Just to make it clear what kind of future they envision for America, Republicans have chosen union-busting Governor Mitch Daniels to respond to President Obama’s state of the union address. Meanwhile, workers take their protest against Indiana’s so-called ‘right-to-work’ law to the home of the Republican speaker of the Indiana House, Brian Bosma. Video clip here.
Dana Bash, CNN’s senior congressional correspondent, reports on “GOP angst: Gingrich’s rise could be their downfall.” A typical quote unearthed by Bash “If he’s the nominee, it’s a disaster. There is no way to sugar-coat it,” said one GOP congressional strategist describing the tension after Gingrich won South Carolina.” At CNN, see also James Carville’s memo to the Republican establishment, “You have a disaster on your hands.”
If you wondered if there was something a little, well, odd about the over-the-top audience responses to Newt’s every comment in recent debates, you are not alone, as Rachel Weiner notes in The Fixx.
Democrats don’t have to worry much about losing the Jewish vote, according to Peter Beinhart, writing at The Daily Beast: “Every four years, Republicans vow to use Israel to pry Jews from their nearly century-old allegiance to the Democratic Party. And every four years, they fail. The reason is that only about 10 percent of Jews actually vote on Israel…Most American Jews don’t really vote as Jews at all…They vote as secularists…Jews aren’t that far left on economics, but on the issues where secular and traditionalist Americans clash–abortion, church and state, gay rights–their secularism pushes them into the Democrats’ arms.”
New poll has vulture capitalist and bomb-thrower in stat-tie in Sunshine state. Talking Points Memo average of three polls has Newt ahead by 6.2.
Greg Sargent reports on a new WaPo-ABC news poll which indicates that Romney is tanking with blue collar voters.”…Among whites with incomes of under $50,000: His negative numbers among them have jumped 20 points, from 29 percent to 49 percent. ”
Demos has a new report, updating the status of voter-suppression in Florida and other states, and concluding “Congress, clear-sighted state legislators, the U.S. Department of Justice, election officials, voting rights activists and concerned Americans must continue to fight against vote suppression proposals and for legislation that affirms all citizens’ fundamental right to vote and have those votes counted.”
Susan Saulny’s New York Times article, “As Race Moves to Florida, Facing Political Implications of a Housing Crisis,” discusses how the crisis spells trouble for Mitt and Newt, in particular.
If President Obama is looking for a well-stated idea or two for his SOTU, he could do worse than check out Robert Borosage’s suggestions at his Campaign for America’s Future blog. He should also read Robert Reich’s “Jobs Won’t Come Back to America Until the Government Pushes Greedy Corporate Executives to Invest at Home” at Alternet.

This latest New New York Times poll showing President Obama’s “vulnerability with swing voters” also inadvertently underscores the need to clarify distinctions between “swing voters,” self-identified “Independents” and GOP or Dem-leaning “independents.” It might also be helpful to know what percent of these categories qualify as “low-information” voters and who they are. Perhaps the most relevant sentence in the NYT report by Jeff Zeleny and Dalia Sussman: “The poll found that 28 percent of the public says the economy is getting better, which is the biggest sense of optimism found in a Times/CBS News poll since last February.”
Check out “Welcome to Low Country: A Compendium of South Carolina Political Ads” at Times Swampland and be glad, very glad that Dems don’t have to worry about our nominee’s participation in butt-ugly presidential primaries.
Ron Paul isn’t laughing at the Colbert thing.
Michael Tomasky’s Daily Beast post “Newt’s Racist Surge May Sink Romney in South Carolina” hits it straight. Looks to me like Newt’s “food stamp president” comment was likely a lazer-targeted ploy to take a big bite out of the bigoted segment of Paul’s constituency.
As damaging as Mitt’s 15% effective tax rate may be, Dems ought to think about a creative ad targeting high turnout seniors, addressing “Romney’s Unorthodox IRA” as reported in the Wall St. Journal by Mark Maremont. Maybe quote from Maremont’s “Mr. Romney reported his IRA produced income between $1.5 million and $8.5 million from the beginning of 2010 until Aug. 12 of last year…Mr. Romney’s IRA includes holdings in Bain entities based in offshore locations, including one Cayman Islands entity that Mr. Romney listed as having a value between $5 million and $25 million.” Punch line: “So, how’s your retirement plan doing?”
Will Perry’s fold help Newt? Will Santorum get a sympathy bump in SC?
Romney is working the potentially-powerful military services-veteran-military industries vote in SC, but it’s fragmented nonetheless, according to “Influential military vote in South Carolina split” by Reuters correspondent Colleen Jenkins.
Gary Weiss explains “Why Romney is Obama’s dream opponent ” at Salon.com. Says Weiss: “This isn’t the invention of the liberal media. It’s Romney’s chickens coming home to roost. It’s going to stick. So when you see the Newt Gingrich super-PAC’s half-hour video describing what happened when “Mitt Romney came to town,” that is just an appetizer. The banquet follows in the fall, if and when Mitt gets the nomination God willing, and the Democrats start running against him.”
The GOP prez field takes some brutal hits in this collection of David Horsey’s political cartoons.

It’s still very early in the new year, but were there an award for GOP meme-propagation in the MSM, I’d bet on Politico’s “Partisan Washington: Obama’s broken promise” by Carrie Budoff Brown and Jonathan Allen.
I’ve read other articles by these writers that seemed balanced enough. But to me, this one has an odious whiff of political bias in an ostensibly non-partisan publication. I assume that the authors know that Obama has bent over backwards to accommodate GOP leaders, so much so that he has lost progressive supporters. The bias favoring Republicans in the post could be more in the editing, as suggested by the headline. Regardless, the article’s argument, though unconvincing, is heavily weighted against President Obama.
The authors do acknowledge that “For Obama, like his predecessors, the [bipartisanship] promise was impossible to keep without buy-in from the rest of Washington.” Though a few Democrats are quoted for ‘balance,’ however, the post leans more heavily on anti-Obama hyperbole like “The tales of perceived insults are legion” and “He stunned Republicans with the recess appointments, but they were only the latest aggravation,” presumably to get readers all dewey-eyed about the tenderness of Republicans’ hurt feelings.
The article faults Obama for not trying hard enough “to build relationships” with GOP leaders, even though he has dined, met, called and played golf with them. This particular Republican complaint is reminiscent of Newt’s hissy-fit when he had to exit Air Force One from the back door in ’95 during the Clinton administration. Only today’s GOP clearly doesn’t need a social snub to obstruct all legislative compromise.
Like every president, Obama can be faulted for his shortcomings. But the GOP meme that Obama hasn’t been willing to compromise is a dubious stretch. Few unbiased observers would hang the onus of failure to achieve bipartisanship on the President more than House and Senate Republicans.
The article conveniently ignores or glosses over the GOP’s knee-jerk filibusters, the Republican blocking of once-routine presidential appointments, the much larger number of recess appointments by all recent Republican presidents, GOP Rep. Joe Wilson’s “you lie” tantrum during the President’s address to a joint session of congress in ’09 and the GOP leaderships’ naked admissions that ‘destroying’ Obama is job one etc. And while ‘Blue Dogs’ and other moderate Democrats cross party lines regularly in congressional votes, there aren’t any ‘Red Dogs,’ are there?
With benefit of hindsight, there are undoubtedly some things Obama could have done better to reduce partisan polarization. But blaming him for not trying hard enough is a lot closer to GOP propaganda than an unbiased evaluation. I’m all for partisan editorializing, left and right. But it shouldn’t masquerade as unbiased journalism.

More evidence of a Romney cakewalk to the GOP nomination going forward at Nate Silver’s five thirty eight blog.
So, how did the GOP frontrunner celebrate MLK Day? According to Amanda Peterson Beadle, writing at Nation of Change, “Mitt Romney plans to tout his extreme immigration positions during a campaign stop in South Carolina today — with Kris Kobach, the author of Arizona’s and Alabama’s immigration laws, at his side…But as extreme as Romney’s immigration stances have been, campaigning with an anti-immigrant official with ties to a hate group on Martin Luther King Day is beyond the pale.”
Eric Pape lays bare the cluelessness of Romney’s Euro-bashing at ForeignPolicy.com, riffing on Mitt’s insistence that President Obama “wants to turn America into a European-style social welfare state” in stark contrast to Mitt’s steely determination to “ensure that we remain a free and prosperous land of opportunity.” Pape notes for example, that “Since the global economic crisis kicked in, French unemployment increased by about 25 percent. (Then again, American unemployment increased by about 50 percent in that same period — and the U.S. rate is higher, at 8.5 percent, than the averaged unemployment rate of the eurozone’s two largest economies, France and Germany).”
Turns out the low information voter thing is a pretty big problem for Dems, especially when it comes to knowing what the GOP candidates are about, according to a recent Pew Research poll. Dems got work to do.
Michael C. Dawson has a thoughtful and informative rumination on “The Future of Black Politics” at the Boston Review, the lead essay of a forum with nine other experts on the topic.
While at the Boston Review, check out Stephen Ansolabehere’s post on “The Brown Majority,” featuring some worrisome statistics for GOP partisans, including: “Over the coming decade, aging alone will increase the number of Hispanics who are eligible to vote by 25 percent.”
Republicans, don’t read this. Keep blithering about the virtues of “creative destruction” and other elitist concepts from Austrian economists and/or Ayn Rand. Voters love to be patronized with cold, academic jargon. And Mitt, keep telling voters more about what a regular guy you are, being unemployed and stuff. Maybe get a beat-up pick-up truck and a NASCAR hat. Oh, and please talk more about Bain’s wonderful track record.
Get up to speed on the latest political buzz-terms at Katy Steinmetz’s Time Swampland post.
Huntsman’s website erasing in context of his Romney endorsement is a hoot. The Fixx’s Rachel Weiner explains: “In October, Huntsman called Romney a “perfectly lubricated weather vane on the important issues of the day,” who “has been missing in action in terms of showing any kind of leadership….”There’s a question whether he’s running for the White House or the Waffle House,” Huntsman said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” in November…He told ABC News around the same time that “the American people, the voters, are going to have a hard time finding, I think, a gut level trust when it comes to someone who has been on so many sides of major issues.”
Regardless of who wins the presidential election, the outcome of four key Senate races in Massachusetts, Montana, Nevada, and Virginia will likely be pivotal in securing majority control. Charlie Cook has a savvy update in his National Journal column, “Epic Battles’ Will Seal Senate’s Fate.”
Check out this GOP candidates Rushmore caricature, made, appropriately, of sand.

Today being the MLK holiday, we can be sure that some of the Republican presidential candidates will have nice things to say about Dr. King, and they will trot out the old “content of their character” MLK quote to suggest he was a conservative.
Although King did not formally endorse any presidential candidates, he came very close on occasion, and it’s instructive to recall some of his thoughts on Republican presidents and candidates during his lifetime. On Eisenhower:

In September 1957 I thought it was quite regrettable and unfortunate that young high school students in Little Rock, Arkansas, had to go to school under the protection of federal troops. But I thought it was even more unfortunate that Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus, through irresponsible actions, left the president of the United States with no other alternative. I believe firmly in nonviolence, but, at the same time, I am not an anarchist. I believe in the intelligent use of police force. And I thought that was all we had in Little Rock. It wasn’t an army fighting against a nation or a race of people. It was just police force, seeking to enforce the law of the land. It was high time that a man as popular in the world as Eisenhower-a man with his moral influence-speak out and take a stand against what was happening all over the South. So I backed the President, and I sent him a telegram commending him for the positive and forthright stand that he took in the Little Rock school situation. He showed the nation and the world that the United States was a nation dedicated to law and order rather than mob rule.
Nevertheless, it was strange to me that the federal government was more concerned about what happened in Budapest than what happened in Birmingham. I thought Eisenhower believed that integration would be a fine thing. But I thought he felt that the more you push it, the more tension it would create, so, just wait a few more years and it will work itself out. I didn’t think that Eisenhower felt like being a crusader for integration. President Eisenhower was a man of integrity and goodwill, but I am afraid that on the question of integration he didn’t understand the dimensions of social change involved nor how the problem was to be worked out.

On Goldwater:

The Republican Party geared its appeal and program to racism, reaction, and extremism. All people of goodwill viewed with alarm and concern the frenzied wedding at the Cow Palace of the KKK with the radical right. The “best man” at this ceremony was a senator whose voting record, philosophy, and program were anathema to all the hard-won achievements of the past decade.
It was both unfortunate and disastrous that the Republican Party nominated Barry Goldwater as its candidate for President of the United States. In foreign policy Mr. Goldwater advocated a narrow nationalism, a crippling isolationism, and a trigger-happy attitude that could plunge the whole world into the dark abyss of annihilation. On social and economic issues, Mr. Goldwater represented an unrealistic conservatism that was totally out of touch with the realities of the twentieth century. The issue of poverty compelled the attention of all citizens of our country. Senator Goldwater had neither the concern nor the comprehension necessary to grapple with this problem of poverty in the fashion that the historical moment dictated. On the urgent issue of civil rights, Senator Goldwater represented a philosophy that was morally indefensible and socially suicidal. While not himself a racist, Mr. Goldwater articulated a philosophy which gave aid and comfort to the racist. His candidacy and philosophy would serve as an umbrella under which extremists of all stripes would stand. In the light of these facts and because of my love for America, I had no alternative but to urge every Negro and white person of goodwill to vote against Mr. Goldwater and to withdraw support from any Republican candidate that did not publicly disassociate himself from Senator Goldwater and his philosophy.
While I had followed a policy of not endorsing political candidates, I felt that the prospect of Senator Goldwater being President of the United States so threatened the health, morality, and survival of our nation, that I could not in good conscience fail to take a stand against what he represented.

On Reagan:

…When a Hollywood performer, lacking distinction even as an actor can become a leading war hawk candidate for the Presidency, only the irrationalities induced by a war psychosis can explain such a melancholy turn of events.

King was more ambivalent about Nixon, who had called King “frequently about things.” King said of Nixon that “it is quite possible that he has no racial prejudice,” and “is absolutely sincere on this issue,” but also that he also considered Nixon a “moral coward” for not taking a strong moral stand on civil rights at a time when it would have helped a lot. (from chapter 15 of “The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.”)
None of this is to say that there were no progressive Republicans who supported the African American freedom struggle –there were some like Senator Jacob Javitz and Gov. Nelson Rockefeller. Interestingly, Republicans including Sen. Goldwater, William Buckley, Sen. Strom Thurmond and President Reagan supported the King holiday bill, despite their stated opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Rep. Jack Kemp was instrumental in passing the MLK holiday legislation. There are many rank and file Republicans who admire and celebrate Dr. King today.
In a transparent attempt to back away from his repulsive newsletter, Rep. Ron Paul has recently lauded what he sees as King’s libertarian creds. But Paul opposed both the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the MLK holiday.
And yes, there were plenty of racist Democrats during King’s lifetime. It would be fair to say that racial prejudice was a defining characteristic of too many Dixiecrats.
King never gave up hope that both parties would take a strong stand against racial discrimination, and he testified to the platform committees of both major parties. But the record clearly shows which political party today is the more vigorous champion of the cause of racial and economic justice championed by Martin Luther King, Jr.

Paul Begala sums up “Mitt Romney’s Charmless Win in New Hampshire” at the Daily Beast: “…It’s pretty easy to look bulletproof when your enemies are shooting blanks. Yes, Jon Huntsman ran a “comparative ad” that was weaker than baby’s pee. And, yes, Newt Gingrich body-slammed Romney in the Meet the Press debate, essentially calling him a liar and demanding he “cut the pious baloney.” But no one hit him right between the eyes with the kinds of ads Hillary and Barack used, let alone the carpet-bombing Romney’s allies used against Gingrich in Iowa.”
Seems a little early for Republican kumbaya, what with Governor Perry calling Romney a “vulture capitalist” and all.
WaPo’s Chris Cillizza presents compelling data from a Washington Post-Pew Research Center poll which indicate that endorsements don’t matter much. But I still think this one opened some hearts.
The GOP’s Class ‘Warfare’ meme rings a bit ridiculous to the reality-based community. But class conflict is definitely on the rise, according to a new Pew Research poll. As CNN’s Moni Basu reports, “Conflict between rich and poor is at an all-time high, at least in the way of public perception…The survey found that 66% of adults believe there are “very strong” or “strong” conflicts between the two groups. That number spiked 19 percentage points since Pew last posed that question in 2009…The public’s evaluations of divisions within American society, conflicts between rich and poor now rank ahead of three other potential sources of group tension — between immigrants and the native born; between blacks and whites; and between young and old…”
You think Newt’s Bain-Romney attack is hot stuff? Dig Benjy Sarlin’s TPM post, “Dems Prepare To Hammer Romney With The REAL Bain Onslaught“.
Alex Altman has an interesting analysis up at Time Swampland, “What Ad Spending Says About Each GOP Candidate-and Their Success.” Altman notes, “If Romney gets dinged by the air wars in South Carolina, he’s likely to quickly recover in Florida. The state’s size and large number of major media markets make it prohibitively expensive for minor-league outfits to play there.”
Taylor West and Peter Bell agree at Hotline on Call that it’s all about Florida as far as Romney is concerned.
The GOP spin doctors are working overtime, parroting the meme that private equity firms are mighty job-creators. But this Nobel laureate ain’t having it. “…We’re not going to get better policies if the man sitting in the Oval Office next year sees his job as being that of engineering a leveraged buyout of America Inc.”
Election prediction junkees should read this L.A. Times post by Brad Schiller before making any bets.

Watching video clips of Romney’s flip-flopping on just about every major issue is a tiring experience. But his lurid history of pandering to exploit the latest trends in political idiocy should not distract voters from the raw truth of what he stands for today, which is an all-out capitulation to the agenda of the vulture capitalists.
The Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuval explains it well in her WaPo op-ed, “Extremist in Pinstripes.” Vanden Heuval reviews Romney’s extremist positions on social issues, immigration, increasing the military budget and notes his call to push the Supreme Court even further to the right with his appointments.
She provides a disturbing account of Romney’s blase certitude in support of draconian cuts in Pell grants, Medicaid and food stamps, children’s health programs and aid to people with disabilities to “give multinationals a tax holiday” and give millionaires a nearly $300K tax cut, and adds:

This shouldn’t come as a surprise. Romney, as Mike Huckabee once famously noted, “looks like the guy who laid you off.” At Bain, he was the guy who fired you. In a review of 77 major deals that Bain capital did when Romney headed the firm, the Wall Street Journal found that “22% [of the businesses that Bain invested in] either filed for bankruptcy reorganization or closed their doors by the end of the eighth year after Bain first invested, sometimes with substantial job losses.” Of course, Bain produced remarkable returns for its investors, including Romney.

Romney’s flip-flopping proclivities are the easy target for commentators and pundits. But no one should be deluded by speculation that Romney will flip back toward moderate conservatism, if elected. As vanden Heuval argues,

…This isn’t the plan of a moderate. The conservative garb isn’t something Romney has donned for the primaries. These policies…are consistent with Romney’s background as a corporate raider. And as his fundraising shows, they play well in the plush offices of big finance where Romney made his fortune. He is a champion for the 1 percent, peddling a program that will ensure that working Americans bear the cost for the mess left by Wall Street’s extremes while the buccaneer bankers, corporate raiders and private equity gamblers are free to go back to preying on America.

Vanden Heuval’s article should provoke a sobering reassessment among those who have entertained the fantasy that Romney would govern as a moderate. As E. J. Dionne points out, chameleon Romney has proven highly adept as deluding his fellow Republicans across the party’s ideological spectrum that he reflects their views. Dems should not be so gullible, for there is every reason to believe his election would unleash the worst elements of vulture capitalism.

Not a big fan of Gov Christie of NJ. But it was good to see somebody nail former Ambassador Huntsman for his shameless backstabbing careerism in going after the job of the guy who gave him his biggest break. It resonates particularly well after Huntsman’s sanctimonious “I want to be very clear with the people here in New Hampshire and in this country. I will always put my country first.” Substitute “career” for “country” and you have the real key to Huntsman’s character.
Despite’s Huntsman’s zinger citing Romney as exhibit “A” showing why the country is so divided, I have to agree with Joe Klein’s assessment in Time Swampland that “No one really laid a glove on him, not even in the NBC debate on Sunday morning, which was far sharper and more substantive than the ABC debate last night. There was a reason for Romney’s success-and it pains me to disclose it: he was well-prepped by his consultants. His answers were clear, concise, declarative sentences. None of the other candidates seemed to have been prepped at all.”
Elizabeth Warren gets the Fenway thing a lot better than did Martha Coakley.
Mackenzie Weinger of Politico reports a new Pew poll which indicates that 51 percent of “Republican and GOP-leaning voters said the candidates are excellent or good,” compared to 68 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning voters said they had good Republican candidates four years ago.
Here’s an interesting wrinkle from The Hill: John McCain faults the Citizens United decision for having a “damaging” impact on the GOP presidential field. “…It’s also the result of the worst decision, I think, in at least the last 50 years or so, of the United States Supreme Court called Citizens United, where they basically unleashed without transparency, without accountability, huge amounts of money from these so-called independent campaigns, which you and I know are not independent.”
Nate Silver and Micah Cohen make the case that “Ground Game Determines Candidates’ Strength,” noting that Paul and Romney have the most stable numbers of the current GOP field and the most well-organized campaigns.
New Hampshire’s influence as the earliest primary state could be overshadowed by it’s importance as the state with the strongest pro-GOP trend since 2010, according to Chris Palko at Campaigns & Elections. In addition to the largest swing in the state legislature in 2010, “according to Gallup, only Rhode Island saw a greater decline in Democratic Party identification from 2008 to 2010.”
Quentin Fottrell of SmartMoney.com has some worthwhile insights in “10 Things Pollsters Won’t Tell You: Why you should think twice about those survey results this election season.” Among Fottrell’s insights: “People lie to say what they think is acceptable” (“social respectability bias”), “”The way we ask the questions can determine the answers” and “We’re being outclassed by social network sites.”
Robert Reich’s “How a Little Bit of Good Economic News Can Be Bad for the President” notes a political booby-trap which may lie ahead for President Obama — encouraged discouraged workers.
HuffPo Pollster Mark Blumenthal crunches the numbers and comes up with “…An average across all polls should produce the clearest picture of the outcome…As of this writing it shows Romney’s support declining slightly (to 36.8 percent) followed by Ron Paul (at 17.6 percent), with Huntsman just a point and a half behind (at 16.0 percent) and rising fast, followed by Rick Santorum (11.6 percent), Newt Gingrich (10.0 percent) and Rick Perry (0.9 percent). Huntsman’s momentum is on a track to catch Paul, though who will finish on top is one of those things about which polling simply cannot be certain.”

The latest polls show a Huntsman surge, and Santorum tanking in NH, so Santorum’s 15 minutes may be up sooner than later. But we shouldn’t let this political moment pass without a comment on the ‘Santorum as working-class hero’ snowjob.
Google Santorum +”working-class,” and you’ll pull up headlines like “Santorum fits working class bill,” “Like Rocky Balboa, Rick Santorum is a working class hero” and “Santorum: The Blue-collar Candidate – The former senator touts his working-class roots” etc. The conservative echo chamber is parroting the meme with impressive message discipline. Top conservative pundits, including Brooks, Will and Krauthammer have jumped on the Santorum as working-class hero bandwagon.
It’s not hard to understand why. One of the largest swing constituencies, the white working-class has trended toward the GOP in recent elections. According to Wall St. Journal columnist Kimberly Strassel

…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.
The white working class will make up as much as 55% of the vote in states like Ohio and Pennsylvania. Front-runner Mitt Romney knows it, as does Mr. Santorum. Their fight in New Hampshire and beyond will increasingly be over who can earn more points with this group. Their styles are very different, if equally damaging to the conservative growth message.

Santorum is making a hard-sell pitch for the blue collar vote, as Strassel reports:

Mr. Santorum surged in Iowa as the “I’m One of You” candidate. On the stump, and in his victory speech in Iowa, he’s highlighted his working-class roots. He kicked off his campaign near the Pennsylvania coal mines where his grandfather worked, and he talks frequently of struggling steel towns…He’s the frugal guy, the man of faith, the person who understands the financial worries of average Americans. He’s directly contrasting his own blue-collar bona fides with those of the more privileged Mr. Romney.

In reality, however, Santorum’s working-class creds are awfully thin. His father was a clinical psychologist and his mother was an administrative nurse — clearly more of an upper middle-class upbringing than a blue collar culture. Yeah, he had a grandfather who was a miner, but it’s not like he grew up in a mining family as the GOP meme-propagators would have us believe.
Worse, much of his career in public office has been dedicated to serving as an eager bell-hop for the wealthy. More recently, as the Washington Post reported,

Santorum earned $1.3 million in 2010 and the first half of 2011, according to his most recent financial disclosure form. The largest chunk of his employment earnings — $332,000 — came from his work as a consultant for groups advocating and lobbying for industry interests. That included $142,500 to help advise a Pennsylvania natural gas firm, Consol Energy, and $65,000 to consult with lobby firm American Continental Group, and its insurance services client.

And, as Marcus Stern and Kristina Cooke recently reported for Reuters,

As a senator, Santorum went further, playing a key role in an effort by Republicans in Congress to dictate the hiring practices, and hence the political loyalties, of Washington’s deep-pocketed lobbying firms and trade associations, which had previously been bipartisan.
Dubbed “the K Street Project” for the Washington street that houses most of these groups, the initiative was launched in 1989 by lobbyist Grover Norquist, whose sole aim, he said, was to encourage lobbying firms to “hire people who agree with your worldview, not hire for access.”
…Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a liberal government watchdog group, named Santorum among three “most corrupt” senators in 2005 and 2006, accusing him of “using his position as a member of Congress to financially benefit those who have made contributions to his campaign committee and political action committee.”

Santorum has won some blue collar support by promoting his message of “industrial renewal,” and supporting protectionist measures, as John Nichols reports in The Nation. But, as Nichols, says, “There is no reason to overplay Santorum’s commitments. He is an economic conservative who would side more often with Wall Street than Main Street.”
In 2002, for example, Senator Santorum received a 15 percent rating from the AFL-CIO. Not many Senators had a lower score.
Republican strategists are so desperate for a candidate who can relate to the blue-collar “Reagan Democrats” that casting an arch conservative, silk-stocking lawyer like Santorum as a working class hero seems a reasonable stretch. If Santorum does recover from his latest poll dive, it shouldn’t be too hard for Dems to expose his policy agenda as more anti-worker than not.
Note from James Vega:
Using exactly the same, utterly and shamelessly idiotic “grandfather’s history plus general geographical area” theory of social class, Mitt Romney can claim to be “the authentic descendent and representative of Mexican-American autoworkers” – his grandfather lived in Chihuahua, Mexico most of his life and Romney himself grew up “in the shadows of the automobile factories of Detroit”
Newt, on the other hand, can polish his credentials in the African-American community by claiming to be “a scholar of African society whose congressional district was a short distance from Ebenezer Baptist Church where Martin Luther King led the Civil Rights Movement”

Romney’s tax return could be a game-changer, and not in a good way for Republicans. Talking Points Memo’s Brian Beutler explains why Mitt is extremely reluctant to release it.
Liz Novak sounds the call at In These Times: “Occupy the Electoral Process.” Yes, it’s important to have a non-electoral protest track to push forward a progressive agenda. But now the tea party is mobilizing its resources to elect right-wingers from the white house to the court house, and the Occupy Movement can make the difference that prevents a reactionary takeover.
The Occupy Movement will find lots of useful data for the campaign against inequality in a study, flagged by Jim Hightower, of social justice records of all 31 members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. The survey ranks “each nation in such categories as health care, income inequality, pre-school education, and child poverty rate. The overall performance by the U.S. – which boasts of being an egalitarian society – outranks only Greece, Chile, Mexico, and Turkey. Actually, even three of those countries performed better than ours in the education of pre-schoolers, and Greece did better than the U.S. on the prevention of poverty.”
Dems interested in upgrading their campaign blogs should have a gander at Andrew Clark’s “The five best campaign blogs of 2011” at Campaigns & Elections.
The Forum has a special issue out on “Governing through the Senate,” which ought to be of interest to U.S. Senate candidates and campaign workers. Abstracts and guest passes are free. “…Charles O. Jones considers its inherent peculiarities as the institution meant to ‘go second’ in a separated system; Sarah Binder argues that the modern Senate is moving away from its constitutional role; Frances Lee considers the role of party competition in shaping senatorial behavior; Barry Burden asks about the influence of senatorial polarization and party balance within the bicameral context; and Daniel DiSalvo contrasts partisan polarization with divided government as influences on senatorial behavior. Randall Strahan observes one particular senator negotiating this complicated framework; Wendy Schiller and Jennifer Cassidy consider the dynamics of cooperation (or not) among same-state senators; and Andrea Hatcher contrasts a majority leader who lost re-election with another who won. Ryan Black, Anthony Madonna, and Ryan Owens examine a very private form of senatorial obstruction, ‘blue slip behavior’; Gregory Koger examines what is surely the best-known form of obstruction, the filibuster; Eric Schickler and Gregory Wawro argue that, whatever its collective impact, senators have multiple reasons to protect this filibuster; and James Wallner closes with a substantive realm, budgeting, where the absence of policy action by the Senate is critical. In book reviews, Joseph Cooper uses Matthew N. Green, The Speaker of the House: A Study in Leadership, to think about the study of Congress more generally, and Matthew Green responds; Amnon Cavari reviews B. Dan Wood, The Myth of Presidential Representation; and Philip Brenner reviews Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell, American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us.”
The Monkey Cage has a revealing chart that displays the racial demographics of New Hampshire in stark contrast to that of the United States.
Get up to speed on “Racial Profiling, Republican Candidates, and Rights Violations: the Immigration Debate at Year’s End” by Kari Lydersen, from In These Times via Alternet.
Nick R. Martin has a post at TPM Muckraker on “Report Says ALEC Wields Disturbing Level of Influence’ In Virginia.” Martin explains “The Virginia General Assembly introduced at least 50 bills since 2007 that appear to be near carbon copies of legislation first imagined by the American Legislative Exchange Council, more widely known as ALEC, the report found…The report also said taxpayers spent more than $230,000 to send state lawmakers to ALEC conferences, where they then met with corporate lobbyists behind closed doors. Of the bills apparently drafted by ALEC, three became law, the report said.”
Brad Reed has a good Alternet post, “8 GOP Primary Moments That Would Make Jesus Weep” that Christian voters should find of considerable interest.
Please sign The Democratic Governor’s Association petition to stop voter suppression in the state of Florida. “Now that they control a majority of statehouses across the nation, Republicans are attempting a bold power grab to disenfranchise voters and repeat the Florida election debacle of 2000…Right now, states with Republican governors or new GOP majorities are ramming through bills designed to make it harder for people to vote. They’ll stop at nothing to steal the Presidency. We have to act now to stop these bills from becoming law. The Democratic Governors Association is the only organization devoted solely to electing Democratic governors who will veto any and all attempts to limit voter rights…Stand with the DGA and demand that Republicans stop their politically-motivated attempts to suppress votes.”
In a saner nation, Ta-Nehisi Coates’s post on “Saviorism” at The Atlantic would be the last word anyone would need to read about the warped credo of Rep. Ron Paul.