U.S. News and World Report writes that Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R) is seriously considering a run for the presidency in 2008. This is TERRIFIC news for Democrats, as Barbour has more serious political liabilities than almost anyone.
HALEY BARBOUR, TOBACCO LOBBYIST: According to Public Citizen, "After Philip Morris was the top RNC donor in 1996, Barbour became a tobacco lobbyist." Time Magazine reported that during Barbour's tenure as a tobacco lobbyist, "two Republican Party officials" said Barbour deviously tried to slip a $50 billion tax break for tobacco companies into a budget bill. Now, according to the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, Barbour has used the governor's office to try to gut funding for Mississippi's award-winning youth tobacco prevention program. This, from the governor of the state that originally forced the tobacco companies to admit their products caused cancer.
Senator Bill Frist" took money from the tobacco industry, $23,000 so far (Source Center for Responsive Politics at URL http://www.crp.org/tob96/tobacco91-96.htm ). He gives good return to the industry for their investment in him, by voting in their interests in most instances.
Public Citizen gives Frist a rating of 13% [ the ideal being 100% ] on tobacco issues. . .
When Republican Senators killed the McCain Bill (S1415) which, properly amended, would have been a powerful force to reduce the damage tobacco does to our society, Frist voted in favor of the tobacco industry on 12 out of 14 votes, for a cumulative score of 14%. That's a failing grade in any school ! Check it out for yourself at Public Citizen http://www.citizen.org/tobacco/mcpac.htm#List.
So what's the big deal? 75% of senators, Republican and Democrat, take money from tobacco companies?
The big deal is that [in addition to being elected to be a representative of the public,] Bill Frist is a doctor! Not only is he a doctor, he is a thoracic surgeon! Thoracic surgeons have more personal experience with the suffering of patients with tobacco caused diseases than most other physicians. They are the best, and often the only, hope of cure for patients suffering from tobacco caused diseases, including coronary artery disease, lung cancer, stroke, aortic aneurysm, peripheral artery disease and emphysema. Frist was actually a super-specialist who transplanted new lungs into emphysema sufferers. The senator is a very bright man; a Harvard man. He can't claim ignorance of the fact that cigarettes cause 480,000 premature deaths in our country alone each year (not to mention the mounting number of deaths American tobacco is causing in other countries, now that their profits are being squeezed a little in the U.S.A.)
Philip Morris is the #1 contributor to the Republican Party.