You may have noticed something about South Carolina Republicans this year — even the ones who have good sense, like Henry McMaster: They’re all about national politics, and not at all about South Carolina.
So it is that you have Henry’s ridiculous “Vultures” ad. And with Nikki Haley, it pretty much seeps into everything she does. For instance, a routine release from her campaign yesterday began:
Friends,Across this country, we’re seeing people waking up and taking their government back. We certainly saw it in South Carolina last month …
Now let’s set aside the ridiculous demagogic “taking their government back” construction, which makes zero sense. I mean, really — give us some examples of these instances you refer to, because I’d like to see what this business of “taking back government” looks like, how it plays out in the actual world, what sorts of results it produces.
No, my point is that the frame of reference, the point from which the release begins, is national politics — specifically, a national ideological movement. From this point of view, what happens in and to South Carolina only makes sense within the framework of the latest national ideological fad.
But things like that actually almost make sense set against the paroxysms that have been engendered by a campaign contribution made to a South Carolina congressional candidate by Nancy Pelosi. Various Republicans have today gone wild over this. They just can’t believe their good fortune. Instead of having to play their usual game of pretending that South Carolinians like Vincent Sheheen and John Spratt are liberals in the modern meaning of the term, they actually have an actual liberal touching South Carolina politics. So of course they are jumping up and down with joy and making mighty mountains out of Nancy’s molehill. They are ecstatic, and like many people who are beside themselves with happiness, they have gotten rather silly about it. For instance:
- Under the headline, “MATCH PELOSI: Let Her Know She Can’t Buy America,” Joe Wilson says, “Nancy Pelosi gave $2,000 to Rob Miller, so we’re asking you to help Joe raise $2,000 today and every day until August 1. Send a strong message to Nancy Pelosi that we’re going to protect conservative leaders and TAKE BACK CONGRESS!” There’s that “take back” construction again (which sort of makes you want to ask, “What did you do with it when you had it last, Joe?”). Then there’s the utter overkill of it. Nancy gives 2 Gs, so the natural response is to raise that much every single day! Somebody needs to take a chill pill.
- On a special, rather comical-looking Web page called “Washington Liberals” and in a related release, State GOP Chair Karen Floyd exults: “Nancy Pelosi is building a team of like-minded liberals and pouring millions of dollars into South Carolina,” continuing, “You’re next up to bat. Will you let Nancy Pelosi buy South Carolina or will you knock her plan out of the park?”
- Then, on Twitter, the Blogosphere’s own Wesley Donehue put out Tweet after Tweet pumping the Wilson effort, with items such as “Will you help us raise $2,000 today to match Nancy Pelosi’s donation to Rob Miller?” followed by “Dang! Already half way there after just 20 minutes. Help us hit just $2k for @congjoewilson.”
Which means people are actually giving actual dollars in response to this utter nonsense. What kind of a sap do you have to be to fall for this flapdoodle?
Now as y’all know, I have no truck with folks interfering in the politics of other people’s states. When folks from here get worked up about elections elsewhere that are none of their business, I call them on it. So for the record, I’d greatly prefer that Nancy Pelosi stay the hell out of our South Carolina elections. Of course, there are levels of egregiousness in outside interference. Speaker Pelosi acting in a fairly modest way upon her desire to keep a majority so that she can keep her job is unseemly. Howard Rich pouring a fortune into South Carolina, not for a national issue, but in an effort to impose his ideology upon the South Carolina Legislature, is an outrage. That distinction made, we can do without your involvement, Nancy.
But the really interesting thing here is the way Republicans overreact when they finally, finally get the smallest excuse to make a South Carolina contest about national politics. Since they have no ideas for helping South Carolina move forward, they invariably fall back on the Washington boogey man. And when a prominent Democrat actually plays along with their narrative, they are absolutely thrilled.
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Karen Floyd exults: “Nancy Pelosi is building a team of like-minded liberals and pouring millions of dollars into South Carolina,” continuing, “You’re next up to bat. Will you let Nancy Pelosi buy South Carolina or will you knock her plan out of the park?”
Answer: YES. We’d be sooooooo much better off if Pelosi politics ruled in South Carolina. Give me a break Karen. Our state is so backwards, with one of the lowest life expectancies and highest unemployment rates in the country. Does it make one scintillas worth of sense to PROMOTE the policies that have failed us? The GOP in South Carolina is nothing but a bunch of raving lunatics with all this “take our government back” crap and the utterly nonsensical, oxymoronic “common sense conservative” mantra.
What South Carolina needs is a good kick in the butt for allowing the lunatic fringe of folks like Sanford, Haley, McConnell and the rest to drive us into the ground. What a joke we’ve become with “You Lie” Wilson and “Waterloo” DeMint. When ultral conservative, radicals like Lindsey Graham can be held up as examples of moderate politicians you know we’re in trouble.
That is Yes I’d let Nancy Pelosi buy South Carolina.
Bud, I hate to say this when you’re actually agreeing with me, sorta kinda (and hey, did y’all see where Doug Ross actually agreed with EVERYTHING about one of my comments?), but…
Does it occur to you that, if you don’t regard Lindsey Graham as a moderate, that it just MIGHT reflect the fact that your own views aren’t exactly centrist?
Of course, I’d agree with you if you said Graham is a conservative. He is, in the old-fashioned, traditional meaning of the term. But nowadays that’s pretty moderate. Where I can’t even begin to go along with you is when you call Lindsey, of all people, an “ultra-conservative radical.” I mean, if that’s what HE is, what is DeMint?
It’s sounding more and more like Nikki Haley wants to be in Washington, DC rather than in Columbia, SC. South Carolina doesn’t have any “Pelosi Democrats” in the General Assembly.
Nikki,
Stick to governing South Carolina; that is assuming that you get the job!
We can’t sell SC to Nancy Pelosi because we’ve already 2nd mortgaged it to Howard Rich.
I’m not a centrist nor have I ever said that I was. I’m a liberal on about 75% of all issues. And damn proud of it. Most of Europe would be regarded as liberal and they live longer and healthier lives than we do. They’re far ahead of us in leisure time and living green. So why not emmlate what works (Europe) and reject what fails (South Carolina). That’s what I call common sense.
Speaker Pelosi acting in a fairly modest way upon her desire to keep a majority so that she can keep her job is unseemly.
-Brad
How can that be construed in any, way, shape or form as being “unseemly”? She wants to keep her job by trying to get more Democrats elected. By keeping her job she feels like she’s doing what’s best for the American people. You can disagree with her on the issues but to suggest she’s unseemly is, well, unseemly.
Go to the Sheheen campaign website and find ANYTHING that explains what he believes he can accomplish as governor. Under his Issues page, he has five topics with a a couple bullet points under each.
At what point is Sheheen going to tell us some specifics? At what point is he going to start actually running a campaign?
Here’s the extent of his “ideas” on fixing government:
“As governor, Vincent will continue to push for greater accountability, increased efficiency, and reform of the governmental process.
”
Who’s writing his stuff, Alvin Greene?
And how does that differ from Nikki Haley’s goals?
Okay, so the Republicans don’t want out-of-state Dems influencing local elections, but it’s a show of broad national support that Nikki has so much out-of-state support.
I’m thinking a savvy liberal like me should pump her contributions into purple state elections that might turn blue.
Moderate, conservative, radical — I don’t know. The the one thing that I do see in Lindsey Graham is an intellectually honest individual. I don’t feel insulted when I hear him speak. So in that regard, he has my respect. And that’s more than I can say than for some others, regardless of how moderate or radical they may be.
Geez.. The Sheheen website has two recent videos of him with Mark Quinn and in the first one all he does is talk about Haley and Sanford and how he’s not like them. That’s a platform?
He appears to be running for Boy Scout troop leader. Ready to bring his harmonica to the campfire and belt out Kumbaya.
12 minutes of video and I learned nothing about what specifically he would do as governor.
Haley should start calling for debates now and make Sheheen talk about being governor instead of talking about Sanford.
Sheheen’s website hasn’t been updated in three weeks and has no new news since June 13.
Is he running for Governor? Does he have a staff? It’s 2010.
Doug, it looks like our comments crossed paths there. In any event, I addressed your points above.
George McGovern was the last true liberal to win a major party nomination for POTUS. Too bad he was trounced in 1972. The Dems have been gun shy about nominating a liberal ever since. He was the last candidate from either party, except perhaps for Ron Paul, who actually proposed a reduction in military spending.
Speaking of McGovern, he celebrated his 88th birthday yesterday by jumping out of an airplane. How cool is that!
First, Doug, talking about Mark Sanford is INFINITELY more relevant, if you’re running for governor of South Carolina, than talking about Nancy Pelosi or Barack Obama. The two things are in totally different universes, in terms of relevance.
The single most important consideration in choosing a governor this year is to make sure we do not make the kind of mistake we made in choosing Mark Sanford. Since Nikki would very much be a continuation of Sanford, if Vincent were not pointing out clearly that he most assuredly would not be, I would demand that he do so.
Now, as to your comments about the Web site. Personally, I haven’t seen a candidate Web site I find entirely satisfactory, although I’m sort of guessing you and I are looking for different qualifications. Personally, I thought the Greenville News story that The State ran today was pretty indicative of important differences between the two candidates: Nikki was for the abominable Act 388 and Vincent was against it; Vincent was for finally raising SC’s lowest-in-the-nation cigarette tax while Nikki was against it.
The excuse Nikki gave for the inexcusable position of opposing the cigarette tax hike was that we should have comprehensive tax reform. Of course, no one in SC has been a bigger advocate of comprehensive tax reform than I have, and in fact the ONLY exception to that with regard to taxes that we ever made at The State was for the cigarette tax (why? because it was about public health — specifically, pricing cigarettes out of the reach of kids — and not about revenues; as we often said, the purpose would be served even if the money were burned). We’ve even opposed such badly needed changes as a higher gas tax to pay to keep up our crumbling roads, maintaining that (with the exception of the cigarette tax) there should be no increases or decreases or other tinkering with the revenue stream without comprehensive reform.
But since I make that exception, perhaps you think Nikki is simply more consistent than I. No way. Somehow, mysteriously, she was unbothered by her concern for comprehensive reform when she voted for Act 388, which is probably the biggest, fattest example of fiddling with the tax system without ANY regard to the consequences to the rest of the system that we’ve seen in 20 years. My exception was modest: The cigarette tax, while saving lives, would have had no effect on the rest of the tax system — it simply would raise the cost of cigarettes. By contrast, Act 388 took the responsibility for supporting school operations entirely off of owner-occupied homes, thereby piling a huge new burden on businesses and on rental property, and placed far too much reliance on a raised sales tax, which was immediately undermined as a replacement revenue source by the exemption for groceries and the plunge in the economy. As a result of 388 — passed purely to please a minority of homeowners sitting on rapidly appreciating property on the coast and other prime locations — our entire tax structure is less stable, less balanced and more dysfunctional than ever.
Anyway…
Beyond that, I will share your frustration that the Web site needs updating. I’ve been frustrated by it lately myself. But I chalk that up to the fact that the campaign had not yet replaced our longtime blog friend Laurin. I look forward to seeing progress on the Web front when the replacement is on board.
Lynn, I love your humor and your political perception!
j thank you. While on Assembly Street today, I saw Comptroller Eckstrom pawning the State’s silver seal. Wonder what the House’s Mace and Staff are worth at Bonded Loan? Does adding Pelosi’s and Rich’s net worth to SC’s improve our credit worthiness?