Lindsey Graham may have ticked off a lot of the Republican base lately — some correspondents on this very blog swear they’ll never support him again — but there’s one thing I don’t think he has to worry about: A Democratic run by Robert Barber. Anyway, this blogger thinks otherwise:
Most recently, Robert Barber Jr. was the top vote-getting Democrat in South Carolina’s 2006 elections.
His 540,306 votes (or 49.79%) fell just 3,108 votes shy of defeating
incumbent Republican Lieutenant Governor Andre Bauer. Barber even
outpaced the Democratic gubernatorial candidate by about 5%. It’s
possible that Barber might even be South Carolina’s Lieutenant Governor
today if his campaign wasn’t distracted about two weeks before Election
Day by a tragically unexpected kitchen fire in the restaurant run by Barber and his family, and originally opened by his grandparents in 1946.
Robert Barber is a really nice fella, if a little colorless. But hey — he couldn’t beat Andre Bauer, and he’s going to take on Lindsey "Meet the Press" Graham? I don’t think so.
By the way, I don’t know what Mr. Barber’s position on immigration is, if he has one.
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I’d vote for Barber over Graham if there is no Republican challenger. I’d vote for ANYONE over Graham and if he runs unopposed, I will not vote at all in the senate race in order to avoid casting a vote for him. I heard Lindsey Graham on WVOC with Kevin Cohen yesterday. I hate him as much as ever. Ed
Lindsey needs to be replaced, even if it means by Donald Duck or Mickey Mouse. This individual like some others up on the Hill think they are great!! Show him the door, not the Senate Russell Building.
There may be some out there thinking why are you so hostile toward Lindsey Graham. Well, it comes down to one thing, “He doesn’t support veterans and I can prove it.” If while talking to him mention my name and inform him of my attitude. Lindsey and his crew know me on the first name basis. Lindsey like some others in DC claim this and that but when it comes down for a vote they kind of forget what they stated. Hog wash he is a LTC in the Air Force Reserve.
Lindsey Graham is clearly a closet homo with one foot out of the door. I’ll be voting for anyone who runs against him.
If Lindsay Graham had puffed his resume to get a job as an Air Force JAG officer and the Air Force later found out. What would they do? Would they say. “Well he’s a good guy and he’s here and he’s working hard, Let’s let him stay”? Or would they kick him out of the Air Force for not having the necessary legal credentials? I think they would kick him out in a New York minute.
Why then does he think it’s ok to grant amnisty to illegial aliens just because they are already her and doing a good job?
Why the double standard? Why will he impose the rules on leagl Americans who are doing it right and not on the illegial aliens who lied or puffed their resume to get here?
What part of “Get Legal or Go Home” dosen’t he understand?
It’s time for a change.
While we’re piling on LG, I have to admit I lost faith in him as a conservative representative of SC years ago.
LG stood and wagged his finger at a senatorial debate and said “when he stopped representing the people of SC, he would come home.” That time has long passed.
With his gang of 14 involvement, his “compromises” have merely become “acquiesence” to liberals’ (Dems and Pubs) positions to the detriment of the conservative cause.
On the amnesty bill, he has sealed his fate, however. And, perhaps that of “his” party.
Dems and libs should be shouting in the streets today, supporting this bill’s passage. It would guarantee the end of the Republican Party.
Admittedly, I’m beginning to wonder if that might not be a good thing.
One final note, please: when the State entertains a full-page ad from the SC Poultry Assoc., the Home Builders Associations, Agricultural and Fruit growing interests, etc., calling LG a statesman, then I think we see the proof in the pudding.
Fellow conservatives .. we have been sold out.
I would encourage everyone to read Peggy Noonan’s article in the WSJ today. It spells out the contemptuous evolution of GWB (and his minions like LG) towards conservatives.
After what I wrote in another place on this blog, “hate” seems like a word I oughtn’t have used when describing how I feel about Lindsey Graham. I don’t hate the man. I strongly dislike what he has done while representing me, and what he seems to stand for. Ed
See, that’s the thing: I don’t want a “conservative” representative or a “liberal” representative. I want a smart, level-headed guy who will go to Washington and THINK about what might be best for the country on each issue and each bill, not somebody pre-programmed with off-the-shelf “answers” to everything.
Mr. Warthen, I whole-heartedly agree with you.
But the reality is that for decades now, people who have differing opinions and philosophies of how to help people have helped to foster and create the system we now have.
Here’s just a piece of George Will’s column:
Hillary just shared her view of nanny-state vision of the future compared to the self-reliance and can-do spirit that helped to set us apart for 160 years.
But, sadly, as I’ve stated before, the real danger to our country isn’t from the right or left, it’s where the folks are that can’t tell the difference between right and wrong.
If more of them are on the left than the right, I think that’s due in large part to moral relativism.
Nothing’s wrong so everything’s okay. How dare you judge? And so on.
And of course, the case is moot.
None of this will matter when the jihadists come and the Mexicans retake North America.
What cave-dwelling bedwetters are left will probably still be waiting on global warming.
Hence liberals’ hostility to school choice programs that challenge public education’s semimonopoly
I confess, I AM hostile to any program that will allow the state to pick my pocket and give MY money to you so you can send your kids to a school that teaches them that Adam and Eve ride on dinosaurs.
I suspect any true conservative would be equally hostile to that notion.
kc, I certainly agree, and while my views are a mix of positions that agree with the left, the right, or neither, I consider my position against taxpayers subsidizing private schools to be one of my conservative positions (as opposed to those classic liberals who want to trust everything to the market) — just as I consider my support for our involvement in Iraq to be one of my more liberal positions (Wilsonian, optimistic about our ability to make a difference, etc.). Just two of many reasons why I don’t see how people choose sides with the crazy labels these days.
I should point out to Trajan that I stand in very strong opposition to moral relativists, but I see them on both the left and the right. On the left, we have those who would have all forms of sexual behavior seen as normal, while in the right no one is allowed to judge what the almighty property owner chooses to do with his property. Just two examples of the broader phenomena — the left is socially relativist, the right is economically relativists.
I reject all of that. There IS such a thing as right and wrong. I might make a mistake and fail to see which is which sometimes, but I don’t pretend it’s all the same. It’s my duty as a human being and child of God to do my best to find the right and do it.
Here’s that Peggy Noonan piece mentioned by Trajan above.
The truth is that America is being run by an aristocracy that is much more liberal on social issues, and much more conservative on economic issues than are the American people at large. We have pre Great Depression levels of wealth inequality due to Globalization on the one hand, and very libertine social attitudes among the privileged on the other. Actually, both phenomenons are due to the advent of unfettered global capitalism. Aside from a much-improved situation concerning race, America today is a worse country than the one created by survivors of the Great Depression and WWII.
In the economic sense, America was a much more egalitarian (and better) country from the aftermath of WWII until the eighties. For example, in the sixties, union membership ran at about 35% in the private sector vs. about 9% today. Capital gains taxes were in the 60% range vs. 15% that we have today, so consequently, wealthy people picked up a much bigger share of the tax burden than they do today, and property taxes and sales taxes were lower on middle and working class people. Good paying union jobs allowed one breadwinner to provide for a family, and unions in effect elevated wages for workers across the entire country. In the sixties, the top 1% owned about 20% of the wealth vs. the top 1% owning 35% of the wealth today. That extra 15% of the wealth that is now concentrated at the top, used to be spread among the people-so consequently the savings rate among ordinary people was much higher than it is today. Since people could actually afford to save money back then, they didn’t have to use credit cards to pay for necessities, and even then, credit card interest rates were deductible on taxes and subject to individual state usury laws (interest rate caps that still exist by the way: in the eighties banking corporations got the exception for large banks implemented on the federal level by a bought-off Congress).
Corporate power also had a big influence on culture and religion. For example, in the seventies, blue laws started disappearing because corporations wanted to expand to a 24hr neo-liberal economy in order to maximize economic exchanges, and they ran roughshod over the conservative opposition in both parties to do it. Liberal Christianity and the Social Gospel came under attack from business leaders who ultimately drove millions away from the legitimate church. Capitalist friendly Fundamentalist preachers were installed in positions of power and they used divisive, often race baiting tactics to help create a “Southern Strategy” to turn a once solid Democratic South into a Republican stronghold. To make matters even worse, the remaining liberal strain of Christianity was co-opted by the likes of Spong, Funk, and Pagels who tried to turn the Gospels into fiction. People who ignore the Gospels altogether vs. people who don’t believe the Gospels. That’s why Christianity almost died.
A nearly dead New Deal in conjunction with nearly dead Christianity equals, well, what we’ve got: a corporatized society. Regardless of what you call it: the so called “private/public partnership”, or Globalization, or neo-liberalism, or neo-conservatism, or whatever, it’s still the same ole moneyed interests running the show. In WWII they called it fascism-literally the Corporate State, where corporations and government merge and corporations play the dominant role.
Brad says: “On the left, we have those who would have all forms of sexual behavior seen as normal”
What would that make Rudy Giuiliani then? A guy who has been married three times; his second wife is most famous for starring in a hit play called “The Vagina Monologues”; and Rudy himself has been the participant in at least two affairs while married and seems to enjoy dressing up as a woman for public functions.
Even Bill Clinton would be embarrassed by that resume…
I consider my position against taxpayers subsidizing private schools to be one of my conservative positions
It is conservative, and people would understand that if the privatization proponents hadn’t done such a good job of spinning the issue – calling it school choice is just bogus. What it is is a MASSIVE new entitlement program, one which would require middle income people like me to subsidize high-income people.
I don’t mind one bit paying taxes to support public schools but I will object most strenuously to any plan that will take money away from me and give it to three-and-four SUV families so they can send their children to private schools.
Give it a rest, KC. Those “three-and-four SUV families” already have all they need to send their kids to private schools. Your real objection is to giving poor people’s kids a chance at a real education instead of the substandard service provided by the educracy.
LW, please. You’re not fooling anyone with your spurious concern for “poor people’s kids.”
And of course I don’t object to “giving poor people’s kids a chance at a real education.” Why, I’d be willing to pay more taxes towards improving public schools that serve poor children. I’d certainly rather do that than let the state take my money and give it to you.
Those “three-and-four SUV families” already have all they need to send their kids to private schools
All the more reason why I shouldn’t have to subsidize them.
KC,
Here’s the bottom line on school choice. It doesn’t matter how many SUV’s I may have or not have. It doesn’t matter if I am independently wealthy or if I work 4 jobs in order to afford to send my children to a private school. What matters is that the government continues to rob me of hard-earned income so they can continue to fund a broken system.
Do you really want to debate the issue of subsidies when the government continues to force taxpayers to fund a school system that is absolutely broken? You don’t have to subsidize anything, and I’m sick of being forced to subsidize something that that is so flawed. With that being said, you funnel your dollars wherever you want, but let me keep mine to invest it in a real education for my children.
Mark, here’s another trouble with the labels — you talk about “unfettered global capitalism.” Well, that’s liberal — old-school, classically liberal, not “neo.”
You have tried to put labels on me in the past. Well, I am precisely the opposite of your “aristocracy” that is “much more liberal on social issues, and much more conservative on economic issues than are the American people at large.”
I believe in conventional morality, sexual and otherwise. That puts Rudy’s behavior out of bounds, as well as such oxymorons as “same-sex marriage.” I’m staunchly opposed to abortion — and capital punishment as well. I don’t know, what other social issues do you have in mind? I’m probably “liberal” or “moderate” on some, but on the hot-button ones, mostly “conservative.” I like strict-constructionist judges, too. I thought the Framers were pretty smart guys, and we shouldn’t be getting too creative in reinterpreting them, to suit ANYBODY’s political agenda. I like courts to rule on judicial matters, legislatures to legislate, and the executive to carry out the laws.
On economic issues, I am mostly “liberal” in the common usage, and sometimes in the classic sense. I don’t care one way or the other about taxes, and certainly not because I have plenty of money. I just don’t question the idea of taxes in any way. I don’t feel like they are onerous — certainly not the state and local ones. In the big picture, I’d like to see us pay LESS in federal taxes — shrinking the federal responsibilities down more to military, diplomatic and interstate-commerce-type functions — and MORE on the state level, because the state ought to pick up more of the functions that are now improperly on the federal. And the state — South Carolina, at least — definitely doesn’t have the revenue to do that now. At the same time, the state needs to cede a lot of control to local, with the taxing authority to go with it. In the aggregate, taxes would most likely not go down, and for some reason, “conservatives” these days ALWAYS want taxes to go down, regardless of whether that’s a good idea in the specific instance or not (basically, of course, ideological people don’t think in terms of specific instances, because they don’t believe in applying judgment, just litmus tests).
Of course, wanting lower taxes and “smaller government” is classically liberal, so the more you examine these terms, the more you spin in circles.
I don’t think that Lindsey Graham will be replaced by a Democrat in ’08. However, the Dems do have a chance to replace our other U.S. Senator, (the one that was elected in ’04). Because he is not even as popular as Lindsey Graham. Yes, I definetly think that the Democrats from this state will elect a Democratic Senator in 2010, (when our other U.S. Senator’s time will be up).