VIDEO: GOP Candidates Call For Massive Deregulation, Dismantling Of Health, Worker and Consumer Protections

By Pat Garofalo

Last night, seven of the Republican 2012 presidential hopefuls participated in a debate in New Hampshire, and as the Wall Street Journal noted, the candidates used the occasion to “[press] for the dismantling of government regulations drawn up over 40 years.” Indeed, the candidates unveiled a deregulatory zeal, proposing to repeal everything from environmental and labor protections to the Dodd-Frank financial reform law and regulations included in the Affordable Care Act. Here are some highlights:

NEWT GINGRICH: The Congress this year, this week, ought to repeal the Dodd-Frank bill, they ought to repeal the Sarbanes-Oxley bill.

REP. MICHELE BACHMANN (R-MN): What we need to do is pass the mother of all repeal bills…and I would begin with the EPA, because there is no other agency like the EPA. It should really be called the job-killing organization of America.

RICK SANTORUM: This president has put a stop sign against oil drilling, against any kind of exploration offshore or in Alaska and that is depressing. We need to drill.

GINGRICH: And one of the things Congress should do immediately is defund the National Labor Relations Board.

HERMAN CAIN: If the federal government continues to do the kind of things that this administration is trying to do through the backdoor, through the National Labor Relations Board, that’s killing our free-market system.

Watch a compilation:

Despite a financial crisis caused in large part by deregulation, climate change wreaking havoc on the country, and plummeting unionization coupled with plummeting incomes, the GOP still seems to believe that the government has no role in setting rules of the road or enforcing any sort of standard to guard against corporate greed or environmental devastation. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) even seemed to imply that the government should privatize disaster relief, responding to a question about FEMA by saying, “Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that’s the right direction. And if you can go even further and send it back to the private sector, that’s even better.”

But not every statement uttered by the candidates was anti-regulation. Cain replied to a question about whether the government has a role in food safety by saying, “The federal government should be doing food safety, yes.”

Tonight’s GOP Pre-Debate Rally Sponsored By Extremists: John Birch Society And The Oath Keepers

By Judd Legum

In Greenville, South Carolina tonight, five presidential contenders will meet for the first GOP presidential primary debate. According to the official program of the pre-debate “Freedom Rally,” is sponsored by several extremist groups, including the Oath Keepers militia group and the radical anti-communist John Birch Society. You can see a picture of the program here. Here’s the John Birch Society’s booth at the the pre-debate rally:

ABC News reports that The John Birch society, famous for its vocal opposition to the Civil Rights movement, represents “the far-right fringe of American politics.” The Southern Poverty Law Center has listed the John Birch Society as a group that “advocates or adheres to extreme antigovernment doctrines.” The group was so radical — calling President Eisenhower a communist infiltrator and claiming that the Soviets used fluoridated water to control Americans’ mind — that they were effectivelyexiled by conservatives until 2010. They even recently called Nelson Mandela “a communist terrorist thug.”

Here is the Oath Keepers booth at the rally:

As ThinkProgress reported on the Oath Keepers:

The Oath Keepers’ website is riddled with paranoid rhetoric about government officials “disarm[ing] the American people,” “confiscat[ing] the property of the American people, including food and other essential supplies,” and “blockad[ing] American cities, thus turning them into giant concentration camps.” In early 2008, the Oath Keepers’ founder warned that a “dominatrix-in-chief” named “Hitlery Clinton” would impose a police state on America and shoot all resisters. After primary voters chose a different candidate, the Oath Keepers simply rewrote their paranoid fantasy to include a taller, African-American lead. At a Center for American Progress Action Fund event remembering the victims of the Oklahoma City bombing, former President Clinton described the Oath Keepers as a “hatriot” group that embraces the same violent rhetoric that fueled Timothy McVeigh.

Are Tim Pawlenty and the other candidates at tonight’s debate aligning themselves with the extreme views of these groups?

UPDATEThis post has been updated to clarify the difference between the debate itself and the pre-debate rally.

UPDATESouth Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) speaking at the rally in front of an Oath Keepers banner: