Thursday, October 26th, 2006...9:41 pm
CD 8 Debate Report: Principles Above Politics Except When Those Principles Don’t Poll Well
On the way out of tonight’s CD 8 debate at Flowing Wells high school, I spied an older Hispanic gentleman with a sign that said “Latinos for Graf.” Another man came up to him and said, “I see you are all by yourself there.”
A better summary of Hispanic sentiment might be from a piece of a cell phone conversation I heard a few minutes later, just three words: “puto, Graf culo.”
In Randy Graf’s opening statement, he protested that Gabrielle Giffords was claiming that he was for abolishing medicare, privatizing social security and outlawing stem cell research. There is a darned good reason why she claims that.
Because Graf has said those things.
Back in 2004, this is what he told the Arizona Daily Star:
As for federal health-care programs like Medicare, Graf said that after years of government involvement, the time could be right for citizens to “take control” in an effort to combat rising costs. “Perhaps government needs to get out of it,” he said.
Asked if he would support the elimination of Medicare, Graf did not reject the idea but said, “It’s not going to be done over-night.” And asked about what should happen in case of poor families who can’t afford costly medical care, Graf said “hard decisions” will have to be made.
He told the National Taxpayers Union in their candidate survey that he supported Social Security privatization. This is from his answer in their survey:
I recognize that Social Security will default on its obligations to future retirees unless fundamental reforms are made. Therefore, I will work and vote for a system of Social Security Choice that will allow younger workers to have the choice of investing much of their Social Security taxes in regulated individual retirement accounts. Current retirees and those nearing retirement would not have any change in their Social Security benefits. Social Security Choice will give younger workers the option of ownership of personal Social Security accounts, with higher rates of return and better benefits than are possible under the current system.
Graf voiced his opposition to federal funding of stem-cell research as recently as August in an article about the issue in the Tucson Weekly.
“It’s not eliminating embryonic stem-cell research,” Graf says. “It’s just making sure that taxpayer dollars are not going into it.”
Let me get this right: when Graf himself declares these positions, it makes him a man of principles. When Giffords points out that he has those positions, it is a distortion. Let me take some time to wrap my head around that and I’ll get back to you.
4 Comments
October 26th, 2006 at 10:47 pm
Ted-
I was at the debate tonight, too, which was on the topic of the federal role in education. Randy Graf demonstrated his utter lack of knowledge about the topic when he answered a question pertaining to 21st century workplace skills with a his usual 19th century rhetoric about the “three R’s” needing to come back as the centerpiece of a school’s work.
Randy also bemoaned the fact that schools are asked to be all things to all people, but neglected to remember how his votes in the Legislature against the Kids Care health insurance program, funding for prenatal care and all-day kindergarten made it even harder for public schools to educate all the children entrusted to them.
After making a bizarre claim that vouchers would save public schools both money and classroom space, calling for the abolition of the Department of Education and lying about Gabby’s record on tax credits for teachers who buy classroom supplies, there wasn’t much else Randy could do to better lay claim to Jim Kolbe’s legacy of antipathy towards public schools and teachers. Although Kolbe still refuses to back Graf, they are cut from the same cloth with regard to their stand on education. Graf, at least, opposed the No Child Left Behind law that Kolbe voted to pass, but not fund.
October 27th, 2006 at 1:25 am
Graf can’t run from his extremist record.
Neither can Kyl…people are starting to see that as well.
October 27th, 2006 at 11:15 am
Would have loved to attend this debate, since on the subject of Education Giffords can partake of Graf “fondue style” but alas, have a Thursday night commitment each week.
It also prevents attending the liberal drinking, much to my chagrin.
Was the place as well attended as Tuesday’s debate?
My real question: Did GOP Cowboy Hat Lady go?
October 28th, 2006 at 9:36 am
Enough of the scam rhetoric on stem cell research!
Embryonic stem cell research is not the way to go to cure diseases. It is inferior technology. Here is why. By definition embryonic stem cells would be generated from an individual that is different immunologically from the sick person you are trying to cure. So, you inject the cells derived from embryonic stem cells and you get an immune response that will attack and destroy your precious embryonic stem cell derived cells. What a waste!
The answer is to clone stem cells from the body of the sick individual. This is the best way to avoid the immune response. It is the way to create new body parts as needed. But the science of such somatic stem cell creation is in its infancy. We need to put our precious research funding into science that will be productive, not scam rhetoric that gives liberals an issue to run on and false hope to the sick.
But unfortunately for liberals, nobody opposes cloning somatic stem cells. So the liberals do not have an issue to run on. So liberals divert attention from truly promising technology and focus on inferior technology just so we can create a wedge issue for the election. Great!
The fact is that nobody wants to ban embryonic stem cell research. All the major drug companies are free to do all the embryonic stem cell research they want.
How would you feel to know that liberal rhetoric on embryonic stem cell research may actually cause federal money to be diverted to inferior technology at the expense of technology that can actually work?
Gabrielle Giffords knows nothing about science, she just parrots liberal scam rhetoric.
Science is not politics. There is no liberal or conservative science. You should be offended that liberals would tout embryonic stem cell research as a magic cure when they should know that it is just another scam to create a false issue for the election.
You should be offended that junk science is constantly being used by liberals to manipulate you.