Memo From President Brad Woodhouse: Race to the Right in Georgia
The top two extreme Republicans running for Senate in Georgia have advanced to the next round of this knock down, drag out, race to the right primary fight. With two more months of campaigning until the runoff, David Perdue and Jack Kingston will undoubtedly continue to pander to the Tea Party base. Whether opposing raising the minimum wage/extending unemployment benefits, or supporting cuts to Medicare/attempting to voucherize the program, extreme conservatives Perdue and Kingston have more in common than not. Not to mention the time Kingston suggested low-income children perform manual labor in exchange for subsidized school lunches, and Perdue's track record as an out-of-touch elitist. Is this the face of a Republican Party that has learned its rebrand lessons from 2012?
Santorum & Terri Lynn Land's War on Women
It's fitting that the same day Michigan Senate candidate Terri Lynn Land released an ad attempting to repair her image after weeks of negative press stemming from her comments on pay equity, Rick Santorum's PAC is announcing its endorsement of her. Santorum is well known for his opposition to the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and his extreme opposition to both birth control and abortion even in the case of rape. It's no surprise, then, that Santorum would support Land.
The Truth About GOP Opposition to Paycheck Fairness
As Senate Republicans today blocked passage of the Paycheck Fairness Act, supporting legislation to strengthen equal pay protections for women might seem like a no brainer for Republicans whose own party autopsy cited the need to improve outreach to female voters. But for the extreme conservative Republicans in the Senate - and the Republican candidates seeking to join them - no excuse for voting against this bill has been too low. Just yesterday, Mitch McConnell called the Paycheck Fairness Act a "bizarre obsession" of the left, while Marco Rubio said "I think we're just wasting time" holding a vote on this bill. These sad efforts to diminish the very real problem of pay inequality facing many American women are merely an attempt to distract from the fact that so many extreme Republicans, both current Senators and 2014 candidates, don’t support remedies to ensure women receive equal pay for equal work.