Sunday, January 24, 2010

GOP Sweetheart - 1/24/2010: Andre Bauer

Today’s GOP sweetheart is a real piece of… work.

bauersideal South Carolina Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer, who is running for the Republican nomination for governor, held a town hall meeting yesterday where he argued government should be tougher on families whose children receive free and reduced-price lunches. Bauer said that parents should be required to “pass drug tests or attend parent-teacher conferences or PTA meetings.” To make this argument, however, he compared people receiving government assistance to stray animals:

My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed. You’re facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don’t think too much further than that. And so what you’ve got to do is you’ve got to curtail that type of behavior. They don’t know any better,” Bauer said. [...]

Later in his speech, Bauer said, “I can show you a bar graph where free and reduced lunch has the worst test scores in the state of South Carolina,” adding, “You show me the school that has the highest free and reduced lunch, and I’ll show you the worst test scores, folks. It’s there, period.“… [emphasis original]

Inserted from <Think Progress>

Only a true GOP sweetheart would compare the children of people his party’s policies condemn to poverty to stray animals.  I imagine the above graphic reflects Bauer’s concept of an ideal child.

11 comments:

the walking man said...

Is Andre an American name? Sounds like a foreigner to me, does anyone have his birth certificate?

Jolly Roger said...

Damn....beat me to this one. I like my graphic better though :)

TomCat said...

Welcome, Otto. I see your blog has not been updated in a couple months. Do you have a new one? Hmmmm... I don't think so. They're plain old GOP stupid, just like Republicans who sit on the Supreme Court.

Mark, the operative question is, "Is he even human?"

No doubt, truth. I trust the virtues of what he said will soon be babbled far and wide on Faux Noise.

Heh heh, JR. You usually do. ;-)

Oso said...

TC,
thanks for bringing this to light. What's really disillusioning is, they don't even realize how offensive and vicious the guys statement is.

scsolarguy said...

Why don't you post the context of his comments? He used a bad analogy, but he also said he does NOT advocate reducing federal aid. His point is get parents involved in children's educations and you can break the cycle. He's talking about people who live off the system and want to keep it that way, passing this down to their children, and their children, and so on. His point is we do NOT need to cut the aid, but we need to revise the way it is administered so it can actually HELP people. He thinks we are doing a DISSERVICE to the people we are trying to help when we don't give them the means to break the cycle. And he's right. Why don't you read the whole story if you're going to try to rally people for or against it?

Lisa G. said...

North and South Carolina are both dirt ass poor. My mother lives in North Carolina in a gated community - for 100's of miles around there is nothing but shanty shacks, rusted out cars, etc. She justifies this because "we pay taxes that help the community". Here's a real shocker - she's a Republican. I once said that we were upper middle class. Her response (I shit you not) "I prefer to think of us as lower upper class." My mouth just fell open and I laughed my ass off. She always felt she deserved to be wealthier than she was.

I highly doubt that the majority of these people want to live in abject poverty (as is the way with most of the south) and pass that onto their kids. They're too busy working 3 jobs to put food on the table to attend PTA meetings. That's for WASPs like my mother.

Mike said...

Absolute contempt for the poor -- that is the neocon way.

Jolly Roger said...

Why don't you post the context of his comments? He used a bad analogy, but he also said he does NOT advocate reducing federal aid.

I did read it all, and if you don't understand that his "context" doesn't change a damn thing about what he said at first, then I'm not real sure how to educate you.

SC high school graduate, right? I guess all those demographics on y'all don't lie.

TomCat said...

You're welcome, Oso. Racists seldom realize such things.

Welcome, SC. I reexamined the context, and it changes nothing. The man said "OINK". Do you expect us toi believe he isn't a pig?

Thanks Lisa. That personal touch brings it home.

It is, Stimpson. Exactly!

JR, be nice, here. :-) But your argument against his rationale matches mine.

ivan said...

First the Supreme Court enshrining the ruling oligarchy, and now this!

TomCat said...

Ain't that the truth, Ivan. Next the KKK will be buying campaign ads.