2012 GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney (Photo: Flickr/Gage Skidmore)

Mitt Romney, the GOP presidential candidate who edged out an eight-vote victory over Rick Santorum in the Iowa caucuses, has a long track record on education that includes standardized testing and accountability, charter schools and school vouchers.

Education Week writes:

Romney has a long record and a lot of ideas on education redesign. He’s a fan of standardized testing, and has credited the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 with providing a much-needed boost to accountability. In fact, he was one of the NCLB law’s biggest champions when he ran for president back in 2008. But this year, he has also emphasized the need to step up the state role when it comes to K-12.

The No Child Left Behind Act — signed into law in January 2002 by George W. Bush and supported by the Obama administration — mandated standardized testing that evaluates teachers by score results. In late 2011, the Obama administration offered states “waivers from the most onerous requirements of No Child Left Behind.”

Public school advocates who oppose mandatory standardized testing to determine teacher salaries and state and federal funding for public schools have called for a National Opt Out Day on Jan. 7.

Romney, according to Education Week, “also complimented President Barack Obama’s signature education reform program—Race to the Top—saying the program “had done some good things.”

Race to the Top, “a competitive grant program,” was launched by the Obama administration in 2009 to “encourage and reward States that are creating the conditions for education innovation and reform.”

The program provides funds to states that reform education in four areas: adopting standards and assessments that prepare students for work and college; building data systems that measure student growth and success; recruiting, training, rewarding and retaining effective teachers and principals; and turning around the lowest achieving schools.

Education Week adds that Romney has “called for getting rid of teacher salary schedules, but said he’d like to pay beginning teachers more. He also waded into the culture wars, saying he thinks students should be taught about the advantages of marriage.”

Education News reported last September that Romney also supports charters schools, school vouchers and “currently supports the federal government’s involvement in education and would keep in place the No Child Left Behind act created under President Bush in 2001.”

The ads by Keep Conservatives United (KCU) paint Perry as being soft on illegal immigration and says “illegals take jobs.”

The radio ads supplement two television ads that have been running in the state in support of Bachmann since mid-August.

“The ad shows voters in next year’s critical South Carolina primary the clear differences between Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry on illegal immigration,” Bob Harris of KCU said in a statement on the website. “It will reach a politically attuned audience for a week to build support for Bachmann.”

The PAC has been airing two television ads targeting Perry. One targets his spending:

Another ad accuses Perry of embracing President Bush:

Bachmann, of course, has been the target of ads that poke fun at her embrace of President Bush:

One small fact most commentaries about the announcement are missing is that such a decision for 501(c)(4) groups like Crossroads GPS may not simply be a matter of keeping the positive momentum going — it’s also a means of balancing the group’s ledger so that its “primary purpose” doesn’t look like electing federal candidates by the time the group files its tax returns in 2011. By advocating on issues following the elections, in other words, Crossroads GPS can drive down the percentage of its spending on election activities, a percentage that many watchdog campaign finance groups have complained is well beyond the 50 percent mark now. According to the tax code, section 501(c) nonprofits’ primary purpose can’t be to elect candidates for office.

That said, the announcement also has strategic implications for Democrats, many of whom are already making the worried case that left-leaning groups must quickly create an equally viable outside spending infrastructure in order to compete with Republicans going forward:

The two sides agree that should the donations continue to roll in as Mr. Duncan says he expects, his organization and its allies will be in a position to pummel Mr. Obama and his party with advertisements throughout the Republican primary season.

That would provide a potent first wave of attack while the Republican candidates focus on fighting one another for the right to challenge the president. It would also allow the national Republican Party to hoard its cash for the general election and put pressure on the Democratic National Committee to spend some of its war chest.

“I made an exception getting involved in 2004,” Mr. Soros, 80, said in a brief interview Friday at a forum sponsored by the Bretton Woods Committee, which promotes understanding of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

“And since I didn’t succeed in 2004, I remained engaged in 2006 and 2008. But I’m basically not a party man. I’d just been forced into that situation by what I considered the excesses of the Bush administration.”

Mr. Soros, a champion of liberal causes, has been directing his money to groups that work on health care and the environment, rather than electoral politics. Asked if the prospect of Republican control of one or both houses of Congress concerned him, he said: “It does, because I think they are pushing the wrong policies, but I’m not in a position to stop it. I don’t believe in standing in the way of an avalanche.”

It’s unclear whether Democratic attacks against large donors making big independent expenditures in the wake of Citizens United might have influenced Soros’ thinking as well. In all likelihood, however, Soros is being up-front when he says he was animated more during past election cycles by the excesses of the Bush administration than by Democratic Party politics in particular.

Since Obama took office, ten of the most active conservative donors identified by a POLITICO analysis have contributed $19 million to Republican candidates and the political committees that boost them — a pace that far eclipses their giving at this point in the 2006 and 2008 election cycles, according to professional fundraisers, as well as anything big Democratic donors have done.

That number includes donor’s personal contributions, as well as contributions from their immediate family members and corporations, but it doesn’t include whatever amount of money they may have given to section 501(c)4 groups like Crossroads GPS and Americans for Job Security, which under current law (and the FEC interpretation of it) aren’t required to reveal their donors.

The top donors include Texas homebuilder Bob Perry ($2.9 million), billionaire investor Harold Simmons ($2.7 million), natural gas billionaire Trevor Rees-Jones ($2.3 billion) and former Univision chairman Jerry Pernchio ($1.8 million). You can see the whole list along with short bios here.

Last week, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal signed a bill allowing gun owners in his state to carry firearms into houses of worship. Just days earlier, the Supreme Court extended federal gun rights provisions to city and state governments. And last summer, Arizona legislators voted to allow handguns in bars and President Obama signed a bill permitting firearms in national parks.

[Congress1] Despite fears on the right that Obama would trample the Second Amendment and take people’s guns, his presidency has so far been marked by a string of pro-gun victories and a reinvigorated gun advocacy movement — the result of a Democratic leadership that has proven unwilling to take on powerful firearm interests.

“It’s been very clear that there’s a solid pro-gun, pro-NRA majority on the floor of Congress, and you can’t do anything against it,” Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), a gun control advocate who has received an “F” grade from the National Rifle Association, told TWI. “And that’s the entire Republican Party and a fraction of the Democratic Party, which is a majority.”

The proliferation of pro-gun measures under President Obama and the Democratic-controlled Congress reflects the party’s learned reticence on the issue. Democrats remain haunted by memories of 1994, when gun control advocacy by President Bill Clinton led the pro-gun lobby to wage fierce campaigns that ousted several lawmakers aligned with the cause.

“Democrats learned a substantial lesson in 1994, and no anti-gun measures are ever going to come forth in this Congress,” said Don Kates, a lawyer and criminal law expert at the Pacific Research Institute.

The NRA, the leading gun rights group and one of Washington’s most formidable lobbies, has forcefully staked out its territory in Congress. Last month, Democrats, fearing an NRA backlash on a campaign finance measure, carved out what was widely considered a special exemption for the group. Subsequently, the NRA dropped its opposition, and the measure passed the House.

“Some people are so terrified of the NRA vote score that they’ll vote for anything the NRA says to vote for and against anything they say to vote against,” Nadler said. “It’s unfortunate in the extreme.”

In the last 20 years, the NRA and other pro-gun groups have outspent gun-control advocates by over 20-to-1 on lobbying, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Some gun control advocates expected more from this president. As a state senator in Illinois, Obama threw his weight behind various regulatory measures. He backed a ban on semiautomatic assault weapons and voted to limit handgun purchases to one a month per person.

But Obama notably distanced himself from the cause during the 2008 election, proclaiming his commitment to the gun rights. “I believe in the Second Amendment,” he said. “I believe in people’s lawful right to bear arms. I will not take your shotgun away. I will not take your rifle away. I won’t take your handgun away.”

One year into his presidency, the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence gave Obama an “F” across the board on gun control issues. The Chicago Tribune joked the following month that “[o]n the list of issues for which Obama is willing to put himself on the line, gun control ranks somewhere below free trade with Uzbekistan.”

As a result, gun rights advocates remain about as unimpeded in their cause today as during the Bush administration.

“The political climate hasn’t changed a lot,” said Ladd Everitt, spokesman for the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. “If you look back at when Republicans had control of government before 2006, you pretty much saw the same picture.”

“We were hoping for Obama to take a more forceful position in terms of gun violence prevention,” Everitt added, positing that Democrats have backed away due to pressure from the NRA, conservatives in the party, the disproportionate number of single-issue gun voters and the force of industry behind the gun rights cause.

“Gun rights organizations like the NRA saw President Obama’s history as being one of anti-gun owners’ rights,” said Bob Cottrol, a constitutional lawyer and gun law expert at George Washington University, “though that hasn’t been the case so far in his presidency.” But that perception, he said, led to an early and ongoing backlash among passionate gun owners that has furthered the pro-gun cause under Obama.

Kates put it more succinctly: “Historically, Democrats being in power has been a godsend for the finances of pro-gun groups.”

But according to David Kopel, a Second Amendment expert at New York University and gun rights advocate, Obama is subtly doing more to stem the gun movement than Bush. Kopel points out that Bush’s Supreme Court appointees, Samuel Alito and John Roberts, have been more pro-gun than Obama’s appointee Sonia Sotomayor, who voted on the losing side of the recent 5-4 McDonnell v. Chicago case, which limited the types of gun control regulations cities and states can adopt.

“Sotomayor said she considered [the 2008] Heller [ruling] to be settled law, that she knew how important the individual right to arms was, and then less than a year later she turned around and joined an opinion that said Heller should be overturned,” Kopel said.

But the replacements of two left-leaning justices with two other left-leaning justices — Sotomayor and, if confirmed, Elena Kagan — represents more of a status-quo perpetuation than a victory for gun control advocates.

Obama’s reluctance to take up gun control as president, after aligning himself with it for most of his career, signals an increasingly toxic national political climate for the cause and reflects the Democratic Party’s shift.

“I’d say President Obama has been politically astute in not following the Bill Clinton policy of trying to make gun control a top-three national issue,” Kopel said.

Added Kates of the Pacific Research Institute: “Generally speaking, gun control advocates have other ambitions, other objectives, and for now they’re willing to drop their anti-gun concerns in exchange for not being defeated in other matters.”

The media have caught on, and they’re pressing some GOP leaders to explain themselves. Not that the Republicans are ready to concede their hypocrisy.

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) told CNBC yesterday that Part D has been worth the additional taxpayer costs because the program has helped millions of seniors “get their drug costs down.” (As if the 30+ million Americans estimated to get health coverage under the Democrats’ bills wouldn’t similarly benefit.) Republicans “couldn’t have [offset] it if we wanted to,” Hatch added, “because they would not have paid for this.” He was talking about Democrats.

We would have paid for it but we didn’t have the votes to force paying for it. So don’t blame Republicans for that.

That’s a bit different from the explanation that Hatch gave USA Today in December, when he said that the Republicans didn’t offset the new entitlement because, in 2003, “it was standard practice not to pay for things” — a convenient position to have when your party controls both the Congress and the White House, but not necessarily one to set the country on the path to financial stability.

Bruce Bartlett — former economic adviser to Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush — has been quick to call out those Republicans who want to have it both ways. Writing in Forbes in November, Bartlett called Part D “a pure giveaway with a gross cost greater than either the House or Senate health reform bills how being considered.”

It astonishes me that a party enacting anything like the drug benefit would have the chutzpah to view itself as fiscally responsible in any sense of the term. As far as I am concerned, any Republican who voted for the Medicare drug benefit has no right to criticize anything the Democrats have done in terms of adding to the national debt. Space prohibits listing all their names, but the final Senate vote can be found here and the House vote here.

Hatch, it should be noted, voted in favor of the largest entitlement expansion since Medicare was created.

H/t: The Hill.

Although the men did not sue the government directly, the Bush administration intervened in the case two years ago and convinced a judge to dismiss all claims on the grounds that allowing the lawsuit to proceed would reveal sensitive “state secrets” and endanger national security.

The plaintiffs appealed, and the Obama administration has adopted its predecessor’s position, arguing before the appellate court that allowing the five men the opportunity to prove their case would jeopardize national security. At the same time, the  administration claims it has ended the program of “extraordinary rendition,” whereby terror suspects are abducted in one location and sent to another country for interrogation, where they are likely to be tortured. The administration says it still renders suspects to other countries, but only for legitimate court proceedings.  Nevertheless, it has insisted that any information about the Bush administration’s program would pose a current danger.

That argument doesn’t sit well with the plaintiffs in the case, like Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian-born British resident who says he was kidnapped by CIA agents in Pakistan and flown to Morocco and Afghanistan, where he was brutally tortured into falsely confessing to crimes he did not commit.

In court yesterday, American Civil Liberties Union attorney Ben Wizner, representing the five men, argued that it was absurd to suggest that allowing the truth about the program to come out, while still protecting any classified evidence, would endanger national security.

“The facts of this case are known throughout the world,” Wizner said. The Bush administration’s CIA directors had previously testified about the rendition program, and President George W. Bush had acknowledged it. As for the plaintiffs involved in the case against Jeppesen, the Swedish government has already apologized and offered to compensation one of the plaintiffs who was seized from Sweden, where he had sought asylum. The plaintiff claims he was taken to Egypt, where he was tortured with electrical shocks.

Whoever wins this round before the Ninth Circuit could still seek review from the Supreme Court.

The ACLU, meanwhile, has identified an important point about the chronology of the CIA’s internal communications about the tapes. Although the communications remain classified, the dates and summaries of their content provided by the government reveals that a request to destroy the 92 tapes were  made just days after The Washington Post reported on the existence of secret overseas CIA prisons known as “black sites.” Another request was made on the day The New York Times reported that the CIA inspector general had issued a report questioning the legality of the agency’s interrogation methods.

The tapes were destroyed that same day.

While that sounds good, remember that the Detainee Treatment Act was interpreted by the Bush administration’s Justice Department to allow such “enhanced interrogation techniques” as sleep deprivation, food deprivation, shackling, forced standing in stress positions, and a variety of “corrective techniques” that include physical slaps and grabs – either alone or in combination. The new “protections” in the MCA amendments are therefore not all that reassuring.

The amendments also continue to allow judges to admit hearsay evidence, even though the source of the evidence is unavailable for cross-examination by defense counsel. Classified evidence can also still be used against a defendant, although he does not have the right to see it. Protections were added, however, so that the procedures used to protect classified evidence essentially mirror those used in a civilian federal court.

This post has been updated.