Republican candidates give preview of 2012 campaign for U.S. Senate

Three Republican candidates for the U.S. Senate visited Lynchburg Saturday to give the party’s activists a preview of the campaigns they are running for the 2012 GOP primary.

Jamie Radtke, a Richmond-area tea party leader, and Bishop Earl W. Jackson of Chesapeake, who also has tea party connections, spoke to Republican women leaders from western and northern Virginia at the Oakwood Country Club in Lynchburg. 

Former Sen. George Allen, who is seeking to reclaim the seat he lost to Democrat Jim Webb in 2006, told the Lynchburg Republican Committee Saturday night he is proposing broad cuts in taxes, spending and government regulations.

Describing the “Blueprint for America’s Comeback” he unveiled a week ago, Allen said he wanted to reduce taxes on corporations’ earnings from 35 percent to 20 percent and provide a “flat tax” option for individuals. Tax cuts can create new jobs, he said.

Allen said the corporate tax cut would “send a message throughout the world that America is open for business.”

Allen’s plan would reverse policies that limit U.S. access to its own energy resources including oil, coal and natural gas, he said. This plan also would create jobs, he added. 

The Environmental Protection Agency, he said, is “imposing draconian regulations on CO2” that would result in higher costs of electricity and fuel, and cause “enormous job loss.”

Allen also talked about the “Macaca moment” in which he ridiculed a videographer following him for the 2006 Webb campaign. 

“He was just doing his job. I never should have mentioned him at all.  It was a mistake,” and it diverted attention from more serious issues of the campaign, Allen said.

One result of the incident was Allen he learned his grandfather had been imprisoned by Nazis in Tunisia during World War II because of his Jewish ancestry and faith, he said.

“It actually brought my family closer together,” Allen said, and led him to a deeper realization that “for me, religious freedom is absolutely essential.” 

Jackson combined politics and preaching, telling the Republican women the nation’s problems are deeper than jobs and the national government.  The problem is a new vision for the nation “that is completely antithetical to the country that our founding fathers bequeathed us and everything that our constitution designs.”

About 50 leaders of Republican women’s groups from Loudoun County to Montgomery County attended the event — a 6^th Congressional District rally sponsored by the Lynchburg Republican Women’s group.

Although President Obama has said the nation’s economic problems are a “bump in the road,” Jackson said the federal government is exceeding its constitutional powers in dealing with them.

“Our rights don’t come from government. They come from God, and what government didn’t give us, we are not going to allow government to take away,” Jackson said.

“You will never hear me call myself an African American. I am an American, and proud of it,” said Jackson, who is black. Cheers drowned out his next few words.

 Radtke also said the federal government has exceeded its constitutional limits, and its worst example is the Environmental Protection Agency. 

“They are destroying this country,” Radtke said. “They are killing jobs, and they are doing it in the name of the environment, and that is just a lie. They have stepped out way beyond their charter.”  

Radtke said the U.S. government should close its Energy Department and Department of Education. She said it also should get out of the mortgage business and sell the assets of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to private or corporate investors.

Entitlements such as Medicare and Social Security also should be adjusted, she said.

“People tell us all the time that ‘you are going to cut my slice of the pie.’ I understand that,” Radtke said, of changed to benefits for people 55 and older.  “But we are not talking about how small or large your slice of the pie is.

“We are talking about whether there will be a pie in the future,” since the federal government is spending money intended for Social Security and Medicare, she said.