US Senate Debates: Arizona -- Carmona versus Flake

Romney's preferred Senate candidate is not doing so well in Arizona.  His fellow Mormon Flake learned well from Mitt on how to lie and sound convincing.  Did they go to the same school that teaches candidates how to lie and make people believe them?  I am just shocked that they think they can lie and no one will notice.  It is the same tactic as Romney -- say something in a debate and then have your staff clarify.  The dishonesty of GOP candidates is not just the top of the ticket but also now in Senate races.

Jeb Bush has been warning the GOP leadership for a long time about taking Hispanic voters for granted.  Leadership preferred to listen to the hard right with their nasty illegal immigration bills then common sense Republicans.  Now they could pay big time by losing Senate seats.  Arizona could be one of those pickups by the Democrats.  Frankly Carmona deserves to win after Flake lied last night:

Flake was for pledges before he was against them

By Steve Benen -
Thu Oct 11, 2012 1:22 PM EDT 

The U.S. Senate race in Arizona has become increasingly competitive, with Republicans increasingly concerned that former Surgeon General Richard Carmona (D) may upset Rep. Jeff Flake (R). Last night, in a televised debate, the Republican congressman didn't help his case. 

For those who can't watch clips online, the moderator asked, "Did you sign the Grover Norquist no-tax pledge?" Flake replied, "No." Asked if he would sign such a pledge, the congressman again said, "No." Flake added, "The only pledge I'd sign is a pledge to sign no more pledges." 

That's a nice sentiment, of course, but there's a small problem: Flake is already listed as one of the 238 members of the current Congress who's already signed the pledge. 

So, which is it? The congressman's spokesperson told The Hill that Flake signed an older version of Norquist's pledge, not the newest one, so technically, Flake wasn't exactly lying on statewide television four weeks before the election. "Jeff Flake has signed the Taxpayer Protection Pledge in the past, but the language of the pledge was changed last year," the spokesperson said. 

OK, so which part of the new version of the pledge does Flake oppose? According to the spokesperson, the congressman doesn't like the language that pledges to "oppose any net reduction or elimination of deductions and credits, unless matched dollar for dollar by further reducing tax rates." 

That might be more compelling if the identical language wasn't in the original pledge that Flake signed. 

The congressman's spokesperson "was unable to explain the discrepancy." Imagine that.

Then there is this from the Huffington Post  on the results of a Latino polling group who just polled Arizona.  Looks like doing their own polling is about the only way they are going to be heard because some national pollsters are ignoring the Latino voters:

Mitt Romney has a problem with Latino voters nationwide, but things look particularly bleak for him in Arizona. 

A poll posted Wednesday by Latino Decisions found 80 percent of Latino voters in Arizona prefer President Barack Obama to Romney -- eight points higher than the percentage of Latinos nationwide who support the president in other surveys from the firm. 

There's bad news in the poll for down-ticket GOP candidates as well. Three-quarters of Latino voters said they prefer Democratic candidate Richard Carmona to Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) in the senatorial race. And 67 percent of those polled said they will vote Democrat in congressional races. 

Latinos make up 30 percent of the population in Arizona, which is typically a red state. 

Saying Romney has a problem with Latinos may be the understatement of the year.  If the Republican Party doesn't lose its bigoted ways which we are seeing in this election, then the GOP will not have to worry about Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Florida where you find large Latino populations who are growing.  They will shortly start dominating elections in these states which will go blue with the hatred of some members of the GOP toward minorities.  If I was a young Latino, there is no way I would join this Republican Party today with their hate filled rhetoric.  The GOP is becoming more and more the Party of the white southern male with women also starting to leave the GOP because of the GOP anti-women stance.

Then there is the interview with the Vice Presidential candidate Ryan who once again gets it wrong but sticks with the narrative if you live in the inner city, it is your fault if you get shot.  Latinos/blacks in Phoenix will be glad to know they are responsible for getting shot because of lack of character according to Paul Ryan:

The clean-cut, VP candidate that Romney thought would be good at crunching numbers and keeping his mouth shut seems to be growing closer and closer to a Y-chromosomed version of 2008 Sarah Palin every day.

On Monday, Paul Ryan illuminated the real reason that some U.S. inner city areas are posting murder rates higher than Kabul’s and Mexico City’s. Public school systems buckling under the weight of austerity cuts and useless teacher tracking programs? Nope. Poverty and unemployment caused by a capitalist system hell-bent on exporting every available job overseas? Nope. A lack of gun control that allows firearms to find their way into the hands of young children? Definitely not. 

The real reason, Ryan asserted in an interview with a local Michigan reporter, is the “character” of those living in inner city neighborhoods. 

“The best thing to help prevent violent crime in the inner cities is to bring opportunity in the inner cities. Is to help teach people good discipline, good character,” Ryan said.
In other words, it’s the immoral and inferior culture of inner city (read: minority) neighborhoods that creating all this crime downtown, which is a disaster for the upstanding (read: white) citizens from the suburbs who just want to enjoy a basketball game at the stadium every once in a while. 

OK, perhaps the last part was an editorialization of his statement, but the racial undertones of his words are undeniable. The idea feeds into the well-developed propaganda about the “culture of poverty,” the idea, first pushed under Reagan, that the inferior ethics of the inner city is what keeps its residents impoverished.
This theory entirely disregards chronic unemployment, failing schools, institutional racism, political disenfranchisement and the dozens of other structural forces that create chaos and crime in swaths of the country that capitalism has effectively abandoned. To hear such a dangerously misinformed statement coming out of the mouth of a vice presidential candidate less than a month before the election is terrifying. 

Then again, it should come as no surprised in what has been one of the most racialized election season in recent history. From the President’s birth certificate to the controversy over “Obama phones,” from Romney’s disparaging comments about the 47% to Gingrich’s suggestion that janitors in inner city schools be replaced by nine-year-old students , both the fringe and the heart of the GOP has been spewing thinly-veiled, blame-the-victim criticisms of African Americans left and right. (It’s also an offensive they’ve used against another large percentage of the American population--women--throughout the election season, but that’s another story. ) 

Laura Gottesdiener is a freelance journalist and activist in New York City.

The comments get more bizarre every day from Romney/Ryan and Republican Senate candidates who are going hard right to play to their new base.