And the Democrats are pitching.
Support FR, support Conservative ideals.
Posted on 01/10/2012 2:07:57 AM PST by CutePuppy
The Santorum and Romney campaigns are following Democrats down the class-warfare rabbit hole.
Joe the Plumber might seem oh-so-2008, but as it happens he's alive and voting in New Hampshire, South Carolina and beyond. He's that unhappy voter that Republican contenders Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum are pitching so hard to win. A little too hard, as it happens.
If Republicans have an opening this year, it is with the white working class, a crowd the Democratic Party has been hemorrhaging for decades. Barack Obama did better than John Kerry or Al Gore with these voters, though even he earned just 43% of their vote.
That was Mr. Obama's high point. In 2010 a record 63% of this bloc voted for the GOP. And there are signs that, whether out of calculation or desperation, Team Obama may be abandoning them altogether — instead looking for 2012 victory in a progressive coalition of educated, socially liberal voters, combined with poorer ethnic voters, in particular Hispanics. ..... < snip >
..... Mr. Santorum surged in Iowa as the "I'm One of You" candidate. ..... < snip >
..... Rather, he believes his job is to "look at those who are not doing well in our society." ..... < snip >
..... Team Romney is hoping this won't just win him voters but will also inoculate him against the rap that he is a hard-hearted millionaire. Mr. Romney doesn't want to engage in the rich-versus-not-rich debate. He wants to be for the not-rich and move on.
What both campaigns are in fact doing is following Democrats down the class-warfare rabbit hole. Spooked by the Democrats' inequality theme, the Romney and Santorum campaigns are taking the narrow view, catering to the blue-collar vote, playing the class game. ..... < snip >
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
We are [all] 99% now?
Class warfare is being a “real” conservative? I can get a belly full of that moron-sandwhich from the other party. If conservatives are whining about 99 per centers, who needs ‘em?
I remember the Democrats mocking Delay for being a “bugcatcher.” This is no different.
I hope Santorum stay far away from Joe the Plumber.
< snip > ..... And so at the heart of the Santorum agenda are policies designed to give special handouts to the working class, simply because they are the working class — and even then only to segments of this group. That's behind Mr. Santorum's zero corporate tax on manufacturers, which benefits only Americans working in manufacturing. (Job at Wal-Mart? No soup for you!) It's behind his plan to triple the child tax credit, which benefits only Americans fortunate enough to have a child. (Stalled love life? No soup for you, either!) Call it preferential populism. ..... < snip >
I hope Joe the Plumber stays far away from Santorum.
Well my reason is different than yours. I know you are a Paul supporter so I will explain to you why I want Joe the Plumber to stay away from Santorum. McCain had a campaign stop where Joe the Plumber was to be the main speaker and Joe the Plumber did not show up. That is not a responsible person if you ask me. If you want a blue collar guy to represent there are plenty out there. I think your support for Paul is fine but dangerous. His foreign policy is suicidal. To each his/her own though.
Wouldn't it be nice if this was Dr. Paul's last hurrah and he could hand over the reins of his organization to Rand? I'm really hoping that Rand has a little more reality-based foreign policy and doesn't depend on unicorn butt-sniffers for anti-war votes.
Romney makes Obama's ObamaCARE/RomneyCARE MOOT.
THAT is why the DNC wants him.
Romney makes Obama's IAG issues MOOT.
THAT is why the DNC wants him.
Romney makes Obama's Sharia issues MOOT.
THAT is why the DNC wants him.
Romney makes Obama's 911 Victory Mosque MOOT.
THAT is why the DNC wants him.
Romney makes Obama's RomneyMarriage/Gay Marriage issue MOOT.
THAT is why the DNC wants him.
Romney makes Obama's bad governmental history MOOT.
THAT is why the DNC wants him.
Romney makes Obama's AGW issue MOOT.
THAT is why the DNC wants him.
Romney makes Obama's liberal judge issue MOOT.
THAT is why the DNC wants him.
He said that he might run the next time (either 2016 or 2020) after 8 years of our Republican President or sooner if we are not lucky in 2012. However, I wonder if people wish give him trouble for endorsing his father. lol.
I have failed to understand why a charlatan like Dr. Ron Paul gets anywhere close to 10% support on FR, let alone more than that so far in primaries/caucuses. He has hardly a foreign or a domestic policy that I would agree with (except for general blanket platitudes about "small" government, which he mostly means as isolationist foreign policy and "anything goes" domestic policy).
Paul is a dangerous charlatan, who made a career of selling political snake oil to too many people who don't have understanding or knowledge of anything he says or does. Now, does it sound like I am a Paul supporter?
If it was McCain who had a stop where Joe the Plumber was to be a speaker, I can understand why Joe the Plumber stayed away from that event. I hope that he informed McCain that he would not show up.
And Newt is using socialist rhetoric to attack Romeny, what the heck? I do think the concerns of working class people need to be addressed in way Pat Buchanan raised them, but not this Hippy OWS junk
I bet not. Who is going to condemn someone for sticking with their father? I expect most see Rand there to keep his father from going off the reservation (i.e., running third party). Now THAT would cause trouble and bring 4 years of scorn down on the Paulettes and quite probably Rand too.
Not at all. I think you misunderstand what's going there, it's entirely different from the class warfare rhetoric of Romney and Santorum campaigns. Let me explain.
When Newt Gingrich shot up in the polls, Romney knew that Newt presents the only real challenge to him. He wanted to deliver a knockout punch immediately before Newt got any traction.
Romney [PAC] started saturating airtime and mailings with the lies about Newt and his record (particularly falsely misstating Congressional "ethics" charges and "fine"). He was also hoping to take Newt off his game and positive message and get him flustered and make him lose temperament (to show a "nasty Newt").
That knocked down Newt's numbers especially after endorsement of Santorum by Iowa's "family values leader" Vander Plaats.
However, the plan didn't worked quite as expected, in other respects. Newt immediately warned Romney and his PAC to stop the lying attack ads, and warned the stations in SC and FL not to run false Romney PAC ads. He gave Romney [PAC] about three days warning to stop that or modify the ads.
Attacks also brought significant amount of money to Newt and his PAC. Romney [PAC] wanted to show everyone how the left will "massacre" Gingrich in general election attacking his "baggage" and that would knock Newt out. It doesn't because everybody knows about Newt's "baggage" (most of it, as we already know, has been either false or less than meets the eye, or pretty much contained).
However, few people know about Romney's "baggage" and how the left will attack him. So when Romney [PAC] didn't stop the ads, Newt [PAC] will hit Romney to show everybody where and how vulnerable he is to the attacks from the left (and making sure that it's without lying about Romney's record).
What's more and very important, Newt took it directly to Romney during the NH debate, and when Romney started stumbling but insisted on Newt's "record" and that he doesn't have anything to do "directly" with what Romney PAC does (which is legally correct) Newt not only didn't lose his nerve, but basically said (not verbatim) "That's OK, this is politics, we have big shoulders, this is the game for the big dawgs, and we'll let it play out."
What Newt meant was that, barring Romney [PAC] retreat, Newt - who doesn't legally "directly" control his PAC, either - can't call off his [PAC] dogs, so now they can go ahead and demonstrate just how vulnerable the "electable and inevitable" Romney is to the attacks he will certainly face from the left, with the "baggage" that Republican powers-that-be chose to ignore or downplay.
Now, that... was... cold! And you could see Romney was shaken and just about losing it (the idea, of course, was for Newt to "lose it"). You could plainly see that it hit Romney and his cool, when yesterday Romney had an accident using an "unfortunate" choice of words "I like to fire people!" He is off his game, the blitzkrieg against Newt backfired, and now Mitt himself is under attack which he didn't expect to happen (due to positive "coverage" by friendly media).
Another way you know it backfired, is that Newt [and his PAC] received a massive infusion of money from people who understand that it's between Mitt and Newt as far as viable candidates for nomination go (Santorum is playing for Romney's VP spot by being a "spoiler", just like Bachman did before... and still thinks she is in the running).
I am pretty sure this will not be an anti-capitalist film, it has nothing to do with PE business, it will be about Romney, and from "reliable sources". In any case, Romney will have to spend time an money to defend himself - something he didn't have to do until now - and he's already made mistakes because of it. QED!
These decisions of attacks and counterattacks are not made off-hand or lightly. There are smart people in the PACs who can "read" what their beneficiaries are saying and doing and react accordingly without being legally "directed" to do it.
I think this is most unfortunate...Romney is the usual filthy-rich hypocrite using the gullibility of the masses to promote himself, but Santorum is moving from the GWB model to the Obama model rather quickly. I don’t like his big government slant, but I also don’t like his redistributionist streak, which is beginning to emerge now.
Somehow nobody seems to have caught it on Sunday when he urged means testing for Social Security and Medicare, which essentially converts them both into redistributionist welfare programs. This was in the course of his proposal to “share the pain” by reducing benefits to people already receiving SS who in his opinion don’t need it.
People who have paid into these programs all their lives should not be penalized for their success by being denied benefits if they exceed a certain income. If they want to refuse these benefits or give them to charity, fine, but the idea that they should spend their entire lives paying into a fund that will only benefit a chosen group is simply delayed redistributionism.
Actually, the only one who caught him was Gingrich, who said that the whole concept of “sharing the pain” was a mistake and that the objective was to make the programs successful, partly by offering options, but also by restructuring and, in addition, addressing the fraud problem (something Obama refuses to do), which is expected to cost one trillion dollars over the next 10 years. So that was a practical answer that did not involve the usual thing of using taxes (even in the form of SS contributions) to redistribute income.
Santorum would have a zero tax rate for capital gains for manufacturing in order to create new manufacturing jobs in USA.
Walmart cannot move retail store clerk jobs out of the country, so we don't need to sweeten their pot to keep retail jobs in the USA.
There have always been tax credits for kids, even the author of this article had parents that got a tax credit for her stupid ass.
Santorum did come from working people and was a congress critter from PA, the cradle of the unions, and so his views are skewed toward the blue collar folks plus the guy has 7 kids so that might influence his view on tax credits.
Basically, you are saying, that you think they are "captive" and so, "No soup for them!"
That ["captivity"] may or may not be true (Wal-Mart and other retailers are actively deploying overseas, and may close shops/stores in the U.S. where margins become lower, i.e., follow the same path that the manufacturers, at one time thought to be "captive," went) but the more important issue is, do we really want the "crony socialism" government that picks and chooses winners and losers in different industries, depending on how "captive" they are to the government policy?
Isn't this exactly what Democrats are doing? Not only the Big Government, but different tax and regulation policies depending on how "important" you are? Aren't we here already, and Santorum will just tinker with the tax and regulations depending on his life experience with unions and his number of children?
...and so his views are skewed toward the blue collar folks plus the guy has 7 kids so that might influence his view on tax credits.
Exactly! So why are we blaming Clintons and Obama who grew up with Alinsky's ideals and Rules for Radicals? Santorum just sees it through the prism of his experience of unions and children, and wants to use Big Government to reward slightly different "classes" of people and enterprises.
Or did I miss something?
P.S. By the way, those "captives" vote, so guess what happens in four years?
Actually, I was pretty disappointed to see him firmly planted in the GWB model of "compassionate Republican" or "preferential populism" because there is little, if anything, that is "conservative" about it.
Actually, the only one who caught him was Gingrich, who said that the whole concept of “sharing the pain” was a mistake and that the objective was to make the programs successful...
That's not really surprising, is it? Gingrich does tend to think about the issues and ask the right questions, not just say the usual "conservative dogma" slogans that keep getting same people elected in their districts and states time after time. He's gotten quite a lot of grief over it.
>> I have failed to understand why a charlatan like Dr. Ron Paul gets anywhere close to 10% support on FR <<
I think a lot of them are basically trolls, sent over by DU to stir up chaos and dissent among FReepers.
(Or “seminar posters,” to paraphrase Maha Rushbo.)
Paul supporters are very disruptive, just like OWS. I read that yesterdayin NH, Gingrich was prevented from speaking at a campaign stop by a mob composed of a group of OWS supporters and a group Ron Paul supporters. The local police refused to intervene and the Secret Service (which protects candidates as well) felt that it was too dangerous for Gingrich to continue with his talk.
So Ron Paul supporters are doing more than Internet disruption, and it wouldn’t surprise me if they were allied with OWS in seriously disrupting the GOP convention and possibly voting in November.
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