right. A year ago, he said that if Sen. Dick Lugar (R-IN) — the “most respected person in the Senate and the leading authority on foreign policy” — “is seriously challenged by anybody in the Republican Party, we have gone so far overboard that we are beyond redemption.” As it goes, Dick Lugar is already facing a “tough primary challenge” from state Treasurer Richard Mourdock (R), and several other Republicans are also thinking of entering the race.
By: Alex SeitzWald, Think Progress, December 1, 2011
Distilling Mitt Romney’s Position On Immigration
Former Gov. Mitt Romney underwent a tough and fair interview with Fox News Channel’s Bret Baier.
Romney seemed particularly, well, Romneyesque on immigration.
The confusion stems from the fact that, between 2005 and 2007, Romney gave every indication of supporting something like President Bush’s reform proposal: a system whereby illegal immigrants “come out of the shadows” and to the “back of the line” of the citizenship application process.
In 2006, the Associated Press was apparently unclear enough on Romney’s position to write this:
Meantime, one of McCain’s potential rivals for the GOP nomination, Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, has made it known that he supports the president’s immigration position, saying that Republicans who have broken rank with Bush “made a big mistake.”
The same year, Romney said, “I don’t believe in rounding up 11 million people and forcing them at gunpoint from our country.”
He called elements of the Senate bill sponsored by John McCain and Ted Kennedy “reasonable proposals.”
As seems undeniable, Romney took a hard line on illegals when he decided to run for president. That much we know. But I’m still trying to suss out how, precisely, he threads the needle. In the interview with Fox’s Baier, Romney insisted that illegal immigrants who come forward must park themselves in the “back of the line,” behind those who’ve come here legally.
But this was a central feature of both the Bush plan and McCain-Kennedy plan, which was praised by business types as well as conservative activists like Linda Chavez, Grover Norquist and Jack Kemp.
The Weekly Standard‘s Fred Barnes wrote of the Bush plan:
Earned citizenship would permit the 12 million immigrants living illegally in the Unites States to apply for citizenship. They would be required to work for six years, commit no crimes, pay back taxes, and learn English. Then and only then could they get in line to become citizens [emphasis mine], a process that takes five years.
As far as I can tell, Romney found the thinnest of the reeds on which to lean his newfound opposition to the McCain-Kennedy bill: that it would allow immigrants to collect Social Security benefits they’d amassed while working here illegally.
Does Romney really expect anybody to swallow that?
By: Scott Galupo, U. S. News and World Report, November 30, 2011
How The Affordable Care Act Incorporates Many Of Gingrich’s Health Care Proposals
Despite growing evidence — and video footage— that he has previously supported a national health insurance mandate, Newt Gingrich continues to characterize the Affordable Care Act as a government takeover of the health care system that he would repeal on his first day in office. But a closer look at Gingrich’s past health care proposals, his work at the Center for Health Transformation, and numerous books about health care reform, suggest that the law he seeks to repeal includes many aspects of his own health care philosophies and proposals.
As the table below demonstrates, the provisions included in President Obama’s health reform law are more progressive than Gingrich would have allowed, but they aim to expand coverage and lower health care costs in very similar ways:
| Newt Gingrich | Affordable Care Act | |
| Individual Mandate | “You ought to either have health insurance, or you ought to post a bond.” [Healthcare Cease Fire, 2005] | Section 1501: U.S. citizens and legal residents who don’t obtain coverage by 2014, pay a tax penalty. |
| Group Purchasing | “Large risk pools…should be established so low income people can buy insurance as inexpensively as large corporations.” [Winning The Future, 2005] | Section 1321: States establish health insurance exchanges to allow individuals, families, and small businesses to harness the purchasing power of large employers. |
| Subsidies | “Some aspect of the working poor has to involve transfer of finances. To ask people in the lowest paying jobs to bear the full burden of their health insurance is just irrational.” [Healthcare Cease Fire, 2005] | Section 1401: Families with incomes between 133-400% of the federal poverty line will receive premium credits to purchase insurance through the Exchanges. |
| Comparative Effectiveness Research | “A health care system that is driven by robust comparative clinical evidence will save lives and money.” [NYT, 2008] | Section 6302: Establishes a non-profit Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute to identify research priorities and conduct research that compares the clinical effectiveness of medical treatments. |
| Improving Quality | “Don Berwick at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement has worked for years to spread the word that the same systematic approach to quality control that has worked so well in manufacturing could create a dramatically safer, less expensive and more effective system of health and health care.” [Washington Post, 2000] | TITLE X: Improves health care quality through numerous provisions, including the innovation of payment reform models and rewarding providers who deliver quality care. |
| Prevention | “The 21st Century System of Health and Healthcare will partner with you first to prevent illness and then to care for you as a patient if you become ill.” [Saving Lives & Saving Money, 2006] | TITLE IV: Prevention services will be available without additional cost-sharing and the law establishes a Prevention and Public Health Fund. |
| Health Information Technology (HIT) | “Going to a paperless all-electronic system is going to save lives, it’s going to save money, it’s going to lead to better outcomes, it’s going to give us new opportunities.” [Paper Kills, 2007] | The stimulus act invested in HIT and the ACA requires the government to develop standards “that facilitate electronic enrollment of individuals in Federal and State health and human services programs.” |
| Fraud | “First, we must dramatically reduce healthcare fraud within our current healthcare system.” [Stop Paying The Crooks, 2009] | The federal government has “more than tripled the amount of money it has recovered” in the past six years form fraud and the ACA includes numerous anti-fraud provisions from increasing the federal sentencing guidelines for health care fraud to appropriating an additional $350 million over 10 years to ramp up anti-fraud efforts. |
Romney Misinforms Voters When He Promises To Repeal Health Reform Through Waivers
Mitt Romney is running around the country promising conservatives that he will repeal the Affordable Care Act through executives orders (or waivers) that will allow states to opt out of implementing the health reform law. Critics — including some within the Republican party — have argued that a president does not have the authority to eliminate a law passed by Congress, and today, a report from the Congressional Research Service confirms that while Romney would be able to alter certain regulations, issuing waivers through executive authority would “likely conflictwith an explicit congressional mandate and be viewed ‘incompatible with the express … will of Congress’”:
A President would not appear to be able to issue an executive order halting an agency from promulgating a rule that is statutorily required by PPACA, as such an action would conflict with an explicit congressional mandate…However, Presidents have issued executive orders on regulatory review that have increased the President’s involvement in agency rule making generally. […]
A President would not appear to be able to issue an executive order halting statutorily-required programs or mandatory appropriations for a new grant or other program in PPACA, and there are a variety of different types of these programs…However, there may be instances where PPACA leaves discretion to the Secretary to take actions to implement a mandatory program, and…an executive order directing the Secretary to take particular actions may be analyzed as within or beyond the PResident’s powers to provide for the discretion of the executive branch.”
Romney admits that he won’t be able to eliminate the entire law through executive authority and save a Republican majority in the senate, has pledged to use the reconciliation process to undo the rest of the measure. But that too isn’t possible, since “budget reconciliation bill would have to apply only to the budget-related elements of the new law” and would leave many portions of the law intact. Romney would end up “creating a chaotic environment driven by enormous uncertainty over just which parts of the new health care law would be implemented–for consumers, health care providers, and insurers.”
Unfortunately, this reality hasn’t stopped the former Massachusetts governor from telling voters that he will easily repeal Obamacare on “day one.”
By: Igor Volsky, Think Progress, November 30, 2011
Newt Gingrich Supports The “Arizonification” Of America
Newt Gingrich’s repugnant position on immigration should not be concealed by his faint use of the word “humane” during last week’s GOP primary debate. The mere fact his remarks are deemed compassionate is further proof Republican discourse on immigration continues to dangerously metastasize.
Watch this video of a primary debate between Ronald Reagan and George Bush, and it’s clear how unrestrained the current Republican field is in its immigrant bashing. Mitt Romney abandoned his support of immigration reform and now opposes equal education for immigrant children. Herman Cain proposes electrifying the fence along the U.S.-Mexico border. And Rick Perry boasts of receiving an endorsement from a sheriff who recently said it was an honor to have his views on immigration compared to those of the KKK. Within this environment, we may be tempted to see Gingrich as a moderate. However, his statement of the obvious—that the United States cannot and will not deport all undocumented immigrants—was a cold political calculation meant to highlight Romney’s flip-flop and to disguise his own regressive views.
Simply put, Gingrich supports the Arizonification of America. He has embraced the very “attrition strategy” codified into the core of Arizona’s unconstitutional SB 1070. The idea behind this strategy is to make life sufficiently miserable for immigrants that they leave voluntarily. It doesn’t distinguish between lawful and undocumented immigrants, and it privileges the short-term political goal of immigrant-bashing over economic recovery, public safety, and civil rights. And it has a more fundamental flaw. To succeed, the attrition strategy would mean making life miserable for all Americans.
And like the rest of his Republican rivals, Gingrich would deny political equality to 11 million Americans in Waiting by blocking their path to citizenship. He proposes the formation of local “citizens’ review” boards to determine which immigrants can remain in second-class status, evoking ominous historical parallels. When 11 million people have been effectively dehumanized, simply using the word “humane” to describe them becomes controversial.
The United States is going through a shameful chapter in its unfolding history as the world’s first and only nation of immigrants. This isn’t the first time newcomers have been scapegoated, nor is it the first time communities of color have been punished by prevailing political sentiment. From the Chinese Exclusion Act, to Eisenhower’s “Operation Wetback,” to the criminalization of African-Americans over centuries, the American story is replete with examples where people were made “illegal” by unjust laws and careless demagogues. But the country’s proudest and enduring history is always written by people who earned their emancipation. People once deemed “illegal” are often the country’s greatest protagonists.
Gingrich is wrong on immigration, and the 11 million Americans in Waiting are right. Those who stick it out and overcome the mistreatment Gingrich proposes will eventually earn their citizenship to the benefit of us all.
By: Chris Newman, U. S. News and World Report, November 30, 2011
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