Not really knowing Greg Delleney, I took some interest in this mini-profile John O’Connor included in his story today:
Often quiet and funny, Delleney is a member of a loose-knit – and often low-brow – lawmaker lunch group, the House Bi-Partisan Eatin’ Caucus.
Prior to this year, Delleney was not among Sanford’s chief critics. “I agreed with him more than I disagreed with him.”
Chester County GOP chairwoman Sandra Stroman said she has known Delleney, who served in the Navy for three years, for 15 years.
“He’s generally a very quiet person,” she said. “He listens a lot.”
Though many South Carolinians are tired of hearing about Sanford, Stroman thinks Chester Republicans support Delleney.
“I don’t think it’s personal,” Stroman said. “Greg Delleney is a man who believes in right and wrong, and I think he comes down on the side of right every time.”
Delleney is among the strongest right-to-life supporters in the Legislature, typically introducing a new bill each year to limit access to abortions.
This year, Delleney successfully shepherded through the House a bill that requires a 24-hour wait before a woman can receive an abortion. He also scuttled a bill that would have provided dating violence counseling for teens by adding an amendment restricting the counseling to heterosexual couples.
Delleney has critics.
“I like Greg. He is very passionate about what he believes,” said state Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter, D-Orangeburg. “My problem is he is foisting his moral beliefs on public policy. I’m not surprised he’s pushing this, particularly when sex is involved.”
That makes him sound, in general terms, like the kind of conservative I like — as opposed to the Sanford hyperlibertarian type, or the type that gets extremely worked up over illegal immigration. I much prefer the Brownbacks and the Huckabees to the Sanfords and the DeMints.
Not that I would do everything he does. I don’t think I would have adding the hetero clause to the violence counseling thing. That’s the kind of making-an-issue-of-something-that-isn’t-an-issue stuff where social conservatives lose me (at least, that’s the impression I remember having at the time).
So he’s not exactly the kind of conservative I’d be were I to consent to being called a conservative (or a liberal, or any of those oversimplifications). I’m still more the John McCain type.
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Yeah, mavericky.
Isn’t that what Lieberman is, too? Isn’t that why we’re getting this watered down bipartisan opt-out health care bill?
bud’s right–you want bipartisan when it suits your pose, but when something really matters to you, not so much, eh?
Guess what? The things you think don’t matter so much, so you can be all middle-of-the-road bipartisan, actually matter a lot to someone most of the time.
I think you have striven for so long to be the unbiased, fair and balanced editor, which seems worthy at first, that perhaps you got insulated in your concrete tower from the very real concerns behind the politics. Lindsey Graham really made a good point when he said that most of his constituents didn’t care about ideology; they want services.