Perry’s Israel Aid Starts at Zero, “Personhood” A Top GOP Issue, & More Iowa Forum Highlights

David Streeter — November 21, 2011 – 12:38 pm | Civil Rights | Domestic Policy | Election 2012 | GOP Presidential Candidates 2012 | Israel | Republicans | Separation of Church & State | Women's Issues Comments (0) Add a comment

Over the weekend, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA), Representative Ron Paul (R-TX), and Herman Cain—three of the four leading Republican Presidential candidates—appeared with Texas Governor Rick Perry, Representative Michele Bachmann (R-MN), and former Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) at the conservative Family Leader’s Thanksgiving Family Forum in Iowa. According to The Washington Post, “the six candidates in attendance ... called for dramatic changes in current law to achieve conservative aims,” including sharply altering the separation of church and state, women’s rights, and equal rights for all. The candidates also spoke about how their individual faiths influence their public policy priorities.

Throughout the event, all of the candidates made it clear that they—as individuals and as the majority of the Republican Party’s presidential field—do not reflect the values of most American Jews nor do they share similar policy positions.

The full video of the forum is available in the video box above and here. Some of the highlights from the event included:

* Perry reiterated that he would start aid to Israel at zero. He emphasized, “Israel will get its foreign aid, but it starts at zero just like anybody else.” In addition to lumping Israel—America’s strongest ally and partner—with “anyone else,” Perry made no mention of the 10-year Memorandum of Understanding with Israel that President Barack Obama has exceeded, still leaving questions unanswered about where a potential Perry Administration would take the U.S.-Israel relationship. Click here or on the video box below to view the video. 

* Santorum defined restricting a woman’s right to choose as one of his most pressing concerns. According to Santorum:

As long as abortion is legal—at least according to the Supreme Court—legal in this country, we will never have rest because that law does not comport with God’s law that says all life has value. And as long as there is an incongruence between the two, we will have agitation.

* Gingrich also expressed support for a “personhood amendment” that would ultimately eliminate a woman’s right to choose. Cain declared that he would “absolutely sign” and “help promote” a similar measure.

* The Des Moines Register’s Mary Stegmeir summarized Bachmann’s anti-choice and anti-health care reform comments to the forum:

Abortion will be the most important issue in the 2012 presidential election, Michele Bachmann said…

The Minnesota congresswoman said the Affordable Health Care Act has opened the door for public dollars to be used to terminate pregnancies.

‘This is the issue,’ ... ‘We have to have a candidate—and I am (that candidate)—who is committed to the full-scale repeal of Obamacare.’...

Bachmann said she believes ‘every human being deserves and needs that protection from our federal government.’

‘Planned Parenthood now will be pushing chemical abortion and billing that to the federal government under preventative care,’ she said. ‘We’re in a whole new universe today than we’ve ever even comprehended because of Obamacare, and that’s why this is the one election and the only chance that we have to appeal Obamacare.’

* Santorum also pledged that he “will get involved” in banning same-sex marriages “because states do not have the right to undermine the basic, fundamental values that hold this country together.”

* Bachmann also touted her anti-marriage equality credentials.

* According to The Wall Street Journal, none of the candidates “disagreed” when “Gingrich said religion should be more prominent in public education.”

* Bachmann declared that she has a “biblical world view.” According to Minnesota Public Radio, regarding the First Amendment:

Bachmann said laws censor church leaders and conflict with the intentions of the country’s founders, and that she would work to change that.

‘What I would do is back the repeal of that law so that we can exercise First Amendment rights again everywhere, including in this church and every pulpit, said Bachmann.

* Gingrich called secularism a “disaster” and said:

The degree to which the left is prepared to impose intolerance and to drive out of existence traditional religion is a mortal threat to our civilization and deserves to be taken head-on and described for what it is, which is the use of government to repress the American people against their own values.

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