Mountain Views News          Saturday, February 18, 2012

9

LEFT TURN/RIGHT TURN

Mountain Views News Saturday, February 18, 2012

HOWARD Hays As I See It 

RICK SANTORUM’S 
WILLFUL ASCENT

MATT Mackowiak

 “We don't need a president 
to tell us in what direction 
to go . . . We just need 
a president to sign this stuff. 
We don't need someone to 
think it up or design it . . 
. Pick a Republican with 
enough working digits to 
handle a pen to become 
president of the United 
States.”

- Grover Norquist at CPAC

 Candidates dutifully made their appearances, 
and Sarah Palin discouraged Romney supporters 
from assuming inevitability. It was left to Grover 
Norquist, though, to remind candidates and attendees 
at this month’s Conservative Political Action 
Conference of whom they would ultimately 
be answerable to.

 It’s not the American people. For nearly all Republicans 
serving in congress, pledging to uphold 
the Constitution is insufficient without a supplemental 
vow of fealty to Norquist’s Americans for 
Tax Reform – a vow to protect and defend not the 
Constitution, but the Bush millionaires’ tax cuts. 
Aspirants appearing at CPAC are answerable to 
those employing multi-millionaire Washington 
lobbyists like Grover Norquist. 

 If the current slate of Republican candidates 
seems uninspiring (turnout at primaries and caucuses 
has been meager, and a poll shows 20% of 
Republicans supporting President Obama), it’s 
because that’s what those financing the contest 
want. As Norquist put it at CPAC, “we are not 
auditioning for fearless leader.”

 George W. Bush fit the bill - someone who’d 
“sign this stuff”, under the guardianship of Vice 
President Dick Cheney. Bush had “enough working 
digits” to enact the first-ever tax cuts during 
wartime, and to put those cuts, two wars, and a 
massive giveaway to the pharmaceutical industry 
on a no-limit national credit card for somebody 
else to deal with. For cover, he simply kept 
such expenditures off the books, so the national 
balance-sheet wouldn’t appear so alarmingly 
out-of-whack.

 (Soon after the inauguration, President Obama 
fulfilled his promise of honest accounting and 
put those expenses back on-budget, which led to 
Republican apoplexy over the sudden deficit increase 
under the new administration.)

 The goal is to complete a transformation begun 
nearly fifty years ago; from a nation where 
wealth was created with a strong middle-class 
as its foundation, to one where it’s treated as 
a zero-sum game – siphoned off to those gaming 
the wealth created by others. In 1965, 53% 
of our nation’s economy was in manufacturing; 
this dropped to 39% by 1988 and 12% in 2007. 
Today, nearly 30% of all profits flow to the financial 
services industry, and 20% of our economy 
is consumed by the least cost-effective healthcare 
system among developed nations.

 Capital investments don’t go to factories or an 
expanding workforce, but towards the purchase 
of lawmakers. Following the Republican takeover 
of the House in 2011, the 12 freshmen on the 
House Financial Services committee each raised 
an average $535,000 within their first six months 
in office – 32% more than freshmen serving on 
other committees.

 Policies promoted at CPAC might further enrich 
the top 1%, but we know they won’t work 
for the rest of us because they never have. We’ve 
heard the same arguments before, and they’ve 
been disproved repeatedly going back at least to 
President Harding.

 That’s why we’re seeing attempts to change the 
subject. Rather than economic recovery, we’re 
debating birth control (birth control!). President 
Obama visits Michigan to tout our resurgent auto 
industry, and Rick Santorum flies to Washington 
State to bemoan their acceptance of gay marriage.

 Contrary to the suggestions of Grover Norquist, 
the nation does expect a “leader”; someone who 
will “tell us in what direction to go”. President 
Obama assumes this role with the presentation of 
his 2013 budget, and the direction it indicates is 
to the policies which fueled our post-war expansion 
under the leadership of Presidents Truman 
and Eisenhower.

 There’d be a return to tax policies that encourage 
investment here at home, rather than amassing 
wealth in offshore tax havens. Those whose 
income derives from dividend checks and distributions 
would be taxed more on a par with those 
who rely on a paycheck. President Obama characterizes 
this as not “class warfare”, but “common 
sense”.

 The corporate tax rate would be lowered, but 
offset by eliminating the special tax breaks lobbyists 
like Norquist were paid to deliver. We’d be 
dealing with those breaks that have allowed 30 
major corporations to avoid any federal taxes at 
all over the past three years while recording $160 
billion in profits; breaks such as those allowing 
profit-shifting to offshore havens that, according 
to the OMB, cost us $90 billion in 2008 (more 
than the entire budgets of the Departments of 
Education, Health and Human Services, and Veterans 
Affairs). 

 The deficit is addressed by allowing Bush tax 
cuts to expire for those making over $250,000 a 
year, not by cutting Medicaid, Medicare and Social 
Security. Those programs are protected and 
not, as Republicans call for, turned over to the 
same Wall Street players who tanked the economy 
– wiping out thousands of 401(k)’s and pension 
accounts in the process.

 That post-war era of economic expansion is 
reflected in a call for investment in infrastructure 
and education, particularly in making college 
more affordable and spurring studies in the sciences, 
health care and advanced manufacturing 
technologies. (Meanwhile, Republicans question 
climate change and evolution.)

 As reported in the NY Times, today’s deficit 
of $1.3 trillion is the same in dollar terms as 
it was when Obama took office, but with our 
economic expansion, represents a smaller share 
of GDP (8.5% vs. 9.2%). The proposed budget 
brings that deficit down to $901 billion, or 5.5% 
of GDP, with projections it will come down to 3% 
by 2017 (the level economists consider “maximum 
sustainable”).

 70% of our economy is consumer-based, depending 
on a strong middle-class with money to 
spend, rather than trickle-down largesse from the 
upper 1%. 

 Voters understand this. That’s why, rather than 
allowing a billionaire funder of a Super-PAC to 
anoint someone who’ll just “sign this stuff”, come 
November, much to the consternation of lobbyists 
like Grover Norquist, we’ll be re-electing a 
leader.


Rick Santorum was the longest of long shots 
when, five years after losing his bid for reelection 
to the Senate by 18 points, he spent much of 
2011 campaigning for president in three early-
primary states. But he campaigned longer and 
harder - albeit with less media attention, money, 
and staff - than any other Republican candidate. 
By the time Santorum barely won Iowa (as we 
belatedly learned), he had held nearly 400 town-
hall meetings.

The rise of Santorum can be attributed to several 
key factors:

Media coverage: Santorum’s universally 
unforeseen sweep of the contests in Minnesota, 
Missouri, and Colorado last week won him 
enormous attention on broadcast and cable news 
across the country.

A campaign that had struggled to raise $1 million 
over three months in 2011 raised more than $2 
million in the 72 hours that followed that romp.

Electability: Santorum is the most electable 
conservative remaining in the race.

Despite Newt Gingrich’s high name 
recognition and his history as a leader of the 
conservative movement, his baggage has proven 
insurmountable. Gingrich’s only win, in South 
Carolina, came on the heels of two dynamic but 
unrepeatable debate performances, and he has 
been unable to unite social conservatives with 
fiscally conservative tea-party voters.

Santorum has solid, long-standing support 
among social conservatives, and recent polling 
shows he is winning more tea-party support. It 
helps that he opposed the federal bailouts that 
Gingrich and Mitt Romney supported.

Absence of gaffes: This campaign has seen several 
national front-runners: Donald Trump, Michele 
Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Newt 
Gingrich. But all of them were unable to sustain 
a burst of support in the harsh glare of national 
media scrutiny.

Santorum’s campaign had been left for dead many 
times, but it conserved its resources, developed a 
unique strategy, and let its workhorse drive it while 
committing very few gaffes. When Santorum 
has been given an opportunity - as he was when 
Romney’s campaign foolishly underestimated the 
potential impact of a Santorum sweep last week - 
he has seized it.

Solid debates: It’s hard to overstate the importance 
of the televised debates in this campaign. While 
nearly every Republican candidate has had a bad 
debate or a cringe-inducing moment, Santorum’s 
performances have 
been consistently solid, 
leaving audiences with 
the impression that he is 
intelligent, confident, and 
experienced. His tactic 
of lumping Romney and 
Gingrich together on 
such issues as bailouts 
and an individual health-
insurance mandate has 
been particularly effective 
in setting him apart.

Timing: Santorum is the last of the anti-Romney 
candidates. And when you are the last to bat, you 
can be the last to score.

In 2008, John McCain benefitted from peaking 
at the right time, when he won New Hampshire 
and Florida, after faltering badly early in the 
campaign. Santorum never faltered; rather, for 
a long time, he never really got going. But he is 
benefiting now from peaking at the right time.

While the national media, pundits, and 
conservative leaders were flirting with the flavors 
of the month, Santorum was doing the grueling, 
unglamorous work of building an organization. 
That ultimately earned him wins in four of the 
nine states that have held contests.

Santorum has significant momentum. To 
maintain it, he will need to prevent Romney 
from winning both Arizona and Michigan on 
Feb. 28. He also has to prove that he can win a 
large, expensive state, and that he can take harder 
punches from Romney, which Gingrich was 
unable to do.

More important, he needs to raise $5 million to 
$10 million over the next two or three weeks to 
fund his efforts on Super Tuesday, March 6, and 
in large states later that month and in April.

What Santorum needs most, though, is for 
Gingrich to exit, which would allow him to 
consolidate the “anti-Romney” vote.

Not long ago, no one had high hopes for the 
Santorum campaign - except perhaps Santorum, 
his family, and his longtime consigliere, John 
Brabender. Now Mitt Romney’s campaign is 
hoping to come up with an effective response. But 
how do you beat a candidate who held nearly 400 
town-hall meetings and scarcely made a mistake?


Matt Mackowiak is a Washington- and Austin-
based Republican consultant and president of 
Potomac Strategy Group, LLC. Matt can be reached 
at matt@potomacstrategygroup.com.


Independent’s Eye by

JOE Gandelman

LET’S NEVER FORGET CHARLIE AND 
BRADEN POWELL AND KEEP ASKING 
WHY?


The plate clatter grows 
around dinner time 
at Spaghetti Works 
here in Des Moines’ 
historical district. A 
family enters with two 
young boys. I look at 
them and my eyes tear 
up. A couple comes 
in with a teenage son. 
I think about what I 
read months ago about 
an ill-fated teen and feel a huge sense of grief.


I’m thinking of the horrific final moments of 
some kids who didn’t deserve to die or die before 
they reached adulthood. They didn’t deserve their 
unspeakably terrifying, painful and shocking 
final moments. Their tragic stories haunted me 
when I read them and they haunt my dreams still. 


Their stories beg the question of what kind of 
media and entertainment “imprinting” our 
society does so that ticking-time-bomb-like, 
mentally unstable people transform into faces of 
utter evil – and perform unspeakable acts, as if 
they’ve had so much experience doing it before.


These kids will never sit at dinner with friends. 
Never be around for years to be a joy (or pain) 
for their families. They won’t date, marry, or 
decide not to marry. They were betrayed – and 
their lives snuffed out -- by relatives or friends 
they fatally trusted. They died in horrifying 
murderous acts symbolizing the madness 
we have almost accept after a 20th century, 
where the biggest brutalities were totalitarian 
government sanctioned murder. Now our 
outrages have become ever so more personal.


On Feb. 11 more than a thousand people grieved 
for Charlie Powell, 7, and his brother, Braden, 
5 in Tacoma. Their father, Josh Powel, was a 
person of interest in the disappearance of their 
mother, Susan. Josh Powell became unfettered 
evil when a social worker dropped the kids off. 
He locked her out, was heard telling his sons 
“I have a surprise for you…” – then chopped 
them up with a hatchet and blew up his house. 


What kind of lifetime mental images 
created someone who could come up 
with such a terrifying final ending?


Last April there was news of Florida’s Seath 
Jackson, 15, who was caught in a teenage 
love triangle, lured to see a former girlfriend, 
then attacked by four teens who beat him 
with a wooden object, shot him repeatedly, 
put him a bathtub and broke his knees so 
he’d fit in a bag, then burned his remains 
into ash and bone fragments. The four teens 
were thankfully put away for a long time. 
But what mental images helped them do what 
they did the way they did it with such efficacy?


Yes, there have been assassinations, murders, mass 
murderers and serial killers throughout history. 
The 20th century saw assembly-line-like state 
sanctioned mass murder in Hitler’s Germany and 
Stalin’s Soviet Union. But it has gotten personal 
in America. A new movie, “Murder by Proxy: 
How America Went Postal,” looks at the string 
of post office mass murders by angry employees 
that began in the mid-80s. Since then we’ve seen 
school kids killing fellow students and teachers. 
Workplace and school bullying are big issues now.


But where does the imprinting come that 
blueprints and scripts these violent acts?


So I sit here realizing I’m lucky because I’m 
HERE. I’ve been blessed. I reached my 20s 
and will reach my senior years. I have loving 
relatives, good friends and a mother who is 90.


But Charlie and Braden lost their mother two 
years ago and even a head of cabbage at Vons 
supermarket now knows Daddy Josh murdered 
her. Seth’s parents never saw their son again. 
His young murderers totally obliterated him 
off the face of the earth as surely as Josh Powell 
totally obliterated his kids in the explosion.


Charlie, Braden and Seth: you deserved happier 
experiences in your short appearances on 
life’s always-too-brief stage. You were terribly 
cheated and are proof that “life is not fair.”


But it can be a mite less unfair if the rest of us 
never forget you and what happened to you. 
Some of us won’t. And some of us will continue 
to ask “why?”


Joe Gandelman is a veteran journalist who wrote 
for newspapers overseas and in the United States. 
He has appeared on cable news show political 
panels and is Editor-in-Chief of The Moderate 
Voice, an Internet hub for independents, centrists 
and moderates. CNN’s John Avlon named him 
as one of the top 25 Centrists Columnists and 
Commentators. He can be reached at jgandelman@
themoderatevoice.com and can be booked to speak 
at your event at www.mavenproductions.com.

WILL Durst 

THE 2012 POLITICAL ANIMAL AWARDS

Don’t mean to overreact and risk boosting 
everybody’s blood pressure higher than opening 
offers on Facebook’s upcoming IPO, but this 
might be a halfway decent time to seek out a nice, 
safe steel bunker to hunker down in or behind, 
because it’s awards season and heavy metal 
statuettes are being tossed around like dimes at 
a county fair.

Like the flurry of resumes from the outer office 
of Michele Bachmann’s inner circle. As plentiful 
as the doubts currently circling Mitt Romney’s 
Super PAC. We’ve already been treated to 
the golden-plated spectacle of the Grammys, 
BAFTAs, Golden Globes, People’s Choice 
Awards, Machine Tool Diamond Awards, Screen 
Actor Guild Awards and what with the Emmys, 
Oscars and CMAs right around the corner, this 
might be the perfect opportunity to weigh in 
with the most consequential of them all: the 2012 
Political Animal Awards. Note: No tuxes have 
been bruised in the creation of these awards. 

BEST COSTUME: Rick Santorum for that 
winning period look -- subtly harkening back to 
a young Mr. Rogers with rabies.

 

BAD TIMING AWARD: Tim Pawlenty, for 
deserting the presidential line-up before getting 
his own shot at leading the pack. Runner-up: 
Mitch Daniels.

 

UNCLEAR ON THE CONCEPT AWARD: 
Herman Cain, for continuing to blame the media 
for finding his fan full of feces.

 

THE DUMBER THAN HE ALREADY LOOKS 
AWARD: In an extremely competitive field, Rick 
Perry. 

THE NOT AS DUMB AS HIS HAIR LOOKS 
AWARD: For the sixth consecutive year, Donald 
Trump.

THE CLAUDE RAINES INVISIBLE MAN 
AWARD: George W. Bush.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: In a thankless 
role, Callista Gingrich.

 

THE WE CAN’T FIND A MUZZLE BIG 
ENOUGH AWARD: Joe Biden. May have to 
retire this award in his name.

 

BEST SCORE: Whoever bought Apple at 8.

THE WHY WON’T ANYONE RETURN MY 
CALLS AWARD: DEMOCRATIC DIVISION: 
John Edwards. John Kerry. Anthony Weiner.

 

THE WHY WON’T ANYONE RETURN MY 
CALLS AWARD: REPUBLICAN DIVISION: 
Dick Cheney. Pat Robertson. Glenn Beck.

 

BEST SPECIAL EFFECTS: Industrial Light & 
Magic for making Mitt Romney appear so lifelike.

 

BEST MAKE UP: Newt Gingrich for his very 
convincing Walking Dead grimace.

 

BEST CHOREOGRAPHY: Grover Norquist. 

 

THE “OH MY GOD, NOT YOU AGAIN” 
AWARD: Whoever decided contraception made 
for a good election-year wedge issue.

 

BEST BOY: Marcus Bachmann.

 

BEST ANIMATION: Chris Christie. 

THE OTHER MORMON MEAT AWARD: Jon 
Huntsman.

BEST NEWCOMER: Paul Ryan for his highly 
controversial script, “Roadmap for America’s 
Future.”

 

THE LUCKY IT WASN’T BITTEN OFF 
AWARD: Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer.

 

MENSA’S SMARTEST MOVE OF THE YEAR: 
In a huge upset, Sarah Palin picks this one up for 
refusing to accept another supporting role.

 

THE HOW CAN WE MISS YOU IF YOU 
WON’T GO AWAY AWARD: Ron Paul.

 

BEST ENSEMBLE IN A MUSICAL OR 
COMEDY: The entire Republican Party 
Presidential Nomination cast.

 

BEST ACTOR: Body of work award goes 
to Speaker of the House John Boehner for 
various portrayals as outraged defender of 
fiscal responsibility, obstinate party stalwart 
and sophisticated gentleman to whom gracious 
cooperation is of the highest priority and doing 
it all while orange.

 

BEST DIRECTION: The Koch Brothers.

 

MISDIRECTION AWARD: Newt Gingrich for 
his moon-base proposal. Always knew his full 
ambitions could never be contained by Planet 
Earth.

 

COMEBACK OF THE YEAR AWARD: The U.S. 
economy.

 

THE BETTER TO BE LUCKY THAN GOOD 
AWARD: Barack Obama.