Rick Santorum Plays 'Welfare Card' in Iowa

By Wayne Dawkins

In Iowa, a state as white as a Midwest blizzard, Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum played the blacks and welfare card. The former U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania told a pre-Iowa caucus audience he doesn’t want to “make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money.”

Well isn’t that special.

Did Santorum sleep through his stint in Congress? He’s 15 years late; Welfare reform in 1996, brokered by a moderate Democratic president and conservative Republican Congress, pushed hundreds of thousands of blacks [brown and whites too] off the dole.

Fortunately, CBS news and other “lame stream” media were watching and challenged Santorum on his lazy, false, race-bait statement. The former senator did not deny blaming welfare consumption on black citizens; he incoherently connected his words to the movie “Waiting for Superman,” a documentary about education reform, not welfare or government entitlements.

Santorum’s flip lip revealed the anachronism that is the Iowa caucuses. A declining, demographically white-as-snow state should not be setting the agenda for presidential elections for an America anymore because the nation is undeniably a demographic mosaic.

The Democrats are not caucusing in Iowa this week because President Obama is their candidate. As for the Republicans, today is the dance of the unelectables. Roll call:

Ron Paul: He’s against all foreign aid and wants small government, and he’s campaigning in a farm subsidy state;

Newt Gingrich: He has wife and finance ethics drama. A CNN pundit this morning said Newt complaining about negative ads like killer whale Shamu complaining about water;

Rick Santorum: His looks are out of central casting, but he is extreme and clueless. See his comments above;

Michele Bachmann: A bomb thrower and marginal legislator, not a stateswoman;

Mitt Romney: Much of his own party doesn’t like him, largely because he’ll say anything to try and get elected;

Rick Perry: Oops, what misguided domestic or foreign policy gaffe did he make now?;

Jon Huntsman: Too moderate and reasonable, ironically bad things.

Iowa is a state with a real place named Waterloo, and like Gen. Napoleon, some of the above players are about to be slaughtered after his anachronistic political caucus.