Abortion question booed at Republican debate
A question about abortion caused a flareup in the culture wars during the last Republican presidential debate before next week’s Arizona and Michigan primaries and “Super Tuesday.”
The question drew boos from the audience and impassioned statements from the four candidates on the stage in Mesa, Arizona, last night.
“Since birth control is the latest hot topic, which candidate believes in birth control , and if not why?,” was the question posed via cnnpolitics.com.
It sparked a lengthy discourse by the candidates on religious freedom, contraception, and family structure. None of the White House hopefuls directly responded to the question.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who has taken on the media in previous debates, said it was a legitimate question before questioning CNN moderator John King and zeroing in on Democrat Barack Obama.
Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney provided backup, saying Obama had launched “the worst attack on religious conscience in the history of the United States.”
Washington Extra – Tax time
If President Obama did indeed schedule the release of his corporate tax revamp Wednesday to steal the spotlight from Mitt Romney’s tax plan rollout – as some critics charge – it just might have worked. The Obama plan was the top story of the day.
But perhaps more importantly, Obama neutralized corporate taxes as an election year issue by aligning himself with Republican positions.
Sure, there may be differences in the tax rates each candidate backs – Obama at 28 percent, Romney 25 percent, Santorum 17.5 percent and Gingrich 12.5 percent.
But the message is the same: cut taxes on our corporations and especially domestic manufacturers to make the United States more competitive. That’s all voters are likely to hear.
The president also showed Corporate America – not his biggest fan – that he’s willing to talk with them, at least on the tax issue. Cutting the corporate tax rate has been a top goal of big businesses for many years.
Not that it will add up to much more than political messaging, at least this year, with elections coming in November. The odds of meaningful tax legislation in 2012 are slim to none.
But come 2013, tax reform could be the big show and Obama’s plan puts him at center stage.
Obama sings again, this time blues with B.B. King, Mick Jagger
President Barack Obama gave what appeared to be an impromptu performance of “Sweet Home Chicago” during a blues concert Tuesday night at the White House in celebration of Black History Month.
At the end of an evening of performances from the likes of B.B. King, Mick Jagger, Jeff Beck, Derek Trucks, Shemekia Copeland and others, Obama grabbed a mic from the stage and crooned, “Come on, baby don’t you wanna go,” part of the popular blues standard.
A month ago, Obama sang a little Al Green — a moment captured on video and viewed thousands of times over. It was seen as having added cool points to the president. Afterwards First Lady Michelle said Obama sings to her all the time.
Whether Tuesday’s performance was really impromptu, or staged as another way to help the president’s image during an election year, we may never know. One thing we do know is that Republican candidates like Mitt Romney have not had the same success in musical performance.
Obama called the blues “music with humble beginnings,” with roots in slavery and segregation in the United States.
Obama said, “Because their music teaches us that when we find ourselves at a crossroads, we don’t shy away from our problems. We own them. We face up to them. We deal with them. We sing about them. We turn them into art.”
See the video here from PBS. Obama sings at about 47 seconds.
Santorum explains “phony theology” comment
Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum says he wasn’t questioning Barack Obama’s faith on Saturday when he said the Democratic president’s agenda was based on “some phony theology.”
Santorum explained his comments during an appearance on CBS’s “Face the Nation” Sunday, saying he was questioning the president’s world view — not his faith.
“I accept the fact that the president’s Christian,” Santorum said. “I just said that when you have a world view that elevates the earth above man says that, you know, we can’t take those resources because we’re going to harm the earth by things that are frankly just not scientifically proven.”
A devout Roman Catholic and social conservative, Santorum brought up the theology issue a day earlier in Columbus, Ohio, as he addressed supporters of the conservative Tea Party movement. (Here’s the story from Reuters’ Sam Jacobs)
On ABC’s “This Week,” Robert Gibbs, a senior advisor to Obama’s re-election campaign said Santorum’s “phony theology” comment crosses a line and was dragging the presidential campaign down.
“I can’t help but think that those remarks are well over the line,” Gibbs said. “It’s wrong. It’s destructive. It makes it virtually impossible to solve the problems that we all face together as Americans.”
Here’s Santorum on “Face the Nation”
All these so-called “social conservatives” screamed bloody murder when it was rumored that Muslims were being granted a religious exemption to the individual mandate on PPACA. (Even though that was nothing more than a chain-email rumor.) Now these same wingnuts insist that if Obama doesn’t grant Catholics a religious exemption that he’s somehow violating the constitution. Which is it Republicons? Do your religious beliefs exempt you from following the law or don’t they? Or is it just YOUR religious beliefs that garner special privilege?
Santorum: backer’s contraceptives comment was bad joke
“It was a stupid joke,” Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum says about a wealthy backer’s “aspirins for contraceptives” comment.
Whatever it was, Santorum — a staunch social conservative – said he’s not going to be responsible for what his supporters say.
“I’m not going to play that game,” the former Pennsylvania senator told Fox News host Greta Van Susteren Thursday night when asked about what Foster Friess said earlier in the day.
Friess, the chief donor to the pro-Santorum SuperPAC, was asked whether he had any concerns about the candidate’s views on social issues. Part of his response raised eyebrows.
“Back in my days, they used Bayer aspirin for contraceptives. The gals put it between their knees and it wasn’t that costly,” he told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell.
Here’s video from the MSNBC interview:
I don’t know what is more scary. The fact that Santorum is running for president or the fact that he actually won 3 states so far.
Washington Extra – Peace by piece
Not since Vietnam has the United States sat down with an enemy it was fighting on the battlefield and negotiated an exit from war. That long-standing policy might end this year if a carefully choreographed diplomatic dance takes U.S. and Afghan officials to a negotiating table with the Taliban.
As Reuters Washington correspondent Missy Ryan explains, President Obama’s peace gambit has the potential to be a significant development for U.S. foreign policy. But it turns out it is a policy borne out of necessity: two years ago, the Pentagon thought the Taliban could be defeated militarily, and today, it’s all too clear they aren’t going away.
There are many hurdles and not insignificant push back here at home to overcome. And Obama may want to don a helmet for the incoming fire… from Capitol Hill. As soon as he notifies Congress of plans to move Taliban detainees from Guantanamo to get the ball rolling, he is sure to face a torrent of attacks.
If the idea of talking with a fundamentalist group known for its brutality and repression is just too hard to conceive, consider this: it could have well happened a decade ago and possibly ended the war in Afghanistan.
As a former U.N. official and advocate of peace talks told Ryan: “When people start to add up cost of war in Afghanistan over the last decade, they will ask how on earth the new Afghan leadership and U.S. officials failed to take advantage of these early overtures by the Taliban.”
Here are our top stories from Washington…
Gingrich offers “dream team” to supporters
For a $100 donation, this free poster of Newt Gingrich and his conservative “Dream Team” can be yours.
The poster — featuring the Republican presidential candidate flanked by endorsers of his White House bid — was offered to supporters Tuesday in a new fundraising appeal.
The Dream Team photo was unveiled at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington last week. The Gingrich campaign said it was hit, and now conservatives across the country are clamoring for a copy of their own.
We wondered whether the Gingrich folks were inspired by the reported success of rival Rick Santorum’s sweater vest campaign. But there was no immediate response to an email inquiry about the initial poster offering.
By its own account, the Santorum campaign’s “thank you” gift to small donors — supporters without SuperPAC money — has been a hit too.
The Santorum camp has “extended by popular demand” — for a limited time — its offer of the official Rick Santorum For President sweater vest, which can be had for a minimum contribution of $100. “It’s a great way to show your support for Rick,” the campaign says, describing the vest as 100 percent cotton, made in the USA, and grey (shouldn’t that be g-r-a-y?).
And that’s not even the biggest acknowledgement being offered to people willing to make small contributions to their favorite candidate.
oh man, part of that $100 goes to the guy that photoshopped 20 lbs of bacon fat off Newt’s neck. That’s great. It looks like some kind of poster for CSI: Ignorantville.
Washington Extra – Post script
You’ve heard about the income divide and the digital divide. Now, get ready for the postal divide.
Nearly 80 percent of the 3,830 U.S. post offices slated for closure later this year are in sparsely populated areas where poverty rates are higher than the national average, according to our findings in the special report “Towns go dark with post office closings.”
One-third of them fall in areas with limited or no wired broadband Internet, leaving 1.7 million people in the lurch. One of them is Carlos Sandoval, a rancher in Trinchera, Colorado, who relies on his post office for everything except groceries.
The closures will strike at the economic heart of many of these communities, but they will also hit the reputation of a Postal Service expected to serve all. And although there is not much noise about the impending closures in Washington, those who know about the toll they will take are not mincing words.
“The postmaster general doesn’t have a clue about what’s going on in rural America, and it shows,” said U.S. Senator Jon Tester, a Democrat from Montana.
Here are our top stories from Washington…
Tending to China-US relations
Valentine’s Day is as good a day as any for China and the United States to work on the kinks in their relationship.
Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping signaled beforehand that tending to the state of the “dynamic and promising” U.S.-China connection would be the at the heart of his White House visit on Tuesday.
The economic and trade relationship between the two countries is far too important to be frayed by “frictions and differences,” Xi wrote in a Q&A submitted to the Washington Post and published on the eve of his White House meeting with President Barack Obama.
“What is important is that we properly handle these differences through coordination based on equality, mutual benefit, mutual understanding and mutual accommodation. We must not allow frictions and differences to undermine the larger interests of our business cooperation,” Xi wrote.
The man many see as China’s leader-in-waiting promised to do better and called on the United States to make an effort too — but he might not be feeling any love from the Republicans seeking to upset Obama in the Nov. 6 election.
Tough talk on China has been a recurring theme on the campaign trail — especially for former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. He calls China a cheater and says, if elected, he’d work to get Bejing labeled a currency manipulator, something the U.S. Treasury has so far refrained from doing.
In a speech last week, the Republican lumped China with Russia and jihadism. (It didn’t have the same ring of George W. Bush’s axis of evil, but the point was made.) Romney, a leading candidate now tied in recent polls, said that trio threatened to compete with the United States and the West for world leadership.
Washington Extra – A Deng Xiaoping Moment?
Maybe it’s the careful, consensus-oriented system that produces them, but China’s leaders in recent years have not exactly exuded personality. President Hu Jintao is famous for his stiff manner and scripted speaking style. Jiang Zemin was slightly more relaxed, and enjoyed showing off his English language skills and knowledge of U.S. history.
Washington on Tuesday will get its first close look at China’s next president, current Vice President Xi Jinping, who has a reputation for being more open and refreshingly direct than some of his predecessors. It may be too much to hope for a “Deng Xiaoping moment,” a 1979 turning point in Sino-American cultural relations when the diminutive Deng, China’s great modernizer, attended a rodeo in Simonton, Texas, donned a giant cowboy hat and wowed the crowd. Deng was then China’s vice premier.
Xi has conflicting needs on this visit. He wants to show peers and the public back home that he can handle the American account, China’s most important relationship. He visited Iowa in 1985 and, by all accounts, the experience affected him. He also wants to strike a good working relationship with the White House and Capitol Hill, which could help both sides handle a daunting array of disagreements: human rights, the South China Sea, China’s currency, and Obama’s more aggressive posture in Asia, to name a few.
But Xi also won’t want to make any waves that could complicate his ascendance to the top of China’s pyramid, still 13 months away. So a jaunty tractor ride when he returns to Iowa later this week may not be in the cards.
Here are our top stories from Washington…
Obama election-year budget aims to spur hiring President Barack Obama called for new spending to boost growth and higher taxes on the rich, laying out an election-year vision for America in a budget that drew heavy fire from Republicans for failing to curb huge deficits. Obama’s 2013 spending proposal is expected to go nowhere in a divided Congress and is widely seen as more of a campaign document that frames his economic pitch to voters and seeks to shift the focus from deficits to economic growth. For more of this story by Alister Bull and Laura MacInnis, read here. For a story on the Arab Spring and the budget by Susan Cornwell, read here. For a story on proposed dividend tax hike by Kim Dixon and Patrick Temple-West, read here.
