Yesterday, I glanced over a piece in The Washington Post about how the furious debates and jockeying over ideology going on within the Republican Party are distorting national issues. An interesting little reminder of the way a minority of a minority (say, the Tea Parties) can wag the whole dog if it has the right leverage at the right moment. All you have to do is create enough paranoia within the mainstream of one of the two big parties when it’s feeling particularly vulnerable, and the whole national conversation changes. Another thing that’s wrong with party politics.
But that’s not the point of this post. The point of this post is to express my disappointment that, based on reports of last night’s GOP gubernatorial debate I’ve seen (unfortunately, or fortunately, I missed the event itself), we’re not getting any incidental benefit from this national debate here in SC. Instead of getting a choice between several types of Republicanism, we get four candidates all trying to be just alike — and unfortunately, in the wrong direction, away from the more centrist strains of the party.
All four say:
- They’ll veto a bill to raise the cigarette tax that 75 percent of the voters want to raise.
- They want to go full-bore Arizona crazy on immigration.
- They all want offshore drilling.
OK, that last one’s not so bad — as founder of the Energy Party, I want offshore drilling, too, as part of a complete, rational energy policy (acknowledging that disasters will happen, but seeing the imperative of weaning ourselves off foreign oil as essential). But you’d think we could get some debate on it when you have four candidates on the stage.
But the worst, the inexcusable, point of the three is the sheer boneheadedness on the cigarette tax.
Yes, as I’ve heard Henry McMaster explain before, we DO need comprehensive tax reform. That’s why I’ve resisted any kind of adjustment in tax revenues, up or down (even the perfectly sensible proposal to increase our gas tax to fund needed infrastructure work) for years. No one has spent more years arguing for comprehensive tax reform than I have.
But Henry — and the rest of you — raising the cigarette tax isn’t about raising revenues. It’s not about funding government. It has always been about pricing cigarettes out of the reach of kids. We have data from all over the country that shows this works, and adolescents are saved from lifetimes of addiction and eventual painful, expensive deaths. It’s not about the money. You can burn the money, and you’ll still accomplish the purpose (although, let me say quickly, burning the money would be stupid).
The really maddening thing is to hear someone like Henry — who had once offered promise of being the most rational, least ideological, most pragmatic guy in the field — say such idiotic things as “I believe the impulse we have to raise taxes to solve all problems is not the right answer.”
First of all, Henry, WHAT freaking impulse? Where? In what State House? On what planet? Have you been in some state capital up north or someplace where someone might even suggest raising revenues when they’re down? Something no one in our State House EVER does? Since 1987, a general tax — the sales tax — has been raised ONCE, and that was just to pay for the bizarre move of eliminating homeowner property taxes for school operations.
As for the rest of that statement… “to solve all our problems…” again, what the HELL? What, because this one time we want to save some kids lives by raising a tax — not out of some vague hope or unfounded belief, but because we KNOW that every 10 percent increase in the price of cigarettes reduces youth smoking by about 7 percent and overall cigarette consumption by about 4 percent.
I don’t know about you, but I find this really disturbing. Is there really no one in the GOP willing to step out and think about issues and chart an independent course?
Maybe you don’t care. Maybe you’re a Democrat and don’t want a Republican to win anyway. But let me clue you in on something: No matter what you want, Republican nominees tend to win statewide elections in this state, regardless of their merits or lack thereof. So you should worry. I’m certainly going to.
Being someone who doesn’t care which party a candidate comes from as long as he makes sense, I like to play it safe. I like there to be someone I like, someone I can cheer for, in each party. I always hope for a situation like we had on the national level in 2008 — the first time in my whole life that my favorite Democrat and favorite Republican both got nominated. A no lose situation.
Increasingly, though, I’m starting to think a rational independent in South Carolina had better start hoping against hope that the right Democrat wins his party’s nomination, and then goes all the way against the odds. Odds that, this year at least (because of Mark Sanford and other GOP embarrassments recently) aren’t quite as long as usual.
But to cover my bets, the way I always do, I’d sure like to find a Republican I like too, between now and June.
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Brad, there are no Republicans any more, only officeholding wannabes who live in mortal fear of the disapproval of Grover Norquist instead of telling him to take a flying leap. I hope at least one of the GOP hopefuls changes his/her mind, since their stance on the cigarette tax alone rules them out of serious consideration otherwise.
@Steve – Agree.
A moderate Republican only emerges after the June Primaries.
Unfortunately, all seem more eager to swagger now and accept the hypocritical flip-flop later. Same as it ever was . . .
Was a pretty sad display to see not one push the benefits of a reasonable tax.
Having reviewed the candidates for governor in both parties, this will probably be one of those elections where you hang a banner reading “This is a choice?” in your front yard, then plant a sign for the nominee from each party underneath it.
Brad for governor. Write it in.
What does it matter, the Governor has about as much power in this state as the Lt. Governor and is nothing more than a figure head. This state is run by a handful of good ol’ boys in the Senate.
For the record, Glenn McConnell has been the Duke of South Carolina for more than a decade.
I have heard from an insider that Gresham Barrett is smarter than your average Elephant. I have no further knowledge…except that Henry is a neighbor, and has cleaned up his rental properties pretty well, but is fighting to keep stuffing as many tenants as possible into them, regardless of the lack of parking and other perils of overcrowding. He also thought the proposed $11-a-year slumlord license fee was outrageous, so….I guess he’s standing firm, like another blond Republican– from Indiana.
The State today is saying Andre is distinguishing himself by coming out against the “lazy” poor. They debate whether it’s a page from Lee Atwater’s book–“poor” is code for “blacks.” Andre denies this, of course.
If this were a Facebook post, I would click “like.”
Two points from which you might take comfort: one, candidates tend to try to outdo one another appealing to the base in a primary. And secondly, while you say “Republican nominees tend to win statewide elections in this state,” that may not stay true forever. Demographics are changing in this state, and I don’t just mean in a racial sense, i.e., African-Americans or Hispanics. People continue to move here in large numbers from other parts of the country, and if the state GOP can’t field more innovative or creative or pragmatic candidates, it may squander its once sizeable advantage here.
And if all that fails, the triumph of any one of these four bozos would at the least ensure that South Carolina continues to provide heaps of quality material for The Daily Show in the years ahead.
Kathryn, there are city codes about how many non-related adults can live in the same dwelling. (I know because I keep careful count of how many, um, coeds, live next door to us.) Can Henry get busted for this?
Brad,
If you were still at The State, would this have been the year when paper would finally choose to NOT endorse a candidate in a party?
I hope you will not come out later as a supporter for McMaster by saying, “Well, he REALLY doesn’t mean all the things he says.”
@Phillip- I have Johnathan Chambers’s cell phone number on speed dial. We nabbed Henry (Peggy is probably the record owner, or some combination of McMasters–it’s how they don’t have to get a business license–they never own more than four properties in the same combination of names).The city took him before BoZA. He lost, of course, or maybe not of course, but he lost. He appealed to Circuit Court on US Constitutional grounds, notwithstanding a long-standing case on point that was reaffirmed in 2008.
Will he get grieved for filing a frivolous law suit?
See Michael P.’s comment re: Duke McConnell…..It’s an aristocracy here, still, and Henry’s a blue blood. The laws don’t apply to him.
Phillip, let me know if you need help counting the co-eds. I don’t want you to strain your eyes.
Doug, I don’t know what I’d do. I figure I’d endorse the least bad option, doing it the way we always do — frankly setting out the problems with all the candidates, and explaining why this one is the least bad. And as you know, I’ve explained to you at length why we do that, but you don’t find any of the explanations satisfactory (a divide that I think arises from the fact that you view things from the perspective of an individual who is free to walk away from a difficult choice, whereas I felt as editor a responsibility to the community to help sort through unpalatable choices).
That said, this situation is different, as I explained above. The Republicans are chasing the more extreme elements of their own party. And yes, the winner of the primary will move to the middle, but it’s going to be tough in this case to move that way enough to make up for what we’re seeing now.
In a case like this, I would probably at least toy with the idea of going ahead and saying all the GOP candidates are disqualifying themselves. In fact, I can well see myself at least bringing up that idea for the sake of discussion. I did things like that as editorial page editor. I made “modest proposals” for the sake of argument — at which point the rest of the board saw itself as having the duty to wrestle me to the ground and sit on me until my fit has passed. I was that kind of editor — one who would say, “What if…” and try to challenge the group — rather the kind who never wanted to try anything new. I got easily bored.
I suspect that in the end I would agree with the more conservative voices on my board and do what we usually do, because that would be the responsible thing.
Of course, at the back of everyone’s minds would be the fact that we all deeply valued our nonpartisanship. And the idea of dismissing one party entirely, even when warranted, would have run against our instincts. No matter what we did or said, it would be misinterpreted as declaring “We are now Democrats,” and would affect how readers perceived everything else we wrote.
Of course, everything I’m saying here is based in past experience. But when you ask me “What would you do if you were editor NOW?”, I honestly can’t answer you with a high degree of confidence. That’s because the decision-making process is so complex, based in so many variables. I’m not seeing what the other members of the board are seeing now, not participating in their daily discusssions of the issues, and haven’t done so for more than a year. It’s difficult to know exactly what I would do or say lacking that experience. It’s hard to explain unless you’ve done that for years, but every day’s interaction shapes future actions; it’s a dynamic process.
Another way of putting that — the sci-fi way, I suppose you might call it — is that the Brad Warthen responding to your question on this blog is not the same Brad Warthen in the alternative universe where he is still EPE of The State. And while I may understand a lot about that guy, there are places where our minds don’t meet, and I can’t speak for him.
Sad indeed. I think there are a lot of us out there who have long lamented the fact that this country is so often stuck choosing between two parties, equally bad in their own separate ways. Well that was before the GOP walked off the plank of reality (perhaps voluntarily, perhaps forced off by a vocal, angry group of, oh, let’s call them “patriots”) into a sea of fantasy where cutting taxes is always right, the government is out to take your stuff, and conservative politicians at even the local and state levels seemingly have some mandate from above to fight that meddlin’-in-er-lives President and his dog.
I don’t personally believe in voting against someone except in extreme circumstances (e.g. Palin for Pres.). In other words, I’d rather abstain from voting than pick from the lesser-of-two-evils (I’m not trying to avoid the responsibility of a tough choice, I just believe that if you let a dog eat from the table, you’ll teach him that it’s ok to do so). But I’ll be damned if I’m not tempted everytime these GOP candidates insult my intelligence as a voter with their bullsh- bullhonkey (e.g. that typical South Carolinian impulse to raise taxes).
Just thinking about it makes my head want to explode.
Looking back at this post, it occurs to me… Sen. Robert Ford has TOTALLY cornered the market on crazy in his party’s primary, and Rex and Sheheen are perfectly content to let him do so.
The Republicans could do the same, letting, say, Andre Bauer go off on his poor-people bashing tangent. But no, they’re all determined to agree on extreme positions. Most unsettling.
Of course, they’re ALSO letting Andre go on his tangent, so that’s something.
But David–voting and teaching a dog to beg at the table…. It is the same insofar as dogs will beg without being taught–they just smell food and want to eat it. Politicians want votes.
After that, surely you can determine which one more closely approximates your views. That’s actually how you train dogs to do lots of things they *aren’t* inclined to do–you reward each time they move closer to what it is you want them to do. No reward when they move away.
And Brad–what scares me is that lots of my fellow South Carolinians think Andre is right on the money….he’s maybe crazy like a fox.
I asked this before – Ford versus Bauer… Who does The State endorse?
I know it’s unlikely but still… that would be the litmus test for seeing how far The State would go to think it was providing a service by endorsing someone who its own editorial staff wouldn’t vote for.
Ooooh Doug, don’t even think about that one….I might have to say Bauer! Echhh!
Kathryn is exactly right about Bauer. He’s gaining more votes than he’s losing with that shameful “lazy poor” ad.
I’ve always taken the lesser-evil approach to voting, but if I had to vote in the Republican primary this year I don’t know WHAT I’d do. Maybe vote for Andre, just in the hope that the Republican party in this state would finally, mercifully, implode.
Kathryn — I understand what you are saying but my personal voting history won’t allow it. The last two times I did that left a bad taste in my mouth. First, 2004, I tried, really tried, to pick the best presidential candidate. Seemingly every issue I now support is the opposite of the policies of the man I voted for in 2004 (perhaps my attempt at personal atonement for voting for GWB’s second term?). Also, 2006 for governor — even though Tommy Moore was not elected, why should I have had to vote for him? I probably wouldn’t have at all if his opponent didn’t repulse me so, especially on higher education. Like I said, it’s my personal decision. And I’ll have you know I do intend to vote for governor this time around.