A television ad from Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain, running statewide on radio and the FOX News Channel, erroneously claims the Environmental Protection Agency wants to regulate methane from cattle and dust from farming activities.

The ad features a number of farmers, one of which says the EPA wants to regulate methane coming from cattle.

“For thousands of years, 60 million buffalo roamed these prairies in Iowa,” one farmer says. “Who regulated them?”

EPA regional spokesman David Bryan told The Iowa Independent Monday that “there’s no truth to that at all.”

“There are a number of regulations on greenhouse gas emissions and different types of ambient air quality standards, but trying to say we’re putting a tax on emissions from cows is just a little ridiculous,” Bryan said.

Another claim in the ad, that the EPA wants to regulate dust on farms, is also a myth. Bryan said every five years the Clean Air Act requires the EPA to evaluate air standards, but EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson made it clear in a note to Congress that there is no intention to regulate dust on farms.

“You can’t plow a field without dust, you can’t drive down a gravel road without dust,” a farmer says in Cain’s ad. “My dog makes dust.”

The EPA focuses on regulating course particulates, Bryan said, such as dust from construction, demolition and industrial sites.

“We center our monitoring of air mostly on urban areas where it affects the most people,” he said. “We’re going to leave the dust standards where they are.”

Dean Kleckner, former head of the Iowa Farm Bureau and the American Farm Bureau, endorses Cain in the ad, saying, “He reminds me of Ronald Reagan, and I knew Ronald Reagan.”

“Over-regulation is killing the American farmer,” Kleckner says. “I think Herman Cain is the answer. Running a farm is a business and Herman Cain is a proven CEO.”

Bryan said the EPA has worked to counter the false claims that the EPA wants to regulate methane and dust, but not everyone is getting the message.

“What further method do we have other than you folks to say we don’t intend on doing this?” Bryan said.

David Yepsen, a former political reporter who spent 34 years at The Des Moines Register, said there’s a very possible scenario in which Mitt Romney wins the caucuses, the New Hampshire primary and the Republican nomination.

A similar scenario played out in 1980, Yepsen said, when George H.W. Bush beat a field of much more conservative candidates in Iowa. Ronald Reagan eventually won the nomination after coming in a close second in those caucuses.

“That’s a different era but the same thing could happen,” Yepsen said. “Romney could win Iowa with a plurality because you have some other candidates carving up that conservative vote.”

Register political columnist David Yepsen

President Obama is vulnerable, Yepsen said, but Republicans won’t win if they nominate a candidate that offends women or drives away young voters, who are generally supportive of LGBT rights.

He warned candidates and the Republican Party in general against moving too far to the right, saying it’s important to appeal to the base but they need to leave themselves room to maneuver back to the center for the General Election.

“I have a lot of respect for social conservatives but if you drive the Republican Party so far to the right on social issues at a time when Americans care about jobs and economic development issues you’re going to lose,” he said.

Romney, Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Herman Cain appear to have the “three tickets” out of Iowa this time, Yepsen said, and U.S. Rep. Ron Paul could also do well. But he noted the caucuses broke that mold in 2008, when U.S. Sen. John McCain did poorly in Iowa but won the nomination.

Yepsen was the keynote speaker Thursday evening for a series at the State Historical Museum, where an updated exhibit on the Iowa Caucuses is on display. He is now director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.

Yepsen also weighed in on the national jockeying between states hoping to be the first or at least an early contest for presidential hopefuls. He said that jockeying actually makes Iowa more important because it compresses the schedule.

“Candidates who do poorly in Iowa and New Hampshire have no chance of wining in Florida,” Yepsen said. “Candidates who do well in Iowa and New Hampshire can raise money, they have media momentum for big states like Florida.”

Yepsen expects the caucuses to be held in early January, but he said to “keep that week between Christmas and New Year’s open.”

Is racism part of the equation?

“The immigration debate has been influenced by bigotry and fueled by nativist extremists such as former Congressman Tom Tancredo and State Senator Russell Pearce of Arizona who sponsored a law that violates the Supremacy Clause of the US Constitution,” says DeeDee Garcia Blase, executive director of Somos Republicans.

The question of racism was raised recently by right-wing columnist Dennis Prager, writing in National Review.

Prager, predictably, says it is practicality–not racism–that is driving the discussion, but his column has drawn rebuttal from some. That he writes in a somewhat paternal tone may not help his cause.

Prager writes:

All it takes is common sense to understand that we simply cannot afford to take care of all of you in our medical, educational, penal, and other institutions. However much you may pay in sales tax, most illegal immigrants are a financial and social burden in those states in which most of them settle.

Yes, many of you are also a blessing. Many of you take care of our children and our homes. Others of you prepare our food and do other work that is essential to our society. We know that. As individuals, the great majority of you are hardworking, responsible, decent people.

But none of that answers the question: How many people can this country allow to come in?

The moment you answer that question is the moment you realize that Americans’ worries about illegal immigration have nothing to do with “racism” or any negative feeling toward Hispanics.

Those who tell you it is racism or xenophobia are lying about their fellow Americans for political or ideological reasons. You know from your daily interactions with Americans that the vast majority of us treat you with the dignity that every fellow human being deserves. Your daily lives are the most eloquent refutation of the charge of racism and bigotry. The charge is a terrible lie. Please don’t believe it. You know it is not true.

Daniel Cubias, writing at Being Latino Online, is having none of it, or not much of it in any event.

Cubias writes:

Now, I’m sure Prager is sincere. But he is giving his fellow conservatives way too much credit.

No doubt, plenty of Republicans have legitimate objections to illegal immigration that have nothing to do with race. But to say, as Prager does, that “the vast majority of us could not care less if your name is Gonzalez or Jones” is to deny reality.

It was not liberals who ran commercials depicting Latinos as menacing thugs, or made jokes about shooting undocumented people like vermin, or called Latinos “locusts,” or… well, you get the picture. The point is that conservatives did all that (and more) by themselves, unprompted.

Still, this is anecdotal evidence. Do we have anything a bit more concrete that ties racism to the immigration debate?

Well, Mother Jones recently reported that a majority of our favorite group, the Tea Party, believes “that newcomers from other countries threaten traditional American customs and values.” Furthermore, a whopping 72 percent think we “should deport all illegal immigrants back to their home countries,” despite the fact that this would probably lead to economic chaos.

Another study showed that “racial resentment” was second only to “conservative ideology” when it came to the motivations of Tea Party members. And yet Prager would have us believe that their views on immigration are not influenced by even a hint of bigotry.

Let’s give credit to Prager for a couple of things, however. His attempt to speak directly to Latinos is rare for a conservative. More often, they’re busy riling up their base by speaking about Latinos. And his column is free of vitriol and even makes an attempt (however awkward) to see things from the perspective of an undocumented person.

But ultimately, Prager’s column appears to be a conservative’s uncomfortable epiphany. He knows that the disappointment many Latinos feel for the Democrats is no match for the hostility they harbor for the GOP. Prager is trying to undo the damage, stating that the allegation of rampant bigotry in the GOP “is a terrible lie. Please don’t believe it. You know it is not true.”

This shameless, rather pathetic pleading is what the conservative approach to Latinos and immigration has been reduced to. Rather than attempting to clean up the racism that infects their movement, conservatives are now trying to insist that this prejudice doesn’t exist at all.

I’m sorry if I don’t quite buy it.

Garcia Blase says racism is practically institutionalized in so far as much of the information used by the GOP in justifying harsh immigration laws and rhetoric comes from what she believes to be racist organizations.

“Powerful groups like NumbersUSA and the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) are part of a strong lobbying anti-immigration ‘movement,’ where NumbersUSA has at least 600,000 due paying members,” she says.

FAIR was founded by John Tanton, a man known for his support of eugenics research. In fact, FAIR has received major funding from the Pioneer Fund, which is dedicated to racial purity through eugenics.

Garcia Blase is a fairly staunch Republican on most issues, finding fault primarily in the party’s position on immigration and immigrant rights.

“We have warned all GOP candidates that the anti-immigrant messaging must be dominated with a principle they claim to value — free market thinking. Most GOP candidates excluding Gary Johnson are afraid to truthfully debate the benefits with regard to how immigrants have contributed to American society,” Garcia Blase said. “We believe GOP candidates are afraid of the Tea Party extremists, and they simply lack the spine Ronald Reagan had when he was confronted with tough issues. It is unfortunate that Rick Perry allowed Mitt Romney to put him in a defensive corner because Romney is repeating his anti-immigrant history when he ran against John McCain in 2008. Romney’s hostility towards immigrants in wanting to send them all back is clearly unreasonable and if Romney secures the GOP nomination, Latin Republican support will continue to dwindle. The GOP will not secure a healthy Latin vote during the Presidential 2012 elections due to the hostility and the extreme rhetoric the Republican National Committee (RNC) has failed to moderate.

“It is unfortunate the Republican Party has been hijacked by Tea Party extremists,” she says.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott said on Fox and Friends today that ”you cannot win the presidency if you don’t win in Florida.”

Scott said Ronald Reagan and George Bush won the Florida straw poll and went on to win the nomination and the presidency. He added that whoever wins the straw poll this Saturday will be the Republican nominee. “And I believe the Republican nominee will be the next president,” he said.

Scott added, “They’re gonna be the next president. They are gonna be the one who will have the jobs plan. They will turn our country around.”

“We’ll have over 3,000 delegates here on Saturday,” Scott said. “They’re the Republican activists. You have to participate in this, you have to win it.”

Scott defended his administration’s results: “We cut taxes, we cut regulation, we balanced our budget, no new debt and we’re second to Texas this year in job creation — 87,000 private sector jobs in eight months. I hope the federal level will end up doing the same thing.”

Ten GOP presidential candidates — including Rick Perry, Mitt Romney, Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul — will speak at CPAC FL, held in Orlando on Fri., Sept. 23. The American Conservative Union recently announced Scott will speak at the event.

According to the conservative blog Shark Tank: “The Republican Party is close to reading on to its local Broward Republican rolls a new Muslim member, as Nezar Hamze, the controversial Florida director of  the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), has submitted his formal application to become a member of the Broward Republican Executive Committee (BREC).”

CAIR’s ”mission is to enhance understanding of Islam, encourage dialogue, protect civil liberties, empower American Muslims, and build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding.”

“This is my personal political view,” Hamze tells The Florida Independent about his desire to join the GOP cause. “CAIR is a nonprofit. As the director for CAIR, I can’t engage in supporting or not supporting one party or the other, or a candidate. This is not a CAIR thing. As a matter of fact, I got questioned about this from CAIR.”

Hamze says that while growing up he admired Ronald Reagan, and is proud of GOP social conservatism.

“I’m a very strict social conservative,” Hamze says. “I have strong family values — traditional Islamic values really line up with the Republican Party’s family values platform.”

He also highlights his fiscal conservatism: “This country has gone bonkers in the war machine. We are in every country in the world and can’t afford to pay our own bills.”

“Islam teaches responsibility in fiscal spending,” he says. “If you don’t have it, it’s OK to borrow it, but you have to pay it back. If you don’t pay it back, you have to default, you have to make it right, not just get more.”

He also calls himself a strict constitutionalist, saying he supports civil liberties that are “absolutely supreme in this land regardles of race, religions, gender, anything.”

“That’s where my political platform is. When you look at it, it is almost mirrored with traditional Republican values, not with the new neo-con conservatives,” Hamze explains. “You have some individuals like Ron Paul, Chris Christie that are out there, who stand by their values and treat all Americans equally.”

“Here’s the problem: The neo-cons and the neo-Zionists are absolutely opposed to any Muslim participation in the political process,” Hamze says. “We are very wealthy, very well networked, but not active politically, and that is our problem as a Muslim group.”

He says that those opposed to Muslim political activity know this. “Their claim to fame — and you can use Rep. Allen West — is, ‘Let’s bash the Muslims and get the vote.’” Hamze says he wants to “bring the Muslims to the mainstream political process.”

Hamze adds that if he does not get into the Broward Republican Executive Committee he’ll address the issue with the Republican Party of Florida: “I’m not a quitter.”

He says Muslims vote Democratic because of that party’s strong stance on civil liberties, but the majority of values don’t line up.

Of course, once you drill down, Reagan’s actual positions on taxes, spending and immigration may well fit in better in the Democratic Party than in the current GOP.

A stunning case in point comes to us from Outside The Beltway which has dug up video footage of a 1980 debate between Reagan and George Bush, which given the context of today’s debate, you really have to see to believe.

Reagan calls for an open border with Mexico and Bush says illegal immigrants need to be treated the same as citizens and shouldn’t be considered lawbreakers.

In Wednesday’s debate, only also-ran Jon Huntsman even came close to Reagan or Bush’s nuanced approach to immigration. From The Huffington Post:

Although many attempted to focus narrowly on border security, presidential hopeful Jon Huntsman took a different tack, almost praising then-President Ronald Reagan for signing a mass amnesty for undocumented immigrants in 1986.

Huntsman said Reagan had recognized “a human issue, and I hope that all of us as we deal with this immigration issue will always see it as an issue that revolves around real human beings.”

He said he believes undocumented immigrants should be “punished in some fashion,” but believes legal immigration must be reformed to prevent people from coming into the country without documents.

“Let’s not lose sight of the fact that our legal immigration system is broken,” Huntsman said. “If we want to do something about attracting brain power to this country … we need to focus as much on legal immigration as possible.”

As Rick Perry and the other GOP candidates move to the right on immigration and other issues, they may leave President Obama as the one with the best claim on the Reagan mystique.

Surging in the national presidential polls, Perry joined seven other Republican White House hopefuls at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif. NBC Nightly News host Brian Williams and Politico’s John F. Harris grilled candidates on foreign policy, health care, national security and climate change, leaving social issues like abortion and same-sex marriage mostly out of the dialogue.

Moderators asked the governor to address Texas’ substantial lag in key areas when compared to other states, including its position as last in number of uninsured residents and its low high school completion rates. When questioned about the cause of the state’s staggering number of those without health care — 26 percent of those under age 65 — Perry pointed to the federal government as the culprit.

Perry also downplayed the consequences of public education cuts made this legislative session under his governorship — $4 billion slashed from K-12 classrooms, leaving an estimated 12,000 teachers out of work — calling them “thoughtful reductions absorbed by our schools.”

Perry jumped back into echoing his past controversial statements about Social Security, once again calling it a “Ponzi scheme” — a sentiment expressed in his anti-Washington book “Fed Up!” which has become an anchor for his campaign rhetoric.

“Anybody that’s for the status quo with Social Security today is involved with a monstrous lie to our kids, and it’s not right,” he said.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who many consider Perry’s most formidable opponent, shot back with a defense of the system and its benefit to senior citizens saying, “our nominee has to be someone who isn’t committed to abolishing Social Security but is committed to saving Social Security.”

Often evading direct answers to questions, Perry took the opportunity to swing his replies back to his jobs creation record, figures revealed to be misleading by previous reporting from the Texas Independent. Perry claims to have secured Texas as the hub for job growth nationally, though many of those jobs are low-paying ones.

“We’ve created 1 million jobs in the state of Texas at the same time America lost 2.5 million,” said Perry. But from 2007 to 2010, the number of Texans earning minimum wage or less increased 150 percent — 330,000 jobs — solidifying Texas as the nation’s minimum wage jobs leader, a fact moderators were quick to point out.

“95 percent of jobs we created were above minimum wage,” Perry countered — though his campaign’s justification for that statistic was a 2010 measure, that 5.3 percent of all Texas jobs were hourly minimum wage ones. Only hourly jobs — just over half the total jobs in Texas — can be factored into minimum wage measures, but of those, 9.5 percent of them are at or below the minimum wage.

Perry’s “95 percent of jobs” measure is misleading, then, because he’s not talking at all about jobs “we created,” but total jobs in Texas last year. Under Perry’s watch, the proportion of hourly jobs at or below the minimum wage rose from 5.8 percent in 2000 to 9.5 percent in 2010 — but as PolitiFact reported during the 2010 Texas governor’s race, increases in how much minimum wage pays complicate the question. It’s impossible to tell how many of those are new jobs added at minimum wage, and how many are old jobs drawn into the measure because the minimum wage was raised.

Without getting bogged down in his statistics, Romney took aim at other aspects of Perry’s job growth record, pointing to Texas’ lack of state income tax, its status as a “right-to-work” state and rich natural resources as contributing factors, opening up a heated exchange between the two presidential hopefuls.

“Gov. Perry doesn’t believe he created those things. If he tried to say that, it’s like Al Gore saying he created the Internet,” said Romney.

Perry went back to statistics, answering, “We created more jobs in the last three months in Texas than [Romney] created in four years in Massachusetts.” He said former Democratic Gov. Michael Dukakis created three times more jobs than Romney did. Romney charged back, claiming George W. Bush and his predecessor created jobs at a faster rate than Perry.

During his first presidential debate Perry said, “I kind of feel like the piñata here at the party,” but the GOP contender didn’t shy from swinging back at his opponents, including U.S. Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas), who noted Perry’s support for Hillary Clinton’s health care plan while he was Texas Agriculture Commissioner. Perry responded with some old dirt of his own, bringing up a letter Paul wrote to Ronald Reagan in the late 80s, renouncing the former president after the country became mired in massive debt as result of his policies.

Perry did own what’s likely to be the night’s most remembered moment, late in the debate when he was asked if he has lost sleep over the 234 executions he’s presided over as Texas governor. Before he could answer, the question received a chilling, immediate round of applause from the audience. Perry said no, he didn’t lose sleep over it, “I think Americans understand justice.”

While the issue was danced around during Wednesday night’s debate–with most of the fireworks centering on Social Security and job creation–immigration may well end up as a defining issue in the Republican primary.

As governor of Texas, Perry has taken mostly moderate positions on immigration but seemed to begin moving right at about the same time he began mulling a run for the White House.

From the ThinkProgress web site:

During his time as the Governor of Texas, Rick Perry has staked out one of the most reasonable and moderate positions on immigration reform in the entire Republican Party. He signed the Texas version of the DREAM Act, guaranteeing graduates of Texas high schools in-state tuition at Texas universities regardless of their immigration status. He has indicated support for a path to citizenship and criticized the idea of building a border fence.

Perry even criticized Senate Bill 1070, the radical Arizona immigration bill that incensed immigration advocates and is currently facing legal challenges from the Justice Dept. “That’s not the right direction for Texas,” Perry said at the time. But yesterday, (Sept. 4) the bill’s biggest proponent, Maricopa Co. (AZ) Sheriff Joe Arpaio, tweeted that Perry had personally called him to talk immigration, a move that highlights Perry’s slow and steady lurch right on immigration issues since he launched his presidential campaign.

“We are angry,” said Dee Dee Garcia Blase, executive director of Somos Republicans, a national group of Latino Republicans that supported Perry as governor and had expressed hope that he would continue to be a friend of Latinos as a candidate for president.

“Governor Rick Perry consulting Sheriff Joe Arpaio is reprehensible,” she said by email. “Perry consulting Arpaio is like showing up to a barbecue with a dead skunk. Arpaio is the dead skunk factor that will cause Latinos to flee the GOP after it makes us sick. There was no need for Perry to go to Arpaio for advice particularly when he has been advancing in the polls.

“Unfortunately, we see Perry making the same mistakes that Sen. John McCain made when he ran against Mitt Romney in 2008. Romney’s anti-immigrant rhetoric caused McCain to move further to the right which eventually made it easier for Latinos to (leave) the GOP. In 2007, Romney made a similar fatal and political mistake with Latinos when he consulted Arpaio as an honorary chair of his Arizona campaign. It is unfortunate that candidates cannot learn from history.

“GOP Presidential candidates need not see the immigration issue as a toxic one… As we continue to see the GOP presidential candidates say things that will alienate the Hispanic vote, one can only hope to see a true Reagan presidential candidate. Reagan was never afraid to deal with the immigration issue head on and it was Reagan who was responsible for increasing Latino GOP voters because of the amnesty he gave to immigrants. Latinos are looking for a Reagan on steroids,” she concluded.

The event will be held at the Orange County Convention Center Sept. 22-24 and will coincide with the first-ever Florida Conservative Political Action Conference.

In a press release, former Republican Party of Florida chairman Dave Bitner said the event will “give the candidates an opportunity to bring their message directly to the people of Florida while allowing voters to participate in a poll that has historically predicted the eventual Republican nominee for President.”

The first such Republican Party of Florida-sponsored event (Presidency 1) took place in November 1979. The majority of attendees voted for Ronald Reagan over his primary opponents. Reagan went on to receive the national party nomination and eventually won the presidency over Jimmy Carter in 1980.

Watch an ad for the event:

P5 Live Promo from The Victory Group on Vimeo.

The release added: #

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow chopped up Marco’s words and distorted them, even weaving in mentions of Marco’s parents to attack him. #

Ed Schultz attacked Marco’s speech as “psycho talk” and called Marco a “political hack”. #

In the speech at the Reagan Library Rubio said conservatism is about “compassion and prosperity,” and that while he believes in programs like Social Security and Medicare, they have “have weakened us as a people” and ”we must embrace public policy changes to these programs.” #

Rubio launched Reclaim America, saying he started the PAC “in the hopes of supporting candidates all across this country that will come to Washington and join us and standing up to these policies that have failed us and in its place offering clear alternatives.” #

In his message, Rubio blamed Senate Democrats “who don’t fully believe in the American free enterprise system” and the White House, which is “occupied by someone whose policies have failed the American people.” #

Rubio echos another freshman GOP Sen. Mike Lee, from Utah, who launched the Constitutional Conservatives Fund to “find, fund, and support the kind of statesmen we so desperately need in Washington—those who are ready and willing to stand as champions of constitutionally limited government.” #

“I believe the root of many of these problems has been the erosion of constitutional limitations on the power of the federal government. It has become too big, too expensive and too intrusive, all at the expense of American ingenuity, economic prosperity, and individual liberty,” Lee wrote in announcing the PAC. #

In his speech at the Reagan Library Rubio said, “We built government and its programs without any account on how we would pay for it,” adding that Americans in the 20th century built the most prosperous nation in the world, but also a government “we cannot afford to pay for.” #