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Election

Romney Hits Obama Over Jobs, But His VP Candidates Tout Job Creation

By Adam Peck on May 8, 2012 at 10:20 am

Despite 26 consecutive months of private sector jobs growth, Mitt Romney has nonetheless opened a full court press against President Obama over the recovering economy, claiming that the jobs market has not improved at all in the three years since Obama took office.

Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul appeared on CNN yesterday morning to renew the attack:

“President Obama hasn’t created a net single new job,” Saul asserted. “And so we need someone that actually has the experience, has actually done these things, balanced budgets, instead of someone who is just offering up political gimmicks and trying to tear down his opponent instead of looking at the full part of his record.”

It’s a hard sell to anyone with access to a newspaper, since last week the Wall Street Journal reported that there are now more private sector jobs than when President Obama took office in 2009.

And the Romney campaign’s mission to convince voters is being made even more difficult thanks to several prominent Republican politicians — many of whom are widely speculated to be on Romney’s vice presidential short list — who have been touting their home states’ job creation numbers:

  • There’s Ohio Senator Rob Portman (R), a VP shortlister, who was quick to point out his state’s recent success at creating jobs. “Well we are creating jobs already. So far we’ve created thousands of jobs already,” he said last week.

  • Or Ohio Governor John Kasich (R): “We were the No. 1 job creator in America in February, and we are now the No. 4 job creator in the last year.”
  • Or Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell (R), also on the VP shortlist: “We have put in place policies that help private-sector job creators innovate and grow.”
  • South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley (R), also a rumored VP pick, even put together a video touting several successful jobs initiatives.
  • Or Florida Governor Rick Scott (R) who, while defending his beleaguered chief of staff to a group of reporters said, “we’re getting a lot of good things done — jobs are coming back.”

This will likely be a problem for Romney going forward: The local politicians will want to tout their job creation record, even as their standard bearer wants to try to case the economy in a negative light. They can’t have it both ways.

Election

Nikki Haley: ‘There Is No War On Women, Women Are Doing Well’

By Alex Seitz-Wald on Apr 10, 2012 at 10:46 am

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) defended her party against charges of a “war on women,” saying on Fox News’ “The O’Reilly Factor” last night that women are “doing well”:

HALEY: This is a president that is trying to create distractions. There is no war on women. Women are doing well.

Watch it:

One has to wonder about Haley’s definition of “well.” Women accounted for the entire drop in labor force participation during the recession, and 88 percent of jobs created since the end of the recession went to men. In Haley’s state of South Carolina, women are paid just 76 cents for every dollar a man makes, and own just 28 percent of businesses, despite making up slightly more than half of the state’s population. As with the nation as a whole, women also face higher poverty rates in the state, with 19 percent below the poverty line, compared to 15 percent of men.

“If you don’t feel this is an attack [on women], you need to go home and talk to your wife and your daughters,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) said after Republican lawmakers spent months (and years) aggressively attacking women’s access to contraception and right to chose.

Haley, a key Mitt Romney surrogate, has become her party’s face in responding to charges of the war on women. But she’ll likely need a better counter-narrative than woman are doing just fine, as Romney appears to be hemorrhaging female support. A new Washington Post/ABC News poll out this morning shows him trailing Obama by 19 points among women.

Related Posts

Health

Nikki Haley: ‘Women Don’t Care About Contraception’

By Alex Seitz-Wald on Apr 3, 2012 at 5:05 pm

Defending her party after some of its members spent months going after contraception, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) said today that birth control isn’t very important to women. “Women don’t care about contraception,” she said on The View.

When host Joy Behar pushed back, Haley acknowledged that women do care about contraception, but she argued they care about it less than other issues.

HALEY: Women don’t care about contraception, they care about jobs and the economy and raising their families and all those other things–

BEHAR: Well, they care about contraception too.

HALEY: But, that’s not the only thing they care about. The media wants to talk about contraception.

BEHAR: But when someone like Rick Santorum says he’s going to take it away, we care. [Applause]

HALEY: Well, while we care about contraception, let’s be care. All we’re saying is we don’t want government to mandate when we have to have it or when we don’t.

Watch it:

In fact, polling suggests women really do care about contraception, and that the time spent debating the issue has hurt Republican lawmakers and candidates. 98 percent of even Catholic women use birth control at some point in their lives, and most support requiring employers’ health insurance to provide coverage for contraception. (HT: Mediaite)

Justice

Nikki Haley Hires John Boehner’s $520/Hr Lawyer To Defend Illegal Voter Suppression Law

By Ian Millhiser on Jan 30, 2012 at 4:00 pm

Nikki Haley's $520/hr Lawyer

Former Solicitor General Paul Clement is the high-priced lawyer of choice for conservative lawmakers eager to mangle the law and the Constitution at taxpayers’ expense. Clement will defend Arizona’s unconstitutional SB 1070 law before the Supreme Court, he is spearheading the challenge to the Affordable Care Act, and he is charging the American taxpayer $520 an hour to defend the unconstitutional Defense of Marriage Act on behalf of Speaker John Boehner and his fellow House Republicans.

According to a contract released last week, South Carolina taxpayers will now be on the hook for the same price to pay for Clement’s services defending an illegal voter ID law:

South Carolina taxpayers will be on the hook for a high-powered Washington attorney’s $520-an-hour rate when the state sues the federal government this week to protect its voter ID law.

That litigation could cost more than $1 million, according to two South Carolina attorneys who have practiced before the U.S. Supreme Court.

S.C. Attorney General Alan Wilson has more than five dozen staff attorneys to handle the state’s legal affairs, but Wilson hired a former U.S. solicitor general to litigate the voter ID case at a rate of $520 an hour, a contract obtained last week reveals.

South Carolina’s taxpayers aren’t just paying this unnecessary and unnecessarily high fee, they are paying it to defend illegal voter suppression. Voter ID laws are popular among conservative lawmakers because they disproportionately disenfranchise students, low income and minority voters — all of whom tend to be more likely to cast votes for left-of-center candidates than the electorate as a whole. Accordingly, these laws exist for the purpose of shifting the electorate rightward.

Such manipulation of the electorate isn’t just disturbing, it is also illegal because the federal Voting Rights Act prohibits state laws that which are either passed specifically to target minority voters or which have a greater impact on minority voters than on others. If the courts pay even the barest heed to the law, they will strike South Carolina’s voter ID law down in a heartbeat.

Economy

Romney-Backer Nikki Haley: ‘No,’ Not Fair To Hold Romney Accountable On 100,000 Jobs Claim

By Alex Seitz-Wald on Jan 13, 2012 at 11:45 am

On the trail, GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney often touts that his former company, Bain Capital, created 100,000 jobs, even though his campaign has yet to provide supporting evidence. Fact-checking outlets have called the claim “shaky,” “short on evidence,” and “untenable,” and Romney’s campaign may now be backing off the assertion.

But last night, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) — who gave her much-sought after endorsement to Romney — told Fox News host Sean Hannity that it’s not fair for people to hold Romney accountable on the jobs claim:

HANNITY: Newt’s saying, though, that the governor’s record, whether or not he created 100,000 jobs net net net is fair game. Do you agree with that?

HALEY: You know, with all due respect to Mr. Gingrich, no. I mean –

HANNITY: It’s not fair to ask? That’s not fair?

HALEY: Well, I think what you have to understand is what does the private sector do? I come from a business background. I know that when times are tough, we have to make hard decisions — we never want to let people go. have to let people go. And when times are good, you love to expand.

Watch it:

Romney’s campaign has already admitted that the 100,000 number is, for all intents and purposes, bogus. Perhaps that’s why Romney himself has been revising his job creation claim downward over the last few days.

NEWS FLASH

Gov. Nikki Haley Orders State Workers To Act Cheerful On The Phone | Since she took office, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) has tried to slash state employees’ health care and retirement benefits and waged a relentless crusade against the National Labor Relations Board for enforcing pro-union laws in her state. Now, after threatening their livelihoods, Haley is mandating that state workers cheerfully answer phones with the phrase, “It’s a great day in South Carolina.” The normally staid Associated Press couldn’t resist quipping, “Never mind the state’s 11.1 percent jobless rate and the fact that one in five residents are on Medicaid.” She issued the order at a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, arguing the phrase will put workers in a better mood and remind them that they work for the public. It’s unclear if workers who do not use the phrase will be punished.

By Marie Diamond on Sep 29, 2011 at 12:00 pm

Politics

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley Admits There’s No Evidence Supporting Her Claim About Drug Testing The Unemployed

By Alex Seitz-Wald on Sep 19, 2011 at 5:00 pm

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) admitted today that she was wrong in asserting that half the people who applied to work at a nuclear facility in the state had failed drug tests, yet said she will still push to drug test the unemployed.

Haley has been advancing a plan to force jobless South Carolinians to pass a drug test before they can receive unemployment insurance, claiming an epidemic of substance abuse. The problem was so unbelievable, Haley said last month, that at the Savannah River nuclear site, “[of] everybody they interviewed, half of them failed a drug test.”

So unbelievable, in fact, that a spokesman for the Department of Energy, which owns the site, told the Huffington Post’s Arthur Delaney “he had no idea what Haley was talking about.” The site doesn’t even test applicants, just people who have already been accepted, and the rate of those who fail drug tests is less than 1 percent.

At first, Haley’s office doubled down on the claim, blaming others for faulty numbers, but in an interview with the AP today, Haley said she’ll be more careful before blindly repeating things people tell her without checking them:

“I’ve never felt like I had to back up what people tell me. You assume that you’re given good information,” Haley said. “And now I’m learning through you guys that I have to be careful before I say something.”

Haley said she’d probably repeated “a million times” the story that about the test failures before being questioned about the assertions after a Lexington Rotary Club on Sept. 8.

The Savannah River Site story has been central to Haley’s drug testing push. “It’s the reason you hear me focus so much on job training,” Haley told the AP.

“I’m not going to say it anymore,” Haley said, but nonetheless said that she’ll continue her push for drug testing, even though the basis for it is entirely incorrect. As ThinkProgress has noted, mandatory drug testing for unemployment benefits is likely unconstitutional. It’s also just bad policy. The purpose of these laws is to save money, but in Florida, one of the first states to implement drug testing for unemployment benefits, the law is actually costing rather than saving the state money. Ohio is also considering a similar law.

Economy

South Carolina Gov. Haley Insists On Disbanding The ‘Un-American’ National Labor Relations Board

By Tanya Somanader on Sep 2, 2011 at 6:35 pm

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) is leading the Republican rage against the National Labor Relations Board ever since it filed a complaint against Boeing for moving its operations to her “right to work” state as a retaliation against strikers in Washington state. Threatening to move facilities because of strikes is illegal under the National Labor Relations Act and is the exact reason given by a Boeing executive for the move.

Haley, however, is decrying the NLRB as a “rogue agency” that’s actions are “absolutely un-American.” In a conference call with reporters yesterday, Haley slammed President Obama as a “coward” for failing to take sides on the issue and is insisting that he disband the agency:

“And as we are looking at President Obama to give his speech on jobs, the only thing I want to hear from him, the only thing the people of this country want to hear from him is that he’s going to disband the NLRB or get them to step down from a great American company that chose to do business in South Carolina as opposed to going overseas.” [...]

The South Carolina governor feels so strongly that the independent agency shouldn’t exist that she would even support a decision from the lone Republican member of the NLRB to step down. With the recent departure of NLRB chairman Wilma Leibman, such a resignation from Republican Brian Hayes would reduce the board to just two members — i.e., to less than a quorum.

“Anything that would disband the NRLB, I’d be the biggest cheerleader for,” Haley said.

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) is also targeting NLRB, having subpoenaed the agency’s documents on the Boeing decision. NLRB, however, cannot release the documents as it wold jeopardize the court case before an administrative law judge in Seattle, Washington.

The NLRB has long been a primary target in the Republican’s comprehensive campaign to undermine the ability of workers to organize and negotiate better working conditions. No matter how hyperbolic her rhetoric, Haley’s goal is no different.

Health

South Carolina Gov. Haley Rejects Millions Of Federal Dollars To Help State Create Health Care Exchange

By Tanya Somanader on Sep 1, 2011 at 2:40 pm

States across the country are slowly moving forward in implementing health insurance exchanges, a key component of the Affordable Care Act that helps uninsured Americans compare private insurance policies. Thirty-eight states have introduced legislation promoting these exchanges, and 10 states have enshrined them in law.

Even GOP leaders who consistently rail against the health care law are pursuing similar exchanges. In South Carolina, former GOP Gov. Mark Sanford (R) accepted $1 million in federal grant money last year to being exploring an exchange for his state, the fifth poorest in the nation.

But there’s a new executive in town, and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) is putting her foot down on progress. Committed to the “Obamacare” demagoguery, Haley declared that her administration will opt out of this state-driven solution to find its own state-driven solution that will provide “the most health at the least cost”:

But Haley and Tony Keck, whom Haley appointed to head the state’s Department of Health and Human Services, say the federal plan is not the right fit for South Carolina.

“The governor remains an equal opportunity opponent of ObamaCare, the spending disaster that South Carolina does not want and cannot afford,” said Rob Godfrey, Haley’s spokesman. “She and Tony Keck are focused on finding South Carolina solutions that provide our state with the most health at the least cost.”

By rejecting the option of setting up her own exchange, all Haley is guaranteeing now is that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will do it for her. All health exchanges are schedule to open in 2014 when ACA is fully implemented. But if a state has not made progress by Jan. 1, 2013, HHS will intervene. Indeed, HHS is bending over backwards to give states a “second chance” in setting up exchanges to avoid federal action. Only 12 states are refusing to move forward with health care exchanges.

Haley’s refusal to help implement an inevitable health reform all in the name of politics may not sit well with the 21 percent of South Carolinians under age 65 who have no insurance. As state Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter (D) notes, “Governor Haley and all these people spouting the rhetoric have good health coverage…the people who don’t have a place at the table, their voices are not being heard.”

Keck, however, did not completely shut the door on an exchange. “If [the state] decides later that it makes sense for the state to run [an exchange], then we’ll run it. But that may be years off.”

NEWS FLASH

South Carolina Will Offer One Day Of Free Rides To DMV For Those Without Voter IDs | South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) announced yesterday that the state will provide free rides to Department of Motor Vehicle offices for those who do not have valid forms of voter identification, following through on a promise she made nearly two months ago. After Haley’s original promise, she came under fire when state Democrats circulated the story of a 76-year-old black Army veteran who had called her office looking for a ride, only to be turned away. When Haley originally made the promise, ThinkProgress calculated it would take more than seven years for her to provide rides to the 178,000 voters without ID. Should a large amount of those without ID request rides, the state plans to tap into other agencies to help transport them to DMV locations.

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