Category Archives: Elections

You can go your own way: Walid Hakim is not your everyday Lexington County politician

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As you may know, Walid Hakim is running for SC House District 88. It is currently held by Mac Toole, who is pretty much a standard-issue Lexington County Republican.

Walid has a different approach.

First, he sent out this release yesterday:

Hakim Wins Endorsement from
SC AFL-CIO

We recently received a letter from Donna S. Dewitt, the President of the SC AFL-CIO, informing us of their decision to endorse Walid Hakim for State House:

Dear Walid:

The SC AFL-CIO Committee on Political Education (COPE) met April 10th and voted to endorse your candidacy for SC HD 88.

We will be informing our affiliates in the districts with Primary opposition of our endorsement and encouraging them to assist your campaign in any way possible. We will assign key members to work with you and your staff.

While our monetary resources are limited and will be focused on our candidates with opposition, we want to assure you that we will be mobilizing our members around the issues that are important to the working men and women of South Carolina. They will know that you are the candidate the COPE Endorsement Committee has decided best represents those issues.

###

Then, he released the video above.

In it, he calls for a general strike.

On May Day.

On Al Jazeera.

I guess it’s Walid doing this because Mac Toole didn’t think of it, right? Right…

Walid is definitely going his own way, and staying true to his roots.

Maybe this rhetorical approach is a GIRL thing…

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Something struck me when I was reading this release just now from Mia Butler Garrick:

Friends,

Today, we are just 43 days away from the Primary Election on June 12th and I need your help.  Right now in South Carolina, hundreds of special interest groups lobby the good ole boy network here at the State House to vigorously maintain control of the failed status quo that continues to plague our state.  They use their influence to ensure that SC remains at the bottom-of-the-best list by continuing to enact policies that wreak havoc on public education, hinder economic development and job creation and foster an environment of partisanship, nepotism and corruption at all levels of government.

I’m proud of the fact that the folks of District 79 always stand firmly against the good ole boys.  We stand boldly for jobs, for small businesses, for public education, for better infrastructure and safe schools and communities.  But more importantly, we stand firmly and boldly, together.  My campaign has never been about me.  It’s about what we can accomplish together for the future of South Carolina!

That’s why today, I’m asking all of you to step up just as you did two years ago, and show your support by volunteering now.

Election Day is Tuesday, June 12th.

Did it strike you that that sounded very much like the way the Nikki Haley presents herself to voters? As the lone beacon of transparency and virtue in a squall of self-dealing “good ol’ boys”?

Of course, the difference between them might be that Mia actually means it when she says those things. But the similarity in the general line of expression struck me…

Romney Gay Shocker!

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Just ran across this exclusive from Jennifer Rubin at the WashPost:

Richard Grenell, the openly gay spokesman recently hired to sharpen the foreign policy message of Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, has resigned in the wake of a full-court press by anti-gay conservatives.

In a statement obtained by Right Turn, Grenell says:

I have decided to resign from the Romney campaign as the Foreign Policy and National Security Spokesman. While I welcomed the challenge to confront President Obama’s foreign policy failures and weak leadership on the world stage, my ability to speak clearly and forcefully on the issues has been greatly diminished by the hyper-partisan discussion of personal issues that sometimes comes from a presidential campaign. I want to thank Governor Romney for his belief in me and my abilities and his clear message to me that being openly gay was a non-issue for him and his team.

According to sources familiar with the situation, Grenell decided to resign after being kept under wraps during a time when national security issues, including the president’s ad concerning Osama bin Laden, had emerged front and center in the campaign…

And I couldn’t believe it.

I know what you’re thinking: What? Romney had an openly gay adviser? Even for a second?

Yep, that’s what I was thinking, too. Who’da thunk it?

‘… the centre cannot hold… while the worst are full of passionate intensity.’

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Today I pulled from my bookshelf a volume of William Butler Yeats, which I’ve had since college. Someone had recently mentioned the source of the phrase “no country for old men,” and I wanted to look it up.

Eventually, as I browsed, my eyes fell on this:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

W. B. Yeats

Which is a pretty good evocation of what it feels like to be an UnPartisan these days.

And it took me back to what I read in the paper this morning, a story about how SC Republicans (who “are full of passionate intensity”) are reconciling themselves to the man who had turned out to be their best — the one who is widely known  to “lack all conviction.”

I was dismayed throughout the piece. First, there was this quote from Tom Davis — someone I’ve always seen, in person, as a reasonable man, but who continually takes unreasonable positions:

Davis, who backed U.S. Rep. Ron Paul for president in the state’s January GOP primary, now has some good things to say about Romney. But his words sound as much like a warning as an endorsement.

“If he frames the debate between President Obama’s agenda of an ever-growing and more powerful government versus faith in free markets and individual liberty, I think he’s got a good chance of winning,” said Davis, a lawyer in Beaufort. “If he doesn’t draw the line that sharply and tries to tack toward the center, then I think it will be very difficult.”

In other words, my friend Tom is saying that if Romney does anything to make himself more appealing to nonpartisans like me, then people like Tom won’t support him.

This is distressing. It’s distressing that Tom actually seems to believe that the president’s agenda, rather than being the good of the country, is “an ever-growing and more powerful government,” and that he actually doesn’t believe in “individual liberty.” The first is mere hyperbole; the second completely delegitimizes the president, for what American doesn’t believe in liberty?

But this is mild stuff. Tom is the very soul of moderation compared to GOP Chair Chad Connelly:

“He’s a better candidate than he was a year ago. He’s able to articulate all the reasons we need to make sure Obama is just the worst one-term president ever.”…

“When Gov. Romney is the eventual nominee, (those voters) will excited because they’re so disgusted at what Obama has done, trashing the Constitution and pushing Obamacare down our throats,” Connelly predicted.

What?!? “Worst… president ever?” “Disgusted?” “Trashing the Constitution?” “Pushing Obamacare [legislation shaped and legally passed by the Congress) down our throats?”

You would think the leader of our country were Caligula. There has never been a president of the United States who deserved that sort of language, although we’ve had some sorry ones. Yes, I know Chad is the head of a party, but still — I’ve sat and talked pleasantly with him. He’s not a raving lunatic. Yet he speaks as though he’s lost all sense of proportion. This is the way people in the mainstream of the major parties speak these days.

To end on a positive note, I was struck by the language used by Tea Party Freshman Congressman Jeff Duncan:

“Gov. Romney’s policies would be a clear departure from the dubious tactics of the Obama administration,” said Duncan, who hasn’t endorsed Romney or any other Republican candidate.

“I’m confident that Gov. Romney can win over the American people on the promise of limited government, defending individual liberties and a return to common-sense solutions to our country’s biggest problems,” Duncan said.

See, now? That’s the way civilized men speak of others with whom they disagree. “Dubious tactics.” That says one disagrees with the man’s ideas (while at the same time, admitting that the other man could be right, since you are merely calling his approach “dubious”), but one’s sense of proportion is still intact.

Sad, isn’t it, that such rational speech stands out so starkly these days?

Rove says SC’s a toss-up? Is this a typo, or what?

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I think maybe the partisans at both ends have totally lost their minds now. I just got this from Dick Harpootlian:

President Barack Obama is going to win South Carolina.

You don’t believe it? Would you believe the Prince of Darkness Karl Rove?

Well click here and read his latest poll calling South Carolina a “toss up.” So even the biggest Republican propagandist in the country has to admit Barack Obama CAN win South Carolina this fall.

So help us make Karl Rove’s nightmare come true and click here to volunteer. President Obama CAN win, but only if you help. Just do it.

Hey, anything can happen, but if you’re talking probabilities… no way.

Here’s the original Rove info to which Harpootlian refers, but it doesn’t answer the question: What is the basis for putting SC in the “toss-up” column?

If anyone knows, please share.

Jon Huntsman’s very last Tweet

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I was doing a little housecleaning on my Twitter account… as I climb toward 1,800 followers, I thought I’d weed out some of those I follow in a quest to get under 600, so I could brag that I had three times as many followers as I follow, instead of my old standard of twice as many (the ways being one of the Twitterati can mess with your head is truly embarrassing)… and I ran across @JonHuntsman.

So I did what I do with others I’m unsure of — I checked to see what his last Tweet was. And I was startled to see that it was this:

As you can see, that was transmitted at 1:56 p.m. on Jan. 15.

OK, now, remember the sequence of events on that day…

The State‘s endorsement ran that morning.

Around 9 p.m. that night, the news broke that he was dropping out of the primary.

So… it was widely known that he was dropping out only about seven hours after he — or perhaps I should say his campaign — was Tweeting out how pleased he was by The State‘s endorsement.

Yeah, a guy who’s going to drop out can still be appreciative — maybe even especially appreciative — of kind words. But why would he bother Tweeting it? Especially when he’s not much of a Tweeter to start with (his last Tweet before that was five days old).

Of course, I’ve been told there were people in his SC campaign who didn’t know he was dropping out until after media had contacted them. A confusing time.

But I thought this was a mildly interesting footnote.

Oh, and yeah, I’ll be dropping him from my “follow” list.

One thing seems sure — you won’t get “change” of any kind with Mitt Romney

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This morning on the radio, I heard a discussion of what a challenge Obama has in his re-election effort getting young people to back him they way they did in 2008.

Those young people, the argument went, wanted “hope” and “change,” and didn’t get enough of it.

I can see how that might have the effect of dampening enthusiasm, perhaps even of suppressing turnout.

What I don’t see it doing is translating to support for Romney. Unless these young folks really delude themselves, or unless the change they want is of a rightward bent — in which case, they’re still deluding themselves.

And most of us know this. It’s why the GOP base went running to everyone else they could think of before settling on Romney — they knew he wasn’t a True Believer on the kind of change THEY wanted.

And I knew it, which was why I saw him as the most palatable candidate in the field — the real conservative. Romney is a manager. He wants to manage the nation to prosperity. And maybe he can do that. But he’s not a revolutionary, or a counter-revolutionary. He’s a manager.

Now you might throw at me various statements that he’s made or positions he’s taken that contradict that, to which I’ll say, Right. And he’s also the father of Obamacare, but you don’t see him acting like it, do you? As you may have noted, his positioning is somewhat… flexible… based on what he thinks is needed to get the job done at a given time.

I backed Romney — reluctantly — because I didn’t like the kind of “change” that the GOP field was offering this time around. Repealing Obamacare. Endangering the full faith and credit of the United States by absolutely insisting that budget cuts not be accompanied by any kind of tax increases. I didn’t want any of that stuff.

When McCain and Obama ran four years ago, there were changes I looked forward to with each. I believed McCain would manage the War on Terror much better than Bush had. I knew he had the courage to take on things like comprehensive immigration reform. With Obama, while being reasonably certain that he would NOT institute the kinds of national security changes his base hoped for (and I was right — in fact, he has pursued the war with a stronger hand than Bush, and gotten away with it) and he just might give us meaningful health care reform. I even sorta had hopes for a rational energy policy.

But Romney’s virtue, to me, is that he does not represent the kind of change that his party has stood for since 2010 (or perhaps I should say, since the day after Election Day 2008, which seems to be the moment that party went off the rails). That’s a good thing.

I still don’t understand how ANYONE was fooled by John Edwards, at any point in time

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Here is an explanation by one accomplished professional (Walter Shapiro) who was completely taken in. Excerpts:

About three weeks after Sept. 11, 2001, my wife, Meryl Gordon, and I had an off-the-record dinner with John and Elizabeth Edwards at the Washington restaurant Olives. The dinner was at the blurry intersection of Washington life—ostensibly social (Meryl had bonded with Elizabeth after writing an Elle magazine profile of her husband in 2001) but at its core professional (I was a columnist for USA Today and Edwards had White House dreams). Everyone was in a shell-shocked daze after the terrorist attacks, but my only clear memory of that dinner was Edwards’ palpable dislike for John Kerry, an obvious rival for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination.

That was the beginning of a political-journalistic courtship that now makes me cringe. With Edwards on trial in North Carolina on charges of violating federal campaign-finance laws—after the disgrace of being caught with a mistress and denying being the father of her baby—I wish I had befriended a comparatively more honorable political figure like Eliot Spitzer or Mark Sanford…

In hindsight, I feel like the jaded city slicker, bristling with self-confidence that he can never be fooled, who ends up hoodwinked by the smiling rural Southern confidence man. Please understand: I did not deliberately put a thumb on the scale when I wrote about Edwards. It was more that I was convinced by Edwards’ sincerity when he talked passionately about poverty and the Two Americas. And I especially believed (because I spent so much time with Elizabeth) the romantic myth of the Edwards marriage.

Many Edwards insiders from the 2004 campaign say the vice-presidential nomination (bestowed by, yes, John Kerry) changed him. The entourage, the plane, the Secret Service detail and the frenzy of a fall campaign all supposedly fueled Edwards’ self-importance and sense of entitlement. But as I struggle to understand my own entanglement with a scandal-scarred presidential contender, I wonder if this arbitrary division between pre-veep Edwards and post-veep Edwards is too glib.

The danger signs and character flaws were always there, and I failed to notice them. I was certainly not alone in my blindness. David Axelrod, for example, was Edwards’ first media consultant during the 2004 primary campaign. Even after Axelrod drifted away to concentrate on a long-shot Senate race for a candidate named Barack Obama in Illinois, he returned for Edwards’ last stand in the Wisconsin primary. I recall running into Axelrod in the Pfister Hotel in Milwaukee on primary day and hearing him say of Edwards, “He’ll be president someday.”…

Yes, the “danger signs and character flaws WERE always there,” and they stuck out a mile. While I hadn’t reached the point of completely dismissing him in print as a phony, you can see my uneasiness with him in this column from 2003:

… There are few things more unbecoming than a millionaire trial lawyer presenting himself to a crowd as the ultimate populist. Huey Long could pull it off; he had the common touch. So did George Wallace. But John Edwards is one of those “sleek-headed” men that Shakespeare wrote of in “Julius Caesar.” He may be lean, but he hath not the hungry look. Mr. Edwards is decidedly lacking in rough edges. Not even age can stick to him.
His entrance was predictably corny. Other speakers had unobtrusively climbed the back steps onto the platform. Mr. Edwards snuck around to the back of the crowd, then leaped out of his hiding place with a huge grin and his hand out, looking for all the world like he was surprised to find himself among all these supporters. He hand-shook his way through the audience to the podium, a la Bill Clinton , thereby signifying that he comes “from the people.” Watch for that shot in upcoming TV commercials.
His speech was laced with populist non-sequiturs. For instance, he went way over the top exhibiting his incredulity at Bush’s “jobless recovery,” chuckling with his audience at such an oxymoron – as though the current administration had invented the term. (A computer scan found the phrase 641 times in major news sources during calendar year 1993 ; so much for novelty.)…

(The point of the column was to say that some protesters who were there to picket Edwards were even worse than he was. But first I had to establish what I’d thought of him. This incident formed part of my better-known “phony” column in 2007, in which I particularly concentrated on a detail I had not used in this piece — because it involved such a subjective impression that I didn’t have the confidence to attach importance to it until I’d had more experience with him.)

I’m not smug for having been put off, from the first time I saw him in person, by what seems to have taken in others. I’m just surprised that they didn’t see it, too.

Turns out America likes Edwards less than I do

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If y’all will recall, I experienced an unexpected, and not entirely pleasant, moment in the national spotlight back in 2007 when I wrote a column headlined, “Why I see John Edwards as a big phony.”

I caught a lot of heat about it at the time. I later had the gratification of having many people tell me I’d been right all along, even though what was learned about him later was somewhat different from what I was accusing him of. Nevertheless, all of it spoke to his general failure to be what he represented himself to be.

But even I, who first started raising questions about the guy in 2003, was slightly started to read this this morning, as Edwards’ trial started:

(CBS News) With opening arguments in the trial of former U.S. senator and presidential candidate John Edwards set to begin on on Monday, a CBS News/New York Times poll shows that public opinion of him has plummeted since he was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2007. Now, he is now most known for cheating on his wife.

The CBS/NYT poll reveals that only 3 percent of those polled hold a favorable view of Edwards, who has been charged with misusing campaign funds. That is down from 30 percent in 2007 when he was running for the Democratic nomination, which is also the last time the question was asked among registered voters.

Since 2007, Edwards’ unfavorable ratings have risen eleven points, from 30 percent to 41 percent today. However, half of those polled are undecided or don’t have an opinion of Edwards.

Women, however, especially dislike Edwards, with just 2 percent holding a favorable view of him compared to 45 percent who view him unfavorably…

And who can blame them?

But 2 percent? It almost makes me feel sorry for the guy. Almost.

Jon Huntsman marvels at inadequacy of 2012 presidential field, compares GOP to Chicoms

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In this file photo from last summer, Henry McMaster points to the one GOP presidential candidate who might have impressed Jon Huntsman.

Just ran across this over at HuffPost:

Jon Huntsman leveled harsh criticism at his party on Sunday evening, BuzzFeed’s Zeke Miller reported, comparing the Republican Party to communist China and questioning the strength of this year’s presidential field.

During an event at the 92nd Street Y in New York City, Huntsman spoke candidly about his party’s flaws, lamenting the Republican National Committee’s decision to rescind an invitation to a major fundraising event after Huntsman called for a third-party candidate to enter the race.

“This is what they do in China on party matters if you talk off script,” Huntsman said.

Huntsman, a former Utah governor who dropped out of the GOP primary in January, served as U.S. ambassador to China under President Barack Obama.

He also criticized the Republican candidates’ foreign policy stances, particularly in regard to China.

“I don’t know what world these people are living in,” Huntsman said…

Huntsman also spoke on Sunday about his presidential candidacy, revealing that he was less than impressed by his fellow candidates when he attended his first debate in August.

“Is this the best we could do?” Huntsman said he asked himself.

Turns out that Huntsman, whose SC followers largely did not follow his lead in endorsing Mitt Romney when he dropped out, is also rather lukewarm on his fellow Mormon.

Of three political rules broken, two involved SC

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National media may get South Carolina wrong, but on the whole, I find the British press more readable. So it was that I enjoyed this piece in The Guardian, which took a hard-eyed look at political precedent.

You know how analysts over here like to say things like “If Obama wins/loses re-election, it will be the first time that a Democrat ever did so in a year ending in the numeral 2,” or some other such meaningless nonsense — as if every election weren’t distinct, and decided on the basis of millions of reasons scattered across the electorate.

It’s political analysis on the level of sports color commentary — Well, Tim, if he swings at this and misses, it will be the first time that an American League right-hander, facing a left-handed reliever in the bottom of the seventh with men on first and third, has ever, yadda yadda.

In this piece, Harry Enten demonstrates that this election, however it comes out, is destined to break all sorts of records — as does every election.

You should go read it.

But the part that jumped out at me, and that I want to share with you today, is this passage:

At least one of these rules, and likely more, are going to be broken in 2012. The conventional wisdom will be turned on its head: 2012 will indeed be a “unique year”. Believers of this idea can also point to the primary season for the uniqueness that is 2012.

Here are three of them that have since gone the way of the Linotype.

1. No Republican candidate had ever won the South Carolina Republican primary without winning either Iowa or New Hampshire – until Newt Gingrich.

2. No Republican had ever won the nomination without winning South Carolina – until Mitt Romney.

3. No non-Protestant candidate had ever won the Republican nomination – until Mitt Romney.

Yep, of the three unprecedented things that happened in the GOP primary season in 2012 involved South Carolina.

Sometimes, we even shock ourselves.

District 3 voters: What motivated you to vote as you did?

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I’m asking because I was somewhat surprised at how easily Moe Baddourah won the runoff yesterday. Nothing against Moe — I wish him all the best, and hope he’s a very successful council member — but that’s not the way I thought it would end up. I thought Daniel Coble would win, although not run away with it. I saw a Baddourah win as possible, but again, I figured it would be close.

My reasoning was as follows. I thought:

  • Moe had pretty much received all of his potential support in the first go-round. I had seen him as the pro-business, suspicious-of-government candidate in the race, and that he got all of those voters on April 3.
  • All voters who were attracted to Jenny Isgett’s theme that since the district had been represented by a woman for 30 years, it should go for her, seemed more likely to go for Coble in the runoff.
  • Coble’s support was more visible, and seemed more enthusiastic. I really felt for Moe at that neighborhood association meeting where Brett shot the video. At one point he mentioned that the small crowd seemed to be 90 percent for Coble, and I think he was right.
  • Everybody who I knew had declared for a candidate had declared for Coble. I can’t think of anybody who publicly endorsed Moe in the last couple of weeks. That doesn’t mean no one did, but the news didn’t get to me. (Yes, someone will inevitably say that personal endorsements are meaningless, as someone always does but they’ll be wrong. In fact, in an election with no reported polling, they’re about all you have to go by. And even if they didn’t mean much individually, they ALL seemed to go to Coble, which had to be indicative of something.)

But all that reasoning added up to nothing, which leaves me speculating as to the reason it went the other way:

  • Moe and Jenny were actually the anti-establishment vote, or the anti-Coble (as in Bob) vote, if you will.  Jenny voters only had one non-Coble candidate left, and so they went for him.
  • Voters reacted against Coble’s youth.
  • Every one of those public endorsements — Belinda Gergel, James Smith, Steve Morrison, Kit Smith and to a lesser extent Mike Miller — counted against Coble with an electorate that was in an anti-establishment mood. Coble was definitely the Shandonista candidate, and maybe voters in other areas (and perhaps in Shandon itself) reacted against that.
  • One of the few issues on which there was a noticeable difference between the candidates — the water/sewer money, funding the bus system — meant more to voters in those neighborhoods than I could tell as an outsider. (But this explanation seems unlikely, because the differences between them were mere matters of degree, not fundamental values.)
  • There’s more dissatisfaction with the current city council than I had thought (and voting for Baddourah was more of a vote for “change”). I had heard a lot less general grumbling since Benjamin, Plaugh, Gergel and Newman had been elected, but maybe the honeymoon is truly over.
  • Moe had told me he had learned a lot from losing to Seth Rose two years ago. And remember, Seth was an anti-establishment candidate, because he also beat Kit Smith’s chosen successor (a fellow Bennettsville boy). Part of that was a lot of knocking on doors. Of course, Coble did that, too. But maybe there were some organizational things I couldn’t see that really helped Moe turn out his identified supporters — which is everything in such a tiny-turnout election. (But I knew Moe didn’t do everything that Seth did, because Seth advertised on this blog. Ahem.)

As far as tactics are concerned, I could just ask Moe. And I will when I see him. But I’m more interested in why the tactics worked — that is to say, I’m more curious about what the voters themselves were thinking. And since there was no exit polling, I’m asking now.

So how about it, District 3 voters? Whether you backed Baddourah or Coble, why did you do so? Your answers may bear significantly on the future course of Columbia.

“Conservatives Fooled Again!” Aw, lighten up, Francis…

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Before my friends on the left get too wound up telling us what a dangerous right-winger Mitt Romney is, I thought it might be helpful to share with you the sort of thing that actual right-wingers are saying about him. This, and the picture above, are from a release I got promoting a book by a couple of self-styled conservatives:

Des Moines, IA —Just like his lukewarm predecessors Gerald Ford, George H.W. Bush, Bob Dole, and John McCain, Mitt Romney will lose the election this fall, which means the time is now for patriots to begin planning for 2016 lest they risk getting fooled again by the Republican establishment.
So says best-selling conservative author Gregg Jackson and nationally-syndicated radio host Steve Deace, the co-authors of the explosive new book We Won’t Get Fooled Again: Where the Christian Right Went Wrong and How to Make America Right Again. Endorsed by former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee and former Congressman J.C. Watts, We Won’t Get Fooled Again documents 30 years of failed political activism by conservatives, including interviews with several of the movement’s leading figures like Ann Coulter, Dr. Richard Land, and Tom Minnery of Focus on the Family.
“Moderates never win presidential elections and Romney won’t either,” said Jackson, former talk show host at WRKO in Boston. “Every time we have allowed the Republican establishment to have its way the country has lost. And as someone who was on the radio during Romney’s time as governor of Massachusetts, I saw up close that he’s a flip-flopper at best, and a total RINO (Republican in Name Only) at worst. You can’t trust anything Romney says in one news cycle, let alone over the long haul. Whenever the American people are faced with the choice of liberal or liberal-light, they always go with the outright liberal. That’s how we got Obama in the first place, and thanks to the GOP and the failure of many conservative leaders, 2008 is repeating itself all over again.”
Deace, who also writes for Townhall.com, concurs. “Romney has all the lame of Bob Dole plus the flip-flopping integrity of John Kerry,” Deace said. “Right now in the White House we have a committed leftist the American people seem poised to reject, but leave it to the Republican establishment to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory yet again by nominating someone who has a record of healthcare mandates, taxpayer-funded abortions, and support for the homosexual agenda that rivals Obama. Coming off of the successful 2010 mid-term election, you would’ve hoped the GOP would’ve gotten the message America wanted something dramatically different than Obama, but sadly that message fell on deaf ears. This is why the time is now for grassroots conservatives and patriots to take it upon themselves to get it right in 2016 and not leave it up to the failed Republican establishment again.”
The headline on the release was “Conservatives Fooled Again!” Which just makes me want to say, Aw, lighten up, Francis…

District 3 folks, be sure to vote in runoff today

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Well, today’s the day for folks in Rosewood, Shandon, Melrose and other nearby parts of Columbia. Get out there and exercise your franchise.

I liked Alex Postic‘s (that is to say, Mr. Shop Tart‘s) take on the election on Facebook this morning:

Don’t forget to vote today Columbia. Either way, I think Columbia wins – and we get a neighbor on City Council.

Which is no exaggeration. Moe told me he’s like next door from the Tart — which puts him across the street from the house I lived in when I was 4 years old — and Daniel’s very close by as well.

This is the kind of politics you get when you stretch subsidiarity to the max (not the max that Paul Ryan would take it to, which would be the individual, but the max the way I’ve always understood the concept — buy I digress).

Here’s hoping that when it’s over, Columbia does indeed win.

The videos we did for the Coble campaign

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Here are the three videos ADCO created for the Daniel Coble runoff campaign. I like the way they came out.

I think you’ll find they’re a little different from what you usually see from a political campaign.

There are no “gotchas” here. We haven’t edited the truth to try to embarrass the opponent or make him look bad. Our purpose was more journalistic, to provide the voter with information they weren’t getting from news media, to help them make up their minds. Yes, we thought Daniel looked a little better than Moe in these clips. But the clips weren’t just chosen on that basis — in fact, we thought Daniel came across better throughout the debate, although Moe handled himself well, too. They were chosen because they struck a nice balance between complete answers, more than you’d get on TV news, without being so lengthy that the viewer wouldn’t lose interest and go away. (For instance, there were some really pertinent passages when the candidates discussed an important issue at some length — such as when Coble explained his position on water and sewer funds being used in the general fund, and did a good job with it — but we felt they were too long for this purpose.)

At the end of this forum, before the Melrose Neighborhood Association on Monday night, Moe Baddourah thanked the group and praised the format. He liked it because he wasn’t limited to 30-second answers as in some such gatherings. I think he was right, and you should be able to see some of what he liked about the format in these clips, even though we didn’t use some of the longer answers.

Each of the answers you see is mostly complete and unedited. I say “mostly” because in several cases, we trimmed the beginning of an answer and started the clip at the point when the candidate settled down to really answering the question — to the extent that he actually did answer it, which didn’t always happen.

You might watch these and decide you prefer Moe to Daniel, although I think most people will not. In any case, you can get a pretty good sense from watching them which of them approaches issues, and public service, in the way that you would prefer an elected representative to do.

I could elaborate here on the three clips and why we chose them, but I’d rather that those of you who are interested (particularly those who live in Columbia’s third district) would look at them with a fresh eye first, and after I see your reaction, I’ll elaborate.

Enjoy.

Here’s what a Coble endorsement looks like

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Some readers seemed confused earlier as to what an “endorsement” of a candidate looked like. It looks like this, in The State today:

COLUMBIA City Council District 3 runoff opponents Moe Baddourah and Daniel Coble are solid candidates who share common priorities, from focusing on district needs to improving public safety and providing long-term funding for the public bus system.

They also share a common drawback: We fear their strong focus on constituent and district needs could lead them to put those interests ahead of more important citywide issues.

While the two men are pretty even in many ways, Mr. Coble does distinguish himself as the better candidate. His knowledge and understanding of city issues and how government works stood out among all candidates in the just-concluded council races….

Now I can’t say it’s a ringing, unequivocal endorsement. Daniel is The State‘s second choice for the seat. My old colleagues initially endorsed Jenny Isgett, who did not make it into the runoff.

Now if I did endorse someone, it would be Daniel. It so happens that the candidate ADCO is doing work for is the one I would choose were I endorsing. But wait, you say! Isn’t my saying that an endorsement?

Not to me. I’ve spent many years of my life doing endorsements, and I have a very clear idea of what one is. To me, an endorsement involves setting forth a series of arguments as to why someone is the better candidate. As I’ve said thousands of times over the years, the value in an endorsement is the reasons why, not the mere who.

That goes to the core of why newspapers do endorsements (and should do endorsements). It doesn’t matter whether a reader ultimately agrees with the endorsement or not. It is valuable to have considered the arguments, whether you accept them in the end or not. For having spent that time reading a carefully constructed case for a candidate, your own ultimate decision will have been better-considered.

The endorsement in The State today is pretty good. It’s not exactly what I would have written, and were I still the editor I’d have made some changes in the piece, but I generally agree with the points made.

Here they come, all right — and ‘they’ includes YOU

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A fragment from the latest of the DCCC releases that come to me several times a day, which was headlined, “here they come…“:

Since Rick Santorum dropped out yesterday, the Obama-Romney general election has fully engaged.

Just hours after Santorum’s announcement, Karl Rove teamed up with the Koch Brothers to launch a $1.7 million SuperPAC ad buy attacking President Obama in key battleground states.

There’s too much at stake to fall behind Romney, Rove, and the Koch Brothers.

Since the general election kicked off yesterday, we’re only 951 donors away from our goal of 10,000 supporters standing strong for President Obama and a Democratic Majority.

Contribute $3 or more right now to fight back against the Republicans’ swift-boat attacks >>…

My favorite part, I think, is that excellent example of the way parties use completely nonsensical terminology that they know has a proven track record of stirring the emotions of their base — in this case, “swift-boating.” (A term that hasn’t had any sort of relevance for eight years, and never had the meaning that Democrats ascribe to it — but it stirs the indignation of the faithful, and that’s the point.)

This release can be understood on several levels. One is face value: Now that his chief rival has dropped out, Mitt Romney will turn his full evil machine on our beloved President Obama, so you must give us money so we can fight him! Which is problematic in that the situation is not new. Romney has been trying to ignore his rivals and focus on the general election since before the Iowa caucuses; he just kept getting distracted. Now, you’ll see more of the same, with fewer distractions.

Then there’s another, ironic level. This is but one of a very long series of missives over the past few months going after Mitt Romney (remember how bemused I was that the Dems were totally focused on Romney, even as Gingrich was winning the SC primary?), and also trying to scare you into giving money so the party could keep doing so. No Rubicon is being crossed here, folks. Just another step on a long, boring road.

But there is one sense in which we are seeing a qualitative change at this moment. We are, with the departure of Santorum (although not of Gingrich or Paul), entering waters that partisans on both sides have longed to enter. We are entering the area where, according to the self-justifying propaganda of both sides, they believe they have the excuse to throw off any constraints that might in the past have pulled them somewhat in the direction of truth and proportion.

In other words, here they come — the Dems and Repubs both — and their coming at us with stuff likely to be even more outrageous than what we’ve seen.

For months, the two sides have been preparing their followers for this moment. During the SC primary campaign, I repeatedly heard and saw Republicans excusing the attacks they were hurling at each other by saying, “You’d better toughen up and learn to take it now, because if you’re the nominee, this is nothing compared to the horrible stuff that Obama will throw at you in the fall.” And I would turn and look at Obama, and I would wonder whom they were talking about. We’ve all seen the kinds of campaigns Obama runs. The fact that he was NOT like that was a prime reason why we endorsed him in the 2008 SC primary.

Meanwhile, the Dems have been working as hard as ever to demonize the opposition, building to this moment when they could say, “Now these monsters will stop chewing on each other and come after US!” At which point we’re all supposed to run for the hills or something. No, excuse me — we’re supposed to throw all our money at the Democratic Party (which will FIGHT for us!) and then run for the hills.

Well, thanks for the warning. You’ve  reminded me that it’s time to batten down the hatches. A squall of foolishness is headed our way. Here they come…

Something you should know: I’m helping Coble

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The Melrose event Monday night.

Last night I went to a debate between Daniel Coble and Moe Baddourah sponsored by the Melrose Neighborhood Association. But I’m not going to tell you what I think about what was said there because I wasn’t there as a blogger. This is complicated by the fact that various people who saw me there, including Moe, probably think I was there as a blogger. So this is to set the record straight.

I’ll start at the beginning.

Lately, a large part of my job with ADCO has been business development. In connection with that, I went to breakfast one morning several weeks ago (Feb. 23) with my old friend Bud Ferillo, and I urged him that if he ever finds himself in a situation where he’s representing a client who needs some of the services that ADCO provides, he should give me a call.

Sometime later (I’m not exactly sure when, but my first email on the subject was on the Ides of March), he gave me a buzz and said he needed some help with the production of some last-minute mailings for the Daniel Coble campaign. Fine. I put him in contact with colleagues here at ADCO with expertise in that area, and they helped him out.

At that point, I wasn’t directly involved, beyond getting people together. (I didn’t even see the mailings until after they were done and gone.) Nevertheless, when I interviewed Moe for this post, and when I interviewed Mike Miller for this one, I mentioned what my company was doing to help out Bud on Daniel’s behalf. Neither of them expressed any concern. (I meant to tell Jenny Isgett when I interviewed her, but later realized I had forgotten. And given the reactions of the other candidates, it didn’t seem worth a separate call. I’ll let you be the judge whether I was right about that.)

Then, over the next couple of weeks, I got slightly more involved, but only in the sense of being a conduit for communications between the campaign and folks at ADCO.

Last Thursday, my status changed. On that day, Bud asked whether ADCO could shoot video at a debate Monday night, and provide YouTube clips contrasting the candidates. I checked, and our usual in-house people couldn’t do it that night. There wasn’t time for handling things the usual way. I went ahead and personally lined up a free-lancer, Brett Flashnick, who readily agreed to help out.

So I was there last night in case he had questions, and also so I could witness the whole debate, and be able to help him in editing the video. This afternoon, Brett and Bud and I spent between two and three hours going through video and choosing some clips of good YouTube length. Brett has left now and will send Bud and Daniel the finished product to see if they approve.

So basically, I’ve been heavily involved now in making editorial judgments about campaign materials. I wasn’t involved in that way at all before, but I am now.

Even before things got to this point, I was worried about what, if anything, I should write about the campaign. When I wrote about all those endorsements that Daniel got on March 29, the news was so helpful (in my opinion) to the Coble campaign that I worried that I wasn’t reporting anything of similar impact from the other campaigns, and that it could look like I was favoring him. But I couldn’t figure out how to balance things out. Neither Moe nor Jenny were generating news like that; I wasn’t seeing anything new to react to.

Now that I write that, I realize that as indirect as my involvement was before, I should have told y’all about it. The fact that it was entering my head, that I was worrying about whether I was being 100 percent fair or not, even a little bit, means I should have told y’all so you could judge for yourselves. But I didn’t. I thought about it, but I decided that I was overthinking things, and that all I would accomplish would be to make the connection sound like a bigger deal than it was. Which is a case of over-overthinking, now that I think further (over-over-overthink) about it.

Also, I thought this: The fact that Daniel was the only candidate advertising on my blog (and I assure you, the other candidates had the same opportunities to do so that he did) was a greater apparent conflict than my indirect involvement with those mailings. And y’all knew about that — you could see the ad — and were therefore forewarned and armed to make any judgments you chose to make as to whether I was being fair.

Regardless of decisions I made in the past, there’s no question now: Y’all should know that I am involved at this point. So, anything else I say about this runoff (which probably won’t be much) must be considered in light of the fact that I’ve definitely, directly, done work to help the Coble campaign. I fact, I invite you to go back and read everything else I’ve written up to now (just use the search feature to look for the candidates’ names), and decide for yourself.

Of course, this is an opinion blog. I never make any pretense to news-style “objectivity.” But what I invite you to do is see whether you think any subjective judgments I’ve made were ones I would have made anyway, without any involvement in the campaign. Actually, what I see when I look back is that I held back from expressing any strong opinions or preferences. Which means that what I wrote was affected. Because that’s not normal for me.

All of this is making my head hurt. This, of course, is why people who make their livings as reporters and editors just don’t get involved, period. Or at least, that’s the way it used to be when there were good, full-time jobs to be had in that field.

Now, increasingly, news (or at least commentary) is brought to you by people who make their livings some other way. Which is something you have long known about me.

Life is confusing here in the New Normal, and all I can figure out to do about it is to tell y’all what I’m doing. Which I just did.

And the runoff begins…

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Got this this morning from Daniel Coble:

In Tuesday’s District 3 City Council three-way race, I came within 60 votes of catching front-runner Moe Baddourah and leading the District. In less than two weeks, I face him again in a run-off election for the City Council seat. I am very gratified for the support of friends and neighbors within the District and around Columbia for getting me to this point!! A lot rides on this election. And with your help, we will win Tuesday, April 17.

The contrast between Mr. Baddourah’s priorities and my own for serving Columbia could not be more stark. While Baddourah has run his campaign solely on the interests of businesses, I am committed to a more balanced approach that protects neighborhoods while growing our businesses and keeping them prosperous. The result of Baddourah’s narrowly focused campaign would block progress for our City and put at risk the capacity of the City to fully fund essential services like law enforcement. He hasn’t answered how he would replace lost revenue. And he hasn’t said what services should be cut.

My focus on protecting our City’s essential services like public safety and neighborhood protection is highlighted by the endorsement of our campaign by local leaders such as Sheriff Leon Lott and current District 3 City Council Representative Dr. Belinda Gergel. I want to maintain the City’s capacity to help District 3 residents, small businesses, and our economy. And know that I will represent your interests and all other important issues in our District to continue to strengthen our great city! I would be honored to represent District 3 and to carry forward the important priorities of our community that are the backbone of our campaign:

  • Protecting our Neighborhoods
  • Public Safety and Crime Reduction
  • Environmental Protection and Sustainability Programs
  • Economic and Local Business Development
  • Development of our Cultural and Arts Communities
  • Improved Public Transportation
  • Important Historic Preservation
  • Meeting the Needs of District 3 and Columbia Residents!

I am putting together a plan of action to win on April 17. But I need your help to make it possible. Would you support my candidacy by making a donation NOW to support this larger effort? Your gift of $1000, $500, $250, $100, $50 or whatever you choose or are able to give (donations of any size are greatly appreciated and will be well used), would help me communicate and get out supporters for the run-off election.

In order to help, you can give online here or mail your donations to:

Coble for Council
PO Box 50524
Columbia, SC 29250

Our city is a breathing, vibrant and growing community. Every new generation of Columbia has been tasked with the job of re-inventing our community anew. This is the work before us. And with your help now, we will make this new vision a reality.

I haven’t received anything from Moe Baddourah. I need to give him a call and make sure I’m on his email list…