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Iowa GOP win: Santorum’s Race
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I
t’s a pickle the former under-
performing
Pennsylvania
Senator has been in before.
Perhaps afraid of repeating past
electoral mistakes (flashbacking in
cold sweats to his 18 point loss in
2006 to current Sen. Bob Casey),
Rick Santorum appears to fall
back on race as a way to gain tac-
tical advantage in the Republican
presidential primaries.
Some experts call Santorum’s
come-from-behind photo finish,
statistical tie with frontrunner Mitt
Romney in the Iowa Caucuses
proof that retail politicking works.
While Romney, Newt Gingrich,
Rick Perry and others were look-
ing for the right social media trend
and relying on debate performanc-
es, Santorum went native in Iowa,
shaking hands, kissing babies and
slapping backs. Other experts call
it pure luck.
But some are calling it a cheap
attempt at racial coding that
worked. In a place where only 2
percent of the population is
African American, and the majori-
ty of caucus goers are rural white
seniors, aged 50 and up, Black
people become an easy target.
Santorum hasn’t been able to
shake that perception since right
before the caucus. “I don’t want to
make Black people’s lives better
by giving them somebody else’s
money. I want to give them the
opportunity to go out and earn the
money,” was Santorum in the
flesh, free-styling about Medicaid
and other social entitlements
before a small sea of white faces.
To Santorum supporters, and
rank and file Republicans, it’s as if
he didn’t use the word “Black.”
Passionate debates flared up
throughout Facebook and the
Twitterverse, with loyal conserva-
tives (both Black and white)
swearing the senator didn’t say it.
Others blamed it on an invisible
A gAinST THe g rAin
C. D. Ellison
reporter asking the question. Still,
when watching the CBS video that
went viral across the Web, it’s
clear as Hawkeye State snow on a
bitterly cold day what Santorum
said:
“Black.”
It was an awkward moment.
Even the senator admitted as much
in a follow-up interview on CBS
Santorum’s been here before.
Back in July of 2011 when he
announced his run for the
Presidency under a hot Somerset
County sun, he was digging back
into old racial coding crates,
lamenting to cheers and applause
from an ocean of white
Pennsylvanians how “ … America
was a great country before 1965.”
It was the same question back
then as it was this week: Why pick
1965? Was the wine good that
year? Some observers, particularly
many civil rights historians and
‘I don’t want to make Black people’s
lives better by giving them somebody
else’s money’
News in which the host dogged
him with questions on what he
meant. Santorum reached for the
mental lapse defense, swatting at
his own comment as if a mosquito
were buzzing in his ear. He claims
he didn’t know the context —
while not denying he said it.
“If you look at what I’ve been
saying, I’ve been pretty clear
about my concern for dependency
in this country and concern for
people not being more dependent
on our government, whatever their
race or ethnicity is,” Santorum
said in the interview.
But, that’s a big part of the prob-
lem, argues Urban League
President Marc Morial, who blasts
Santorum for picking on people of
color when nearly 85 percent of
food stamp recipients are white.
“By falsely suggesting that people
of color are a disproportionate
drain on resources provided main-
ly by whites, Santorum deliberate-
ly fans the flames of racial divi-
siveness,” says Morial.
activists, chomped on the sena-
tor’s bit about that, accusing him
of racial pandering to an anti-
Black conservative electorate
seething with resentment at any
sign of Black progress. It just so
happened 1965 was the year
President Lyndon Johnson signed
Executive Order 11246, otherwise
known to most as “Affirmative
Action.”
Later on in that same speech, he
rails on entitlements and clumsily
inserts recent small talk with Juan
Williams as validation. Williams is
the Black journalist famously dis-
graced from National Public
Radio, but now happily skipping
about on FOX News as their most
visible face of color.
“Juan Williams said to me about
a week after President Obama
decided to double down. I saw him
in the green room. And I said why
are you doing this? Here’s what he
said. He said, ‘Let me tell you
what President Obama’s team is
telling me.’ He said, ‘Americans
love entitlements, and once we get
them hooked, they will never let it
go.’”
Some suggest that Santorum
knows what he’s doing, but
observe that critics shouldn’t be so
fast to knock him as “racist.” It’s
all politics, they say, and the sena-
tor is doing what it takes to win the
primary.
“Look — Rick is from a state
where the Black population sur-
passes the national one,” says one
source speaking anonymously on
background. “He worked closely
with Black clergy and community
activists as a senator and found
federal money for programs when
they couldn’t. You can’t walk
around Pennsylvania and not
bump into a Black person.”
“But,” the source wryly adds,
“Rick has this habit — just like
most politicians — of sometimes
tailoring his message for a particu-
lar kind of base. And he’s always
getting into trouble for it.”
Long-time Washington observer
and Politic365.com Congressional
Correspondent Lauren Burke says
Santorum’s not the only repeat
offender. That former Sen.
Santorum brings up Blacks within
the context of poverty is telling.
Though 10 percent of whites in the
U.S were in poverty in 2010,
you’d never know it listening to
Republicans running for presi-
dent,” argues Burke. “There are
223,553,265 non-Hispanic whites
in the U.S., 10 percent of whom
live in poverty. That’s 22,355,326
people. Yet when poverty comes
up in GOP political discussion it’s
in the context of Blacks and
Charles D. ellison Special to
the nnPa from the Philadelphia
tribune
Read the rest online at
www.theskanner.com
Holidays in Manhattan: ‘Happy New Year!
N
ew Yorkers are fond of
their declarative state-
ments. Twice in the last
couple of months, I’ve heard a
New Yorker declare his love of the
city by describing it as the expect-
ed location of his demise. Now I
know lots of Portlanders and
Adelaidians who will be content to
die in their home city but I’ve
never heard such a declaration
before. The other day I accidental-
ly bumped a woman with my gro-
cery bag, followed by an apology
on my part, which elicited, not
one, but two, “You’re an idiot”
declarations from the nice lady.
And New Year’s is apparently a
time for New Yorkers, who rarely
even make eye contact on the
street, to declare “Happy New
Year” to the slightest acquaintanc-
es for days on end.
Speaking of New Year’s, no, we
did not go to Times Square to
watch the ball drop. Instead, we
did the real New Yorker thing.
First, we joined 2,000 of our
neighbors at our neighborhood
church - St. John the Divine
Cathedral (largest Gothic cathe-
dral in the world) – for a concert
hosted by Judy Collins (yes, THE
Judy Collins) who was kind
enough to perform a lovely a
Page 4 The Portland Skanner January 11, 2012
n orTHweSTer in nYc
Jeff Tryens
capella rendition of “Both Sides
Now” as a warm-up for a very
heavy-duty oratorio written to
commemorate
Kristallnacht.
Later, we wandered over to our
neighborhood park – Central Park
– where we sat on the Great Hill
watching a quite spectacular fire-
Plaza. One of our favorite activi-
ties was the store window walk.
All were pretty cool and different
but the best, hands down, were the
Bergdorf Goodman windows.
Not surprisingly given its densi-
ty, New York is a city of rules. If
you live in an apartment, for
instance, there’s a rule about what
percent of your floor area has to be
covered by carpeting (to dampen
inter-apartment noise). New York
City government is no exception.
The holiday season in Manhattan is as
amazing as advertised
works display with midtown
Manhattan as the backdrop. Some
neighborhood!
The
holiday
season
in
Manhattan is as amazing as adver-
tised. For over three weeks, mid-
town Manhattan is absolutely
jammed with people checking out
the sights. Don’t even think about
trying to get through Rockefeller
Rules in government come in
many forms – actual regulations,
labor agreements, a bureaucracy
inclined toward the status quo and
the many informal understandings
about the way things really work.
Even after six months, the com-
plexity of it all is daunting.
My latest project is developing
good, cross-agency data related to
workforce productivity. The num-
bers are astronomical - over
300,000 workers, billions in over-
time, millions of hours of “comp,”
43 agencies - many with different
working agreements and expecta-
tions. And I’m running this analy-
sis??? Now that’s a scary thought
given how little I know about the
rules around here.
Gripe of the month – dog pee on
the sidewalks, everywhere. Now I
like dogs as much as anyone, and
more than most, but, really, if you
have a dog in the city, teach it to
pee in the street.
Coolest discovery of the month
– the Septuagesimo Uno “vest
pocket” park tucked away
between two buildings on the
Upper West Side. As you can see
from the photo, it’s tiny. In fact,
it’s the city’s smallest park at four
one hundredths of an acre but, oh
what a lovely, quiet sitting area at
the rear -and what a lovely, great
big gate that is locked at night.
Apparently, it had a cameo in a
movie called Little Manhattan that
is a must see if you’re 11, growing
up in Manhattan. What a thought –
growing up in Manhattan.
Well that’s it for now. Oh, and
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!