Social Issues

DETROIT - On a day when General Motors trumpeted record profits, Rick Santorum said that the auto industry would have done as well or better if the federal government, under the last two administrations, had not intervened to save the industry. Declaring himself an enemy of all federal bailouts, the former senator noted that Mitt Romney, his leading opponent in this state's crucial primary, had supported the Bush administration's TARP lifeline to Wall Street but had opposed the federal investment in GM and Chrysler.

Mitt Romney's small-town bus tour of swing states rolled across Pennsylvania on Saturday, allowing the Republican presidential candidate to campaign as the champion of the middle class in picturesque, everyday American settings. But first Romney dodged a group of about 250 Democratic protesters, led by former Gov. Ed Rendell, by diverting from a scheduled stop at a Quakertown Wawa to another Wawa three miles away. The abrupt schedule change gave a taste of the fight ahead in what is likely to be a close presidential campaign, where every move is contested by one side or the other.

Mitt Romney's small-town bus tour of swing states rolled across Pennsylvania Saturday, allowing the Republican presidential candidate to campaign as the champion of the middle class in picturesque, everyday American settings. Romney dodged a group of about 250 Democratic protesters, led by former Gov. Ed Rendell, by diverting from a scheduled stop at a Quakertown Wawato another Wawa three miles. The abrupt schedule change gave a taste of the fight ahead in what is likely to be a close presidential campaign, where every move is contested by one side or the other.

Here's where government changes the lives of the most vulnerable: the poor, the young, the sick. And here's where voters can see whether the politicians have anything to say - or are just saying anything. In the third of a series on the issues, we look at where the two major candidates for governor, Republican Tom Ridge and Democrat Mark Singel, stand on social questions, and we present the story of one woman on welfare. WELFARE REFORM RIDGE APPROACH: PEOPLE MUST BE PUSHED.

An old-time studio mogul once notoriously dismissed movies that aspired to social conscience with the advice: "If you want to send a message, call Western Union. " In the 1950s and 1960s, you would have been better advised to call Stanley Kramer, especially if you wanted your message shaped in an accessible way that reached masses of filmgoers. Mr. Kramer, 87, who died of pneumonia on Monday in Woodland Hills, Calif., was a prolific and influential producer-director in postwar Hollywood.

Sana Musasama's ceramic sculpture solo at Swarthmore College's List Gallery is the kind of exhibit that aims to put the old-style art aficionado out for the count. Her show is a reminder that in recent decades much attention has been devoted to the art of display in museums and galleries, and many artists have responded by coming up with an art of pure display and nothing else. But there are other artists who demonstrate that our era is better than that. One of these is New Yorker Musasama, among the most prominent American women ceramic sculptors and a teacher at Hunter College.

The social issues that dominated the elections of 1980, '82 and '84 seemed nearly absent from the recently concluded campaign. Hardly anyone talked about abortion, busing or school prayer this time around, and few, if any, TV analysts mentioned them as having played a prominent part in the voters' consideration of candidates. Shortly after President Reagan was inaugurated in 1981, House Minority Leader Robert Michel said that Congress ultimately must come to grips with the social issues, as distasteful as they might be to many members, because "they deal with basic values and therefore have the ability to inflame passions on all sides.

Maybe America's New Right and its Religious Right aren't headed straight for the divorce court. But the duo that was so instrumental in the Reagan political revolution is under heavy strain. And the problems go a lot deeper than differences over evangelist Pat Robertson's presidential candidacy. The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the country's leading conservative think tank for state legislators, has jettisoned such social issues as abortion, school prayer, creationist textbooks and permitting corporal punishment in the schools.

TAMPA - Rick Santorum stared at his smartphone, monitoring his wife, Karen, who was 10 yards away at the anchor desk in the CNN Grill, appearing as part of an on-air panel during Tuesday's session of the Republican National Convention. He was getting ready, as he might say, to take it to 'em. Two of his daughters and a couple of aides hunched over him at his table, blocking the noise of all the people who wanted to get at him. Afterward, Santorum was mobbed by well-wishers and fans, wanting to know about his coming speech in the convention hall; his disabled daughter, Bella; and his take on the man who Tuesday claimed the prize Santorum had wanted.

In the face of increasingly bad economic news, Bush and the Republicans have increasingly pitched the re-election campaign on 'family values,' a nebulous phrase that the GOP hopes connotes a social permissiveness on the part of Democrats, especially the party's support for homosexual rights. - news story in the Houston Chronicle, July 29. The Chronicle's analysis is conventional wisdom already. The Republicans are going to run against gays. Last time out, they used Willie Horton and our fear of black criminals to take our minds off the Iran/Contra scandal, the S&L crisis, the faltering economy and the whole greedfest of the '80s.