IOWA — This may be the ultimate NIMBY moment: At a campaign stop here yesterday, Rick Santorum proposed offering federal government support for labor unions, which he said created a social good.
In Iran.
Discussing his plans for the bogeyman of the moment, Iran, Santorum outlined a three-pronged strategy to pressure and weaken the regime that many fear could develop a nuclear weapon soon. First in Santorum’s plan as he explained it to about a dozen voters in Ottumwa, IA Friday is a tough regime of sanctions against Iran. Third is covert military action against Iranian facilities and nuclear scientists.
But here’s number two, in full:
Work with the pro-democracy groups. There’s been some activity in Iran in the last few weeks. Explosions that have been unexplained. A couple of leaders of the Green Revolution have been arrested. There’s some fomenting going and, and there’s strikes going on. We should have several avenues of getting money into Iran to help striking labor unions, to give them money so they can keep out on strike and disrupt the government and try to create the revolutionary atmosphere there. Because we need to get rid of Mullahs and get rid of the theocracy that’s in charge there.
It’s not going to be a huge surprise to anyone watching the Republican party in the past couple years that Santorum does not propose a similar US government partnership with unions in America. Like his opponents for the presidential nomination — as well as his party’s prominent governors across the country — Santorum says that public workers unions here are anything but a force for good and should be stopped.
“I do not believe that — that state, federal or local workers, unions, should be involved in unions,” he said on a debate stage recently. “And I would actually support a bill that says that we should not have public employee unions for the purposes of wages and benefits to be negotiated.”
