Santorum staffer questions whether God wants women presidents
A staffer in Rick Santorum’s presidential campaign is under fire for an email suggesting a female commander-in-chief could be at odds with the Bible’s teachings.
The Des Moines Register last week reported that Santorum’s Iowa coalitions director, Jamie Johnson, sent an email over the summer asking, ‘Is it God’s highest desire, that is, his biblically expressed will … to have a woman rule the institutions of the family, the church, and the state?”
Michele Bachmann, a social conservative who campaigned heavily in Iowa, competed with Santorum over the conservative evangelical vote in the Iowa caucuses. She dropped out of the race after a dismal finish in the Iowa race.
This weekend Peter Waldron, Bachmann’s faith outreach coordinator, said the email was proof that Santorum had engaged in a “sexist strategy” to sabotage Bachmann. He demanded an apology from Santorum and called for Johnson’s firing.
The recent spat brings the issue of sexism in conservative politics to the fore again. When Bachmann ended her campaign, political observers wondered whether conservative perceptions of women and Bachmann’s own alignment with the Christian right and disavowal of feminism had been her undoing.
The Des Moines Register said that in the final weeks of her campaign Bachmann’s aides began to complain that sexism was a problem in Iowa’s religious conservative community, even as her aides deflected questions from reporters on the topic.
Ron Paul attacks Gingrich and Romney in new ad
Republican Ron Paul has unveiled a hard-hitting new attack ad in Iowa and New Hampshire. As violins play anxiously in the background and washed-out images of the Capitol and other Washington landmarks flash across the screen, a voice-over warns that the “Washington machine” is “strangling” the American economy.
The implication: Washington is a conspiracy of insider politicians — politicians like Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney — working against the people.
“Serial hypocrites and flip-floppers can’t clean up the mess,” the narrator says ominously, as images of Gingrich and Romney flash on the screen. “Ron Paul,” the voice says in closing, is “the one we’ve been looking for.”
Watch Paul’s ad:
Credit: ronpaul/YouTube
Romney casts “Virginia” Gingrich as Lucille Ball
Republican White House hopeful Newt Gingrich has termed his failure to make it onto the presidential primary ballot in Virginia, the state where he lives and is leading in the polls, in pretty grandiose terms, comparing the weekend events to Pearl Harbor. That allowed rival Mitt Romney to get off a zinger on Monday as he prepared to leave the friendly confines of New Hampshire for three days of tough campaigning in Iowa.
On Saturday, Gingrich’s national campaign director Michael Krull put out a statement after his candidate was knocked off the Virginia ballot for failing to garner enough verifiable signatures from residents: “Newt and I agreed that the analogy is December 1941: We have experienced an unexpected setback, but we will re-group and re-focus with increased determination, commitment and positive action,” Krull said on Facebook.
Campaigning at a lobster-and-chowder shack in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Romney was asked about Gingrich’s ballot woes. “I think he compared that to Pearl Harbor. It’s more like Lucille Ball at the chocolate factory,” Romney said to laughter, evoking a classic scene from U.S. television history. The 1952 episode of “I Love Lucy” had the red-headed comedian and her BFF Ethel trying to hold down jobs at a candy factory while their husbands subbed in to do the housework. Ineptitude, and hilarity, ensues.
Mitt Romney addresses supporters during a rally held outside of Geno’s Chowder & Sandwich Shop in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, December 27, 2011. REUTERS/Jessica Rinaldi
The former Massachusetts governor now flies to Iowa for three days of campaigning in his spacious Romnibus. Locked in a three-way tussle for the caucuses with Gingrich and Texas Representative Ron Paul, Romney dutifully declined to make any forecasts in a state where he has made few appearances this year but has helped unleash a torrent of negative advertising against the former U.S. House speaker.
“I’m really not going to get into the prognostications business,” Romney said while pushing through a mob of fans and media toward the sanctuary of his black SUV. “I don’t think there’s any one state you need to win…I want to win in a lot of states. I’m hoping to do well enough to get the 1,150 delegates.”
“If I were to get elected,” he said, “there would be an immediate buoyancy to the economy.”
“Romney also promised that if he was elected everyone would get a free puppy and every Friday at work would be Margarita Happy Hour Day.”
Keep dreaming. Maybe he should promise us $2/gallon gas too while he’s at it.
Biden, Romney spar over economic policy
By Eric Johnson
CHICAGO — Vice President Joe Biden, in his first public criticism of a 2012 Republican presidential candidate, criticized Mitt Romney’s economic policies in an opinion piece in Iowa’s biggest newspaper on Friday.
“Romney appears satisfied to settle for an economy in which fewer people succeed, while the majority of Americans are left to tread water or fall behind,” Biden wrote in the Des Moines Register, which last week endorsed Romney for the Republican nomination.
In the piece, Biden laid out his working-class background — which the Obama campaign will tout in rust-belt swing states in 2012 — and said he and Obama were champions of equal opportunity for all, not an entitlement society, as Romney alleged.
“The president and I firmly believe…that if you work hard and play by the rules, no opportunity should be out of reach,” he wrote. “That is a fundamentally different vision than what the other side has proposed.”
The jabs jibe with the Obama campaign’s focus on the former venture capitalist they see as Obama’s most likely challenger. They also provide a taste of what’s to come in a hotly contested general election.
when joey the clown speak, his alzaimer and parkinson going in 100% coordination, anyway monkey see, monkey does1
Door-knocking Romney reprises missionary days
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney could be excused for having flashbacks to the 1960s when he went door to door in Berlin, New Hampshire, on Thursday.
The former Massachusetts governor worked in France as a Mormon missionary from 1966 to 1968, one of the church’s thousands of earnest young men (mostly) who knock on doors and proselytize. At that point Romney had plenty of doors slammed in his face, but on Thursday, not so much.
“This is a lot easier,” Romney quipped to Reuters. “People speak English. They wish you Merry Christmas. They don’t think you’re a salesman. People used to come to the door [in France] and wag their fingers: ‘No, I don’t want anything.’”
Many French people at the time were “not happy to see Americans, because we were in Vietnam at the time. That was tough,” he added.
Romney strode around the depressed paper milling town in northern New Hampshire, talking to residents in their front doorways, to dog-walkers, and to people in passing cars who slowed down at the curious sight of Romney, handlers and trailing horde of media. At one point he broke into a run, leaving even his bodyguards behind.
Most residents seemed pleased, if sometimes startled, to see Romney appear at their front doors. “What on earth is he doing up here,” exclaimed Doris Dube, 82.
Going on a mission to France gave him draft deferment and was much safer than being drafted for Vietnam.
New DNC ad questions Romney’s claim that “any president would have” killed bin Laden
In an interview with Fox News’ Chris Wallace on Saturday, Mitt Romney said he was “delighted” that President Obama “gave the order to take out Osama bin Laden.” It was something, Romney told Wallace, “any president would have done.”
Not so, according to a new ad from the Democratic National Committee. The video compiles praise from prominent conservatives, all of whom commend Obama for bin Laden’s death.
“I worked with a lot of these guys, and this is one of the most courageous calls, decisions, that I think I’ve ever seen a president make,” says former Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
“The president, I think, handled this brilliantly, frankly,” former Secretary of State Colin Powell says in another clip.
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani is also shown lauding Obama. “It takes a lot of courage to make a decision like that. I admire him,” he says.
Watch the ad:
One president did get bin Laden. His name is Barack Hussein Obama.
Ron Paul quits CNN interview after questions about racist newsletters
Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul abruptly ended an interview with CNN’s Gloria Borger yesterday after she asked him about racist newsletters published under his name in the 1980s and 1990s.
When Borger questioned Paul about profit he reportedly made from the newsletters, some of which contained prejudiced statements about African Americans and conspiracy theories about AIDS, Paul protested that he “never read that stuff.”
“I was probably aware of it ten years after it was written,” he said. “It’s been going on 20 years that people have pestered me about this and CNN does it every single time. So when are you going to wear yourself out?”
Borger responded that the newsletters, whose titles included Ron Paul’s Political Report and Ron Paul’s Freedom Report and were written in the first person, were “pretty incendiary.”
“Because of people like you,” Paul said, before removing his microphone and walking off the interview.
“He clearly thinks it’s irrelevant. He thinks it’s been asked and answered,” Borger later told Wolf Blitzer. “It’s clearly a question he’d rather not be asked.”
So does John King have the right to ask Gingrich about his past relationships? People would rather ignore it because it proves Ron Paul’s point that he is treated unfairly by the media. When Ron Paul scolds the media they say, “he is an old crank”.
When Newt Gingrich scolds the media, People Cheer and Agree with him!?!!?? This whole world is twisted,.
Colbert’s not giving up on S.C. primary
Comedian Stephen Colbert has not given up on the primary in South Carolina.
The cable television talk show host tried and failed to get on the ballot to run in his home state’s primary back in 2008. This year, he has been offering to buy naming rights for the Jan. 21 primary, first by negotiating with the South Carolina Republican Party, then the state Democrats, and now by offering to have his Super PAC cover a $500,000 shortfall that South Carolina counties face in paying for the vote.
“The counties need the money, and Colbert Super PAC wants to give it to you; call it a Christmas Miracle. I’ve already filled out the check, and to prove it’s no joke, I’ve written ‘No Joke’ in the memo line. I’m going to be home in South Carolina over the holidays, so just give me a call. Both state parties have my contact info,” he wrote in an editorial in South Carolina’s “The State” newspaper on Thursday.
“Let’s put this late unpleasantness behind us and, in 2012, hold the greatest primary of all time.”
After learning that the South Carolina Republicans and local officials were squabbling over who would pay for the Jan. 21 primary, Colbert said he had reached an agreement with the state Republican party earlier this year in which his Super PAC would pay up to $400,000 directly to South Carolina and its counties to defray the cost of the election. In return, the primary’s official name would be “The Colbert Super PAC South Carolina Republican Primary.”
“We hammered out the contract over barbecue,” Colbert wrote.
Battered by negative ads, Gingrich calls for Republican truce
A still from “Selling Access,” a recent ad released by the Ron Paul campaign.
Newt Gingrich is waving a white flag in the ad wars. As the most recent Republican frontrunner, he’s become the target of attacks from Ron Paul, Mitt Romney and the the pro-Romney group Restore Our Future.
Many of the attacks have focused on Gingrich’s consulting work for Freddie Mac in the run up to the financial crisis and the collapse of the housing market. Today his campaign announced a petition urging Republicans to stop attacking each other–and presumably to stop bringing up his work for Freddie.
“Attacking fellow Republicans only helps one person, Barack Obama,” the petition says. That does not appear to be strictly true, as Paul and Romney have both gained ground in recent days while Gingrich’s poll numbers have faded amidst the attacks.
The online petition includes Gingrich’s “We Deserve Solutions” ad, in which he suggests those who attack him want to move the country backwards.
“Others seem to be more focused on attacks rather than moving the country forward. That’s up to them,” says Gingrich. “I believe bold ideas and new solutions will unleash America’s creative spirit.”
Well Newt, seeing how you look like what a boxer looks like when he’s on his back on the canvas and is getting the crap pounded out of him, and shouts ‘TRUCE’. Yeah, that’s the way to handle competition. Typical Newt.
Obama campaign reaches out in hard-fought states
By Eric Johnson
CHICAGO – U.S. President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign, which has already proven its fund-raising prowess on its own behalf, is sharing the wealth. The campaign launched a joint fundraising committee to benefit the Democratic Party in the all-important “swing states,” where voting is expected to be close next year, and costs are expected to be high.
The new “Swing State Victory Fund” is the campaign’s second joint account, according to the Federal Election Commission. The fund will help the campaign and state parties in battleground states to fill their coffers as they push to elect. The states connected with the joint account are: Florida, Iowa, New Hampshire, Colorado, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin.
An individual could contribute a maximum of $10,000 to each state party per calendar year, in addition to the $2,500 maximum that can be donated to a candidate during the primary and the general election seasons, respectively, according to the FEC.
“It benefits state parties that will support the president and Democrats on the ticket,” a campaign official said in an emailed statement.
Obama campaign fundraisers so far this election cycle have benefited the Obama Victory Fund, a separate joint fundraising account shared by the campaign and the Democratic National Committee. Together, they have raised more than $150 million, far outstripping the Republicans vying for the nomination to run against Obama as he seeks re-election next year.
I was an investigative journalist in Boston in the 70′s during the White administration. So I come with a journalist’s perspective to this post.
What a stupid news story! So what if one of Santorum’s staffers has a private opinion about women leading the nation? How exactly does that tell us ANYTHING about the candidate? (No, I am not a Santorum supporter).
I can’t believe there’s not more news out there worth of Reuters. Can you find any NEWS stories. Can you explore the major issues and contrasts and feed us some NEW facts? Can you uncover something the public needs to know? I haven’t seen ONE good story come from the media uncovering ANYTHING Barak Obama is doing or has done in the dark. Somebody there look into his ties with Islam. There real news there if you get behind his relationship to CAIR. Financially follow the path to Soros. Let’s see some real news. OK?