Monthly Archives: February 2012

Post poll shows Obama pulling ahead of Romney

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The matchup shows President Obama being favored over Mitt Romney, 52 percent to 43 percent. Most troublesome for Republicans, I would think, is this passage from the WashPost story:

Overall, 55 percent of those who are closely following the campaign say they disapprove of what the GOP candidates have been saying. By better than 2 to 1, Americans say the more they learn about Romney, the less they like him. Even among Republicans, as many offer negative as positive assessments of him on this question. Judgments about former House speaker Newt Gingrich, who denounced Romney on Saturday night in Nevada, are about 3 to 1 negative.

Meanwhile, the president’s recent remarks are better reviewed. Among the roughly 6 in 10 Americans who heard or read about the president’s State of the Union address, 57 percent say they approve of most of what he laid out….

Joel Sawyer joins forces with Wesley Donehue

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A screenshot from an episode of "Pub Politics" when Joel Sawyer, right, stood in for Wesley Donehue. At left is Phil Bailey, and the guest is the record-holder, making his 8th appearance.

Joel Sawyer, ex-press secretary to Mark Sanford and until recently the public face of the Huntsman campaign in SC, has a new gig:

Columbia, SC – February 6, 2012 – Two of South Carolina’s top up-and-coming political and communications talents are teaming up, with Donehue Direct CEO Wesley Donehue announcing today that Joel Sawyer would be joining the firm effective immediately as Senior Vice President.

“Donehue Direct has already established a brand as being the premier internet, social media, and political consulting firm in South Carolina,” Donehue said. “Joel is going to help take this company to the next level in terms of growing our brand and expanding our presence across the region. “

Sawyer and Donehue were recently named among Columbia’s 50 Most Influential People by Columbia Business Monthly, the only political consultants to receive the honor.

Sawyer began his career as a newspaper reporter with the Spartanburg Herald-Journal, where he won S.C. Press Association Awards for spot news reporting and in-depth reporting. He then served in Gov. Sanford’s communications office for more than six years, most recently as Communications Director. He moved on to become Executive Director of the SCGOP, where he guided the state party to its first-ever sweep of Constitutional Offices and taking the 5th Congressional District. Most recently, he served as state Campaign Manager for Jon Huntsman for President.

“This is an incredible opportunity to join a growing firm that is really at the cutting edge of internet and social media technology,” Sawyer said. “Wes and his team are literally creating the roadmap for the convergence of new media and traditional political consulting – and this partnership is going to take it to new heights.”

Donehue Direct is a political consulting and technology firm with operations in Columbia, Charleston and San Francisco. The Donehue team runs campaign and internet operations for clients ranging from City Council and State Legislature to United States Senator and Governor. Last year, Donehue Direct CEO Wesley Donehue was named Republican Innovator of the Year by Campaigns and Elections magazine.

Congratulations to both Joel and Wesley. They seem poised for success in the Republican interactive services market. In South Carolina, that’s a growth niche…

Once upon a time, boys and girls, there were these things called “newspapers”…

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This newsreel, brought to my attention by Burl Burlingame, has a lot of funny lines in it, but none is a bigger hoot than, “there are a lot of writing jobs on newspapers.”

I also like the part when it says that women find it hard to compete with men for hard-news reporting jobs. And it’s so true! You know why? Because there’s aren’t any freaking reporting jobs, that’s why!

Post: Why should troops die in Afghanistan this year if we’re leaving next year?

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The Washington Post had a thought-provoking editorial this morning. Excerpts:

On Wednesday, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta floated an entirely different plan: an end to most U.S. and NATO combat operations in Afghanistan by the second half of 2013, a year earlier than expected, and a substantial cut in the previously planned size of the Afghan armed forces. So much for “fight.” Though Mr. Panetta didn’t say so, this strategy implies another big U.S. troop reduction in 2013, beyond the pullout of about one-third of troops already planned for this year. U.S. commanders have lobbied to keep the troop strength steady from this coming autumn until the end of 2014 — the current endpoint for the NATO military commitment.

The new timetable may sound good to voters when Mr. Obama touts it on the presidential campaign trail. But how will the Taliban, and its backers in Pakistan, interpret it? Before negotiations even begin, the administration has unilaterally and radically reduced the opposing force the Taliban can expect to face 18 months from now. Will Taliban leader Mohammad Omar have reason to make significant concessions between now and then? More likely, the extremist Islamic movement and an increasingly hostile Pakistani military establishment will conclude that the United States is desperate to get its troops out of Afghanistan, as quickly as possible — whether or not the Afghan government and constitution survive….

But if President Obama has decided to pursue that course, there’s an inevitable next question. If the goal of a stable and democratic Afghanistan is to be subordinated — if timetables are to be accelerated, regardless of conditions — why should U.S. ground troops fight and die this year?

That’s always the question, when timetables are given for withdrawal: If we’re going to withdraw at a certain time regardless of conditions, what’s the point of fighting now?

It’s a brutally tough question whether you come at it from the direction of a hawk or a dove.

SC Democrats tout latest employment figures, give Obama the credit

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Rep. James Smith, Mayor Steve Benjamin and Councilwoman Tameika Devine gathered at Main and Gervais today to celebrate the latest employment figures.

Here’s a quote from the release that summoned me to the windswept presser (sorry about the sound quality):

When the President took office, we were losing more than 700,000 jobs a month. The economy was spiraling out of control, and the economic security of millions of middle-class Americans was vanishing. Now, the private sector has added more than 3.7 million jobs, the American auto industry and the more than 1.4 million jobs it supports were saved, and manufacturing is creating jobs for the first time since the 1990s. But the President didn’t just address the immediate crisis and stop there.  He began to lay a foundation for a stronger economy across the country so such a collapse can never happen again.

This is a make-or-break moment for the middle class, and we have a lot more to do if we’re going to continue the trend we’ve seen for the last two years. That’s why the President has outlined a vision for an America built to last.  It’s a blueprint based on American manufacturing, American energy, skills for American workers and a renewal of the American values that made our nation’s middle class the envy of the world – values like fairness and opportunity.

Mitt Romney and Republicans in South Carolina don’t share this vision.  He doesn’t think we should invest in our workers, our students or American industries like carmakers and clean energy. He doesn’t think that we should be rewarding companies only when they bring jobs back to states all across the country, not when they send them overseas. And just as baffling, Romney and the Republicans don’t even admit that this reversal and recovery is happening.

Today, Democrats are embracing the fact that in January, unemployment plummeted to its lowest point in three years. Here’s a copy of the chart they’re standing next to. Meanwhile, some of their detractors are saying that a record number of people dropped out of the workforce that same month.

So I guess you pick the stats of your choice, according to your predilections.

For my part, I told James after the event, all I know is that Obama was inaugurated, and six weeks later, I was laid off. I guess that makes me a tough audience. 😉

But seriously, folks, whoever can claim credit, I’m glad to see promising signs, and look forward to when everybody’s doing as well as they did before 2008.

Who is Mallory Factor? “He’s a funny guy,” said Thomas Ravenel back in the day

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No, I’m not posting this to poke fun at my former newspaper for the ungrammatical lede headline (of course, it should be, “…says he didn’t tell Loftis whom to hire…”). What drew me was how often the question, “Who is Mallory Factor?,” has been asked over the years.

In fact, I started a post in 2006 with those very words:

Who is Mallory Factor, whose guest column appears on the op-ed page today? And no, he’s not a character from a Douglas Adams novel, even though the name may remind you of “Ford Prefect.” (It did me, anyway.)

He’s a really, really conservative rich guy from New York who recently moved to Charleston. He’s also increasingly into politics. And, like Howard Rich, he’s increasingly into South Carolina politics.

On a bit of a whim, I asked Thomas Ravenel, another really, really conservative rich guy, if he knew Mallory Factor. I kind of had a hunch they might have managed to get together. And sure enough, they had. Here’s what Mr. Ravenel had to say. (Sorry about the way it cuts off too soon; that’s as much as will fit on a clip with my little camera — I still thought it was interesting. Especially the part about going to a roast for the guy who invented the Laffer Curve. You’ve really got to be a supply-sider to get invited to those kinds of parties.)

You have to watch the video. It features Thomas Ravenel talking about what “a funny guy” Mallory Factor is.

Give blood, get free stuff — and save lives

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Tomorrow, Groundhog Day, there will be another community blood drive at the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center.

I can’t give, because it’s too soon after the last time. But you probably can. And of course, since I can’t do it this time, they’re giving away cool free stuff:

• A free American Red Cross Lifesavers t-shirt

• A free pound of Starbucks coffee

• A chance to win a pair of Delta Air Lines tickets

OK, so I’m jealous. But truth be told, last time around I managed to get my mitts on two rather nice long-sleeved T-shirts.

But the best reward is knowing that you’ve addressed the chronic shortage of life-giving blood in the Midlands.

The event will take place from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. To make an appointment, call 1-800-733-2767.

Tell them I sent you — in my place.

U.S. health care is already ‘socialized’

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I found this piece from Slate interesting:

At the end of 2011, the remarkable innovator Donald Berwick was forced to resign as the recess-appointed head of Medicare and Medicaid, a casualty of Republican-led opposition to his confirmation. An outspoken fan of the United Kingdom’s single-payer system, Berwick was portrayed by critics as a socialist who once commented that “excellent health care is by definition redistributional.” In 2010, for example, Republican leaders of the Senate Finance Committee grilled him about whether he “still distrusted the free market” and made it his goal to “make health care rationing the new normal.”

The furor over Berwick reflects a broader, fundamental disagreement over the nature of health insurance. Should it be “social” insurance, with which financial risk is leveled between those who are ill and healthy, so the carefree twentysomething and diabetic elderly man pay equally into the system? Or would it be better structured as “actuarial” insurance, where those expected to consume more shell out more, just as those who drive flashy, expensive cars or rack up speeding tickets pay higher auto insurance rates? If your view is the former, you generally support the notion of a single-payer system, as Berwick and many Democrats do. On the other hand, if you see health insurance as actuarial, you favor tiered premiums depending on age and pre-existing conditions, and tend to like health savings accounts, as many Republicans do. This dispute is central to continuing political wrangling over the 2010 health reform legislation, the main provisions of which are scheduled to take effect in a few years.

But Americans made their choice clear long before Barack Obama ever signed the law—and they picked social insurance. The issue today isn’t whether we should redistribute health care dollars. We do, arguably to the same degree that every other country does. Systems with national health insurance systems explicitly redistribute money before patients get in car accidents, discover cancer, or develop heart disease. Here we do it in secret after illness occurs. We create the illusion of actuarial insurance, when the truth is that all major American health care institutions have been socialized for decades…

Any rational health insurance system distributes risk, and cost, so that everyone pays a reasonable amount to cover the needs of the few who are sick or injured at a given moment.

And I’ll never understand why people object to putting the whole country in the same risk pool, thereby spreading cost and risk as thinly as possible.

But that’s ideologues for you. They’d rather call something names than think about how much more sensible it would be.

How can anyone so together go so wrong?

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Have you heard the news about Don Cornelius? Of “Soul Train” fame?

“Soul Train” creator Don Cornelius was found dead at his Sherman Oaks on home Wednesday morning.

Law enforcement sources said police arrived at Cornelius’ home around 4 a.m. He apparently died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, according to sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the case was ongoing.

The sources said there was no sign of foul play, but the Los Angeles Police Department was investigating…

Such occurrences cause me to have a thought that may seem trivial and superficial under the circumstances, but it occurs to me anyway: How does anyone that cool and collected — in terms of his public persona — go off the tracks to this extent? First the domestic violence thing four years ago, and now this?

OK, so that was a stage pose — the unflappable, calmly hip host. I get that. And no, people aren’t always the same off-stage. I mean, we once though Ike Turner was cool, too. But I wonder anyway.

I’ve often had a related, though slightly different, thought with regard to James Taylor — only I think I’m on firmer ground with that one. I look at him, and listen to him, and think, How could a guy have all those mental and drug problems over the years, when he is capable of making such amazingly mellow and soothing sounds any time? If I could do that, I find it hard to imagine that I would ever be uptight.

But what do I know about what it’s like to be these people? Not much.

South Carolina is now an electoral outlier

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On Monday, Bobby Harrell was talking about taking legislative steps to try to ensure South Carolina’s status as the first-in-the-South presidential primary (for both parties, not just the GOP).

But nine days earlier, SC GOP primary voters opted to undermine the best excuse for the Republican national committee, at least, to give South Carolina precedence. For the first time since 1980, they went out of their way to support a candidate who would NOT be the eventual nominee.

So why should anyone care what South Carolina thinks four years from now?

I, for one, will miss all the attention when it drifts away. I like it when the world is paying attention to us for something other than making jackasses of ourselves. I like the buzz. I like South Carolinians having a chance to affect grand events. And yes, I enjoy doing the national and international media interviews. Most importantly, who’s going to pay for me to take a mid-winter break in Key West when nobody cares any more what SC thinks?

I certainly wish my fellow SC voters had taken a moment to think about these things before they capriciously wasted their votes on Newt Gingrich on Jan. 21. But no, they were intent on throwing it all away.

For a moment there, it did look as though Floridians would accept the SC judgment as an early clue to the new direction, but then they woke up and said to themselves, “Wait a minute… this is Newt Gingrich! And we’re not South Carolina. We don’t go off on wild hairs, firing on Fort Sumter and voting for bombastic egoists…”

And they settled down and did what South Carolina usually settles down and does, but didn’t this time: Picked the safe choice, the obvious choice, the guy whose turn it is. They put Mitt Romney back on his inevitability path, and did so decisively.

And already out there, they’re forgetting South Carolina. I can feel it… The next time they pay attention to us, it will be Jon Stewart making fun of us again. And in the unlikely event that Mitt Romney is elected president, he’ll feel less grateful to South Carolina than Barack Obama does (the incumbent at least had an important primary victory here).

We’re drifting… drifting… into irrelevance…

Sigh…