Tony Perkins On Tim Pawlenty

"Not only is Pawlenty brave, he's right. As FRC's Peter Sprigg explains in his 'Top 10 Myths about Homosexuality,' there is no such thing as a "gay gene." Instead, research points to a mix of developmental factors to explain the behavior. Even the Obama administration, when it refused to defend the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), cited a 'growing scientific consensus that sexual orientation is... immutable.' Yet the only source it could produce to support its claim was a 1992 study, which was debunked shortly afterward by a pro-homosexual researcher! Hats off to Governor Pawlenty for knowing his science and refusing to be swayed by one singer's delusions about sexuality." - Tony Perkins, via press release.

Pawlenty: Gayness Is A Choice, Unless It Isn't (Anyway, No Gay Marriage!)

40 Percent Of The Benefits Of Pawlenty’s Tax Plan Go To The Richest One Percent Of Americans

By Michael Linden

Recently, former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty (R) proposed a set of huge new tax cuts that would cost more than three times as much as the Bush tax cuts. His plan to reduce the top individual income tax to the lowest rate in post-war history, cut the corporate tax rate by more than half, and completely abolish taxes on capital gains, dividends, and massive estates would mainly benefit the extremely wealthy. In fact, these tax changes would be even more skewed towards the rich than the Bush tax cuts were.

Using analysis from the Tax Policy Center, we put together the accompanying chart showing just how tilted the Pawlenty tax cuts would be. Nearly 40 percent of the entire benefit of Pawlenty’s plan would go to the richest 1 percent of Americans. The next richest 9 percent would enjoy 25 percent of the total benefit. In other words, under the Pawlenty plan, the richest 10 percent of Americans would reap significantly more than the bottom 90 percent combined:

This distribution is even more slanted toward the very top and away from the middle than the Bush tax cuts were. While the Bush tax cuts delivered 27 percent of their total value to the richest 1 percent, Pawlenty’s plan would give them about 40 percent. The middle 60 percent of Americans got about one-third of the total value of the Bush tax cuts, and would get less than one-fourth of the value of Pawlenty’s.

The Bush tax cuts were an utter failure at promoting economic growth, job creation, or shared prosperity. They succeeded only in turning a budget surplus into a huge deficit. You might think that after such a colossal failure, conservatives would be forced to admit that tax cuts for the rich aren’t a magic economic elixir. Perhaps they’d even start coming up with some new ideas for boosting the economy. But if Pawlenty’s plan is any indication, conservatives seem intent on repeating the mistakes of the past – only bigger.

Tim Pawlenty Gets Glittered

Pawlenty Promises To Appoint ‘Conservative Justices’ Who Will Ignore The 14th Amendment

By Ian Millhiser

The Constitution guarantees that all persons born in the United States are U.S. citizens withonly a handful of very rare exceptions. Nevertheless, in last night’s GOP candidate’s debate, former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty criticized the Supreme Court for following the Constitution’s unambiguous language and promised to appoint justices who would strip many Americans of their citizenship:

This issue of birthright citizenship, again, brings up the importance of appointing conservative justices. That result is because the U.S. Supreme Court determined that that right exists, notwithstanding language in the Constitution. I’m the only one up here — I believe I’m the only one up here — whose appointed solidly, reliably conservative appointees to the court.

Watch it:

Pawlenty would do well to actually pick up a copy of the Constitution before he pretends to know what it says. Under the 14th Amendment, “[a]ll persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” This language is unambiguous; it grants citizenship to all persons born in the US unless they are not subject to American “jurisdiction” — a very narrow exception that applies only to children of foreign diplomats and a handful of other people.

Moreover, the first Supreme Court decision recognizing birthright citizenship was hardly the product of excessive liberalism. The Court first acknowledged this right in an 1898 decision called U.S. v Wong Kim Ark. Three of the justices who joined the majority in Wong Kim Ark also voted with the majority in Lochner v. New York, an infamous Supreme Court decision holding that essential laws protecting workers from exploitation violate the Constitution. Five of the justices in the majority in Wong Kim Ark also voted to uphold Jim Crow in Plessy v Ferguson. So when Pawlenty promises to appoint justices who are more conservative than the ones in Wong Kim Ark, he is essentially calling for a Supreme Court that will immunize sweatshops from the law and uphold segregation.

Sadly, Pawlenty was not the only person on the stage to come out against the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. When asked whether he thinks the children of undocumented immigrants “should be considered a citizen of the United States,” former pizza executive Herman Cain replied, “I don’t believe so.”

Pawlenty’s Economic Plan Cuts Taxes For Millionaires By 41 Percent

By Pat Garofalo

2012 presidential hopeful Tim Pawlenty (R) yesterday laid out his economic “plan,” which is based around huge tax cuts that Pawlenty claims will spark a decade of 5 percent GDP growth, even though growth staying at that rate for that long has literally never occurred in America. As Michael Linden noted, Pawlenty’s tax plan would cost $7.8 trillion over ten years, triple the size of the Bush tax cuts.

During his speech introducing the plan, Pawlenty excoriated President Obama as “a champion practitioner of class warfare.” “I come from a working class background. I didn’t grow up with wealth. But I’ve never resented those who have it,” Pawlenty said. But as a new analysis from Citizens for Tax Justice shows, in addition to being outrageously expensive, Pawlenty’s tax plan is based on the Republican brand of class warfare — giving millionaires huge tax breaks:

– Taxpayers with incomes in excess of $1 million would enjoy an average cut in personal income taxes of $288,822, a 41.4 percent cut.

– Taxpayers with incomes in excess of $10 million would enjoy an average cut in personal income taxes of $2.4 million, a 46.3 percent cut.

– The cost of the personal income tax cuts just for taxpayers with incomes in excess of $1 million would be $141.8 billion.

And that’s just for Pawlenty’s income tax plan. He has also proposed eliminating the capital gains and estate taxes entirely, two moves which would overwhelmingly benefit the very richest Americans.

Pawlenty likes to point to his middle-class background while giving his economic pitch, but his tax plan implies either a huge tax shift, requiring the middle-class to pay for his massive tax cuts for the wealthy, or sky-high deficits in perpetuity. As part of the plan he introduced yesterday, Pawlenty also endorsed a spending cap that would require deeper cuts than the radical House Republican budget, as well as a cockamamie “Google test” that, if taken literally, implies that Pawlenty would be okay with eliminating the Pentagon.

Tim Pawlenty wiped a serial child molester’s record clean in 2008

By Kase Wickman

Former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty formally announced his campaign seeking the GOP nomination for the presidency Monday morning, but by midday, his political past had already caught up to him. Reporting by Minneapolis City Pages' Nick Pinto brought to attention a pardon then-Gov. Pawlenty granted to a sex offender in October 2008, which is sure to haunt the candidate throughout his campaign: the man Pawlenty pardoned was later arrested again for molesting his daughter more than 250 times in an eight-year span, including six years prior to his pardon.

Jeremy Giefer served 45 days in prison in 1994 after being convicted of statutory rape. However, because he married the then-14-year-old girl and stuck around to father the child they conceived together, he begged the state for an extraordinary pardon, which would no longer require Giefer to report himself as a sex offender.

The board — which includes the Minnesota attorney general, the chief justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court, and the governor (Pawlenty, at the time) — voted unanimously to pardon Giefer.

The damning details came in November 2010, when Giefer was again arrested on counts of sex with an underage girl — this time with the daughter he had conceived with Susan before his first rape charge. According to the complaint his daughter, identified in court documents as C.G., filed, Griefer would often make her have sex with him or perform oral sex on him as a favor before he would give her permission to do things, and that he put her on birth control when she was 15 years old so that she wouldn't get pregnant when he raped her without a condom. The abuse started when she was 9 years old.

Pawlenty soon proposed cracking down harder on sex offenders, and said he would never have granted Griefer pardon if he had known he was molesting his daughter.

Pawlenty's fledgling presidential campaign has already seen drama, when Benjamin Foster, a campaign consultant for Pawlenty, was arrested for trespassing and public intoxication when he vomited in an Iowa voter's yard and woke up the family's teenage daughter by banging on the back door.

Another campaign staffer, campaign manager Nick Ayers, brings a boozy whiff of controversy as well: It's widely known that he was arrested for drunk driving in 2006.

Running a presidential campaign ensures that skeletons will come tumbling out of closets left and right, but it's too early to say which past missteps may ultimately prove damning for candidates.

Motor City Liberal Comment: I guess right wingers can no longer play that game of who Bill Clinton pardon now.

Pawlenty Dodges Question About Paul Ryan’s Medicare Cuts

By Igor Volsky 

Earlier this afternoon, House Republicans approved Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) budget framework that would reduce federal spending by $5.8 trillion over the next decade and dramatically alter the Medicare and Medicaid programs. Ryan’s Medicare proposal would eliminate $30 billion from the program by forcing seniors to purchase private coverage beginning in 2022 and by retaining many of the Medicare savings that are part of the Affordable Care Act.

During a Tea Party rally in New Hampshire, likely presidential candidate and former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty (R) endorsed the Ryan proposal, saying, “as a general matter and directionally, I think Paul Ryan’s plan moves in the right direction.” But when I pressed him over whether he supports maintaining some of the Medicare cuts that are part of health care reform, Pawlenty demurred, and took another question:

PAWLENTY: I like Paul Ryan’s plan directionally. I don’t think it’s fully filled out in terms of the fact that we still have to address Social Security and when we issue our plan later in this process, it will have some differences. [...]

VOLSKY: Do you support the Medicare cuts in his plan that he keeps from Obamacare?

PAWLENTY: Anybody else have a question besides this guy?

Watch it:

Ironically, Republicans attacked the Medicare cuts in the Affordable Care Act throughout the last two years, arguing that such reductions would ration care for seniors and would drive providers out of the program. In an executive order prohibiting Minnesota from implementing the ACA, Pawlenty referred to the cuts as “unrealistic assumptions regarding purported future cost-savings.”