This Week In Job Creation: The Republican Edition

Potential-Republican-2012-Presidential-Nominee-Wannabes did lots of talking this week. About lots of things. Novel ideas to generate real jobs? Not so much.

Newt Gingrich on what else, but -- deregulation:

In a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference, the annual gathering of conservative activists, Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, called last week for a radical shift in national energy and environmental policy, including the total dismantling of the Environmental Protection Agency, the relaxation of coal mining regulations and quick approval for offshore drilling projects in the Arctic.

The reaction from some conservative commentators was swift and harsh. “Intellectually incoherent,” said Myron Ebell, the director of energy and global warming policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. “Asinine,” a blogger for the American Spectator opined.

During the same speech at the CPAC conference, he also called for signing a new Hyde Amendment, so no tax payer money funds abortion in the United States. That was point #4 in his 7 point plan to get American working. That will get us far, Newt.

Haley Barbour on none other than, the KKK:

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour said Tuesday he won't denounce a Southern heritage group's proposal for a state-issued license plate that would honor Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, who was an early leader of the Ku Klux Klan.

He seems think he doesn't have to come out against this proposal, because it would never pass anyway. Oh, and the fact that he doesn't "go around denouncing people. That's not going to happen. I don't even denounce the news media." Guess he's going to be really, really, really quiet during his Presidential campaign, given that no-denouncing-things.

Mike Huckabee, comparing abortion to slavery. I predict this will be a popular one for this election cycle. Rick Santorum has already gotten some mileage out of it.

WASHINGTON – Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee (R) compared abortion to slavery at an anti-abortion fundraiser, according to the University of Tennessee's Daily Beacon.

Huckabee, a top contender for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, said abortion shouldn't be a states rights issue, as that would be like making slavery a states rights issue.
"It was wrong to own a slave in Mississippi and Michigan," Huckabee said, as quoted by the student newspaper Daily Beacon. "This is not a states issue."

At least he doesn't pretend to agree with the American public that lack of jobs is the country's #1 problem:

"For me this is an issue that I've said before, transcends all of the political issues. I often said I would gladly lose an election before I would ever yield on the issue of the sanctity of human life," Huckabee told the crowd.

Rick Santorum, on "traditional marriage":

“On economics, how can you have a strong economy if you don’t have strong families?” Santorum said. “If fathers don’t help raise their children and you have the effects of out-of-wedlock births and disintegration of the family — go into the neighborhoods where that is the most acute, and you’ll see a lot more government. You can’t have limited government without strong families and strong neighborhoods, and they so work together.

Santorum also addressed the issue of marriage on Thursday during his CPAC speech when he admonished judges throughout the country for advancing marriage rights for gay couples.

“The judiciary cannot create life and it did not create marriage, and it has no right to redefine either one of them,” he said.

Because, after all, only marriages like his can come to the rescue of our disastrous economy.

Michele Bachmann, channelling the birthers:

Michele Bachmann won't say whether she thinks President Obama is a citizen and a Christian.

"Well, that isn't for me to state," the conservative Minnesota House Republican said today on ABC's Good Morning America. "That's for the president to state."

Obama and aides have repeatedly said the president was born in Honolulu on Aug. 4, 1961, and is a Christian.

"We should take the president at his word," Bachmann said, but she declined to weigh in herself, even when pressed by GMA host George Stephanopoulos.

I promise to always, always, always take Michele Bachmann at her word.

Sarah Palin on breastfeeding:

"No wonder Michelle Obama is telling people to breast feed their babies, because the price of milk is rising so high."

Can't even comment on that one.

All kidding aside, most of these guys (and gals) know they have to address the jobs creation issue, even if they don't personally give a damn. But, since what they all really care about is taking away reproductive rights, eliminating the EPA and Department of Education, chipping away at any gains made on the marriage equality front, re-writing Southern history and propagating the lie that President Obama is a citizen of Kenya, it will be really interesting to see how they continue to present their despicable stances on social issues as valid interventions designed to create jobs and save the economy.

Does anyone out there know how many jobs a new Hyde Amendment might create? Just asking, Newt.