Senate Democrats hammer opponents over social issues

[cal04]

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/senate-races/212175-senate-dems-hammer-opponents-on-social-issues

Democratic Senate candidates are hammering their Republican opponents on social issues, echoing a trend in the presidential race.

(snip)
And it's not just birth control. Other social issues have dominated the national conversation: a push from conservatives in some states to pass a law that would define “personhood” as beginning at conception, some state attempts to ban birth control and the House Republicans' repeated attempts to defund Planned Parenthood.

Democrats running for the Senate haven't been afraid to take the fight on social issues to states ranging from deep-blue Massachusetts to swing-state Virginia to Republican-leaning Montana.

(snip)
Former Gov. Tim Kaine, in a conference call on Tuesday, described the bills as part of a "very extreme and unnecessary anti-women agenda” and sought to tie Allen to the bills, which are opposed by Virginia voters by a 19-point margin, according to a Richmond Times-Dispatch poll.

[pangaia]

1. Well it is about time.

Friends of mine in The Netherlands are writing to me about a YOUTUBE video of The Ayatollah Santorum claiming that Dutch people are leaving The Netherlands because--get this.. the government is requiring euthanasia for certain people. WTF!!!

[Sherman A1]

2. Agreed

it's well beyond time.....

[ashling]

3. Social conservatives and social capital

I started to post a new thread with this article, but I see it is applicable here as well

http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2012/02/santorums-conservatism?fsrc=gn_ep

Which brings us back to Rick Santorum. Mr Santorum's social-conservative views, particularly those on sexuality, have been limned in recent weeks as "a return to the 1950s". This is misleading. In the 1950s, Americans trusted their government, as they trusted most social institutions. Mr Santorum's campaign, like that of all the other Republican presidential candidates, is predicated on a radical mistrust of government, along with the other authoritative institutions Americans used to trust in the 1950s: science, the courts, the medical profession, schools and academia, unions, and of course the media—pretty much everything apart from business, churches, and the military. This is a certain kind of conservatism, one that plays on Americans' fears and divisions and exacerbates the decline of our social capital and mutual trust. It's a far cry from the confident, high-trust conservatism of the Eisenhower-era Republican Party. But if it's that resentful, suspicious kind of conservatism we're talking about, I don't think it's accurate to say that America is by nature a fundamentally conservative country. At least I hope not.