Category Archives: Elections

“The Brad Show,” Episode 3: Vincent Sheheen

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Well, here it is: The third installment of “The Brad Show.” Our guest Wednesday afternoon was Sen. Vincent Sheheen, the Democratic nominee for governor of South Carolina.

We sort of did this one on the run. We found out on Wednesday that he would be in our neighborhood, and were told we could catch him over at Rep. James Smith‘s law office at 4 p.m. So Jay and Julia grabbed the equipment, and we ran over there. James and his staff hastily cleaned off a conference table that was covered with stacks of documents and other debris while Jay and Julia set up the camera and wired us for sound, and we were off. Twenty-five minutes later, we were packed up and ready to leave, the interview in the proverbial can. It all went so smoothly — no thanks to me; all I did was show up — that would you have thought we had done this 100 times before.

So thanks, Jay and Julia, and thanks, Capt. Smith, for accommodating us so generously.

I hope you can find something of value in this conversation. I’m sure you’ll tell me if you don’t…

Coming up on “The Brad Show:” Vincent Sheheen

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My plan was to keep pressing until I got a commitment for a time that Vincent Sheheen would sit still long enough for us to shoot an installment of “The Brad Show” with him, and then to turn and press Nikki Haley for an interview as well — having heard she was reluctant to do such things. Sort of the way I’m currently playing Joe Wilson and Rob Miller off against each other. (Oh, wait — you don’t suppose they’ll read this, do you?)

But the strategy fell all apart today, when the Sheheen campaign called and said, “What about today?,” which set off a scramble to act on that opportunity. Jay and Julia gathered up the equipment, and at 4 p.m., we spoke with him in the conference room over at James Smith’s law office, a few blocks from ADCO. The interview ran about 23 minutes, same as the one with Dr. Whitson.

The show should be up on the blog by the end of the day tomorrow, if nothing more arises to prevent Jay from getting it ready.

To whet your appetite, I share with you the list of questions that I prepared as a crutch before the session. Back when I was at the paper, I almost never prepared questions (or anything else) ahead of time. In keeping with the Fremen dictum to “Be prepared to appreciate what you meet,” and being a believer in the Dirk Gently holistic method of investigation, I liked to go in and see where the interview would go. And often it went in interesting directions that I could never have anticipated.

But with video, I’m a little less confident still, and like to have some questions in front of me in case I freeze up and can’t think of anything to dispel “dead air.”

So I prepared this list ahead of time (it took no more than five minutes) — and we actually got to most of the questions, as you will see tomorrow:

Questions for Vincent Sheheen

“The Brad Show”

October 13, 2010

At the Columbia Rotary Monday, you said this is the most important gubernatorial election in SC in 40 years. I concur. Or at the very least, it’s most important since we missed our chance to have Joe Riley as our governor in 94. But what are YOUR reasons for saying so?

Early in 2009, you jokingly asked me, “Am I making you hopeful?” Well, at this point I would say that depends: Can you win this election? Elaborate.

Why should you win it? Compare and contrast.

One beef I hear from readers on my blog is that sure, maybe Vincent Sheheen is a nice guy from a good family, but what would he DO? Talk about your vision for South Carolina. What do you want to accomplish as governor?

I particularly enjoyed hearing you speak Monday about one of my favorite topics – reforming state government. You have a plan for doing that that originally I wasn’t too crazy about – it involved a lot of sweetener for the Legislature. But since then, I’ve reached two conclusions: One, that’s the only way we’re going to get reform, and Two, your approach actually points to an important difference between you and your opponent.

Could you summarize that plan for our viewers?

Issues, plans and programs aside, elections are, to some extent, about character. Is this one more so?

How do you deal with all the revelations coming out about your opponent without seeming to be too negative? Do you think you’re hitting that note at the proper “Goldilocks” point – neither too hard nor too soft?

And your opponent aside, what the most important thing voters need to know about YOU?

What are you hearing from voters?

Where do you go from here?

By the way, with both Caroline Whitson and Vincent Sheheen, I did an unconventional thing. I gave each of them a brief glance at the questions I had prepared before we started, just so they could be thinking about the answers as we proceeded. I’m more interested in getting thoughtful answers than I am in ambushing sources.

I’ll gladly do the same for Nikki, if she’ll sit down with me — while at the same time telling her what I told Caroline and Vincent, that the questions were not an absolute guide. If things start to move in a promising direction that I didn’t anticipate, I revert to form and run in that direction.

Orwell stands up for the language

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Picking up on my reference to Newspeak back on this post, a reader who prefers not to be named shares with us this essay by Orwell from 1946. It indeed hits on some of concerns I have about the way our language is abused for political purposes today. An excerpt:

Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers. I will come back to this presently, and I hope that by that time the meaning of what I have said here will have become clearer. Meanwhile, here are five specimens of the English language as it is now habitually written.

What followed was a set of examples of bad writing, all of which made me self-conscious. A blogger is not a careful writer. Not this one, anyway. Not by the standards I embraced in the first three decades or so of my career. I defend myself by saying one can either be careful and precise (within the strictest definitions of those modifiers) or one can blog. Most of my posts are minor miracles in that I found the time to rip them out in stream-of-consciousness fashion. Careful thought is for print, or for a blog that only features new posts weekly or less often. I throw out ideas and stand ready to be corrected as I move on to others, always distracted as I simultaneously try to earn an honest living.

And I am intimidated especially because my respect for Orwell’s mastery of the language is so complete. For much of my adulthood, I remembered reading both 1984 and Brave New World in my youth, and placed them roughly in the same category — similarly nightmarish (although opposite, one of them imagining Stalinism triumphant, the other projecting extreme consumerism) dystopias, exhibiting roughly similar levels of literary quality. I was wrong. I read them both within the last few years, and was startled by what a masterful writer Orwell was, and how unremarkable Huxley’s prose was by comparison.

I cringed at what Orwell would say about the words I carelessly thrust at my public like a stoker shoveling so much coal. I was somewhat encouraged to read his own confession of insecurity: “Look back through this essay, and for certain you will find that I have again and again committed the very faults I am protesting against.” But I did not for a moment fool myself; I am not Orwell’s equal. But I am his ally in detesting certain sins against the language committed in the service of politics. Another excerpt:

In our time it is broadly true that political writing is bad writing. Where it is not true, it will generally be found that the writer is some kind of rebel, expressing his private opinions and not a “party line.” Orthodoxy, of whatever color, seems to demand a lifeless, imitative style. The political dialects to be found in pamphlets, leading articles, manifestoes, White papers and the speeches of undersecretaries do, of course, vary from party to party, but they are all alike in that one almost never finds in them a fresh, vivid, homemade turn of speech. When one watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases — bestial atrocities, iron heel, bloodstained tyranny, free peoples of the world, stand shoulder to shoulder — one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy: a feeling which suddenly becomes stronger at moments when the light catches the speaker’s spectacles and turns them into blank discs which seem to have no eyes behind them. And this is not altogether fanciful. A speaker who uses that kind of phraseology has gone some distance toward turning himself into a machine. The appropriate noises are coming out of his larynx, but his brain is not involved as it would be if he were choosing his words for himself. If the speech he is making is one that he is accustomed to make over and over again, he may be almost unconscious of what he is saying, as one is when one utters the responses in church. And this reduced state of consciousness, if not indispensable, is at any rate favorable to political conformity.

It is indeed my goal at all times to be “some kind of rebel, expressing his private opinions and not a ‘party line.'” And I constantly decry the “lifeless, imitative style” found in the expression of “(o)rthodoxy, of whatever color.” I am not Orwell’s equal in the use of language, but I do feel qualified to decry the pap that parties put out.

Let us end by savoring the way Orwell ended his piece:

I have not here been considering the literary use of language, but merely language as an instrument for expressing and not for concealing or preventing thought. Stuart Chase and others have come near to claiming that all abstract words are meaningless, and have used this as a pretext for advocating a kind of political quietism. Since you don’t know what Fascism is, how can you struggle against Fascism? One need not swallow such absurdities as this, but one ought to recognize that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language, and that one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end. If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy. You cannot speak any of the necessary dialects, and when you make a stupid remark its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself. Political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one’s own habits, and from time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase — some jackboot, Achilles’ heel, hotbed, melting pot, acid test, veritable inferno, or other lump of verbal refuse — into the dustbin, where it belongs.

Note, among many other things, his implied assumption — as a lover of language — that “Conservatives” and “Anarchists” stand in opposition to each other. He certainly should believe that; I always have. The next time I hear a would-be “conservative” abuse the very idea of government, I will remember Orwell’s words, and feel a certain kinship.

Will now SWEARS it’s true. For what that’s worth

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As an old-time newspaperman, I still don’t know what to do with junk like this. In the old days it wouldn’t have been out there. But now it is. I mean, The Associated Press? It doesn’t any more MSM than that.

So what do we make of it? I leave that to y’all:

By SEANNA ADCOX – Associated Press Writer

COLUMBIA, S.C. — The political blogger who claims he had a physical relationship with married Republican South Carolina gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley offered new details in a sworn statement released Tuesday.

In an affidavit to a group of Republican activists critical of Haley, Will Folks states he had “romantic encounters” with the state representative in her Cadillac SUV, his apartment and her Statehouse office. He said the physical relationship ended in June 2007, when he began dating the woman who is now his wife.

“Rep. Haley specifically requested that I notify her in the event this relationship was getting serious so that she could ‘back off,'” the statement reads.

Haley’s campaign again denied all of Folks’ claims, which were made without any proof.

“There is something about the days just before an election that make certain people want to get back in the newspapers,” said Haley campaign manager Tim Pearson. “These accusations weren’t true in June, they aren’t true now, and those who continue to be fixated on this nonsense really should look into getting some professional help.”

Folks, 36, provided the three-page affidavit to the two-week-old group calling itself Conservatives for Truth in Politics, which is questioning Haley on various issues. It was sworn before a South Carolina notary public and signed by both but is not filed in any court…

Personally, I don’t think it changes any minds one way or the other. Do you?

“Conservative,” that surprisingly malleable word

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This morning as I parked on Assembly preparing to go in for breakfast, I ran into my good friend Samuel Tenenbaum, who was just leaving. He was agitated, as he often is. He and Patrick Cobb from AARP had just been commiserating about the general decline of our society, what Daniel Patrick Moynihan termed “defining deviance downward.”

And he couldn’t even get the first few words out without being interrupted by a beat-up car with a massive sound system, pulling up at the light right next to us, drowned his words. In frustration, he raised his voice higher to say that was just the kind of thing they were talking about — look at that guy; he’s not even embarrassed! Indeed not. He had his windows part way down, the better for us to hear the obnoxious sounds emanating from within (although not enough for us to see the darkened interior).

Of course, this was just part of the picture, the triumph of low and tacky that washes over us like a tsunami, from Sarah Palin (and such maids-in-waiting as Nikki Haley and Christine O’Donnell) to reality TV. I nodded and agreed that these were parlous, tacky times. (Oh, and no fair throwing that last post at me in this regard.) I tried to pull the conversation AWAY from booming basses, lest Samuel draw gunfire from the guy in the car. You never know.

What Samuel was exhibiting, of course, was a quality that people with a respect for the language would term “conservatism,” in the purest sense — decrying change, longing for a better time when people respected each other more. This may shock those who think of Samuel, with some justice, as one of the few actual liberal Democrats in South Carolina. But that’s what it was. Samuel was being as conservative as all get-out.

This brings me to something I read in the paper this morning:

House Republicans have a simple 2010 election agenda for S.C. voters — boost their Republican majority to 75 members, then watch conservative reform take hold.

Note the lack of quotations around the oddly oxymoronic phrase, “conservative reform.” Irony is often lost on news people, who have to play it deadpan. But what interested me is how a phrase that I remember hearing for the first time this year (it first jumped out at me back here) — I remember it because it struck me as odd — has now entered the lexicon so completely that an experienced reporter like Roddie Burris would use it, straight-faced, without attribution. And that his editors would go along.

My hat is off to the Tea Party and its allies, because a result like this would make any propagandist, even the propagators of Newspeak, envious. Causing people to adopt one’s own linguistic restylings is to propaganda what the hole-in-one is to golf, or the 300 game to bowling.

My problem with the phrase, of course, is that conservatism, rightly understood, is a resistance to change — not advocacy of it, whether the change is termed “reform” or not. If a conservative wants change, then he wants to change back to the way things once were, and then the term is no longer “conservative,” but “reactionary.” Properly understood.

Yes, I get that people want to reform the government in ways that they maintain are in keeping with “conservative” principles. And that’s not inherently oxymoronic, however much it might sound that way. For instance, the kind of restructuring of state government that I and Nikki Haley and (most effectively) Vincent Sheheen advocate would introduce such “conservative” values as accountability to entities and processes that now answer to no one.

My problems is that a lot of people call themselves “conservative” when they are not, according to any traditional meaning of the term. Nikki Haley, for one, whose politics would rightly be termed populist demagoguery (nobody ever called Huey Long “conservative”), and whose personal and business financial accounts exhibit anything but conservative accountability. But one can see why a politician would call herself “conservative” in a state that worships the word. And how he or she would term his or her ideas “reform” whether they are (and sometimes they are) or not.

All perfectly understandable, and perfectly within the honored traditions of political rhetoric.

What surprises me, though, is when I see the rest of us going along with the terminology. I say this not to pick on Roddie or The State. I think they are reflecting the fact that the term has entered the mainstream. I’m just surprised that it has.

I just hope he’s a better accountant than Nikki

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Catching up with my e-mail, I see this came in this morning:

Truth In Politics Announces Forensic Accounting Expert

COLUMBIA, SC- Conservatives for Truth in Politics announced today that Charleston CPA, Ellie Thomas, has joined the group as its CPA.  He will join Ms. Cyndi Mosteller, former 1st Vice Chair of the SC Republican Party and Dr. David Woodard, Political Science professor at Clemson University, Co-Chairs and Liana Orr, Executive Director and Secretary/ Treasurer as the officers of the 501 (c)(4) advocacy association.

Thomas is recognized as an expert in Accounting and Tax Matters by the Circuit Court of South Carolina and recognized as an expert in Forensic Accounting by the Circuit Court of South Carolina.  He served on the Patriot’s Pointe Development Authority from 2001-2004, serving as the Finance Committee Chairman from 2003-2004.  He also served as a volunteer accountant for the SC GOP from 1987-1989.

In addition to adding a CPA, TIP is pleased to announce they have over 100 official members of the organization and almost 500 followers on Facebook in less than 2 weeks since its formation.  The organization is also receiving contributions to help get the word out that true transparency and answers to serious questions concerning Republican Candidate Nikki Haley are in the public’s best interest.

“We are very pleased to have Ellie Thomas join us.  One of the main issues that has raised numerous questions is Nikki’s numerous violations on both her personal and business taxes.  Thomas, a forensic CPA that specializes in these matters, will be a tremendous resource to TIP as we educate the public about her numerous tax problems,” said Mosteller.

In addition to Ms. Haley failing to come clean on her personal and business tax matters, TIP is also asking Ms. Haley to explain or clarify many questions that are still lingering:

“To our knowledge, there is no ‘”small business tax” that she keeps referring to in her campaign rhetoric.  We feel very strongly that if Ms. Haley doesn’t come clean on that issue, we will be forced to let the public know it is nothing more than smoke and mirrors,” said Thomas.

“We do know that she wants to eliminate the corporate income tax which significantly benefit large out-of-state corporations and does absolutely nothing for the majority of small business.  She may try to pull the wool over your eyes by making up things like the “small business tax,” but I can assure you as a forensic CPA that has spent my entire professional career knowing the tax code that this organization will not allow these statements to go on any further unchecked,” said Thomas.

It does appear that Nikki Haley will pay for this big business tax break on the backs of the working families of SC by increasing their taxes on groceries.  A recent Wall Street Journal article noted that this will hit families making less than $45,000 a year the hardest, especially in a bad economy when more people are buying groceries to avoid eating out.  “I can tell you that most of my clients are not making more money but trying to save.  Eating out less and buying groceries to feed the family is the trend these days.  I never thought I would see a Republican Nominee advocate a tax in this economy.  Interestingly, I saw comments made by Iris Campbell.  I doubt Gov. Campbell would have been advocating a tax on groceries when the unemployment rate was at double digits and the economy was so bad,” said Mosteller.

TIP has also asked for Nikki Haley to make copies of her tax returns, her State House computer hard drive and emails available to the press in the same transparent manner as Sheheen. TIP has also asked for sworn affidavits from her, Will Folks and Larry Marchant concerning the charges of infidelity.  “We have heard from Folks and Marchant who indicated that they will provide the affidavits.  We have yet to hear from Ms. Haley,” said Mosteller.

For more information on Conservatives for Truth in Politics, please go to www.sctruth.com

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The comic stylings of Vincent Sheheen

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You can tell a lot about a candidate by the way he delivers a joke. And what I can tell from this is that we really need to elect this guy governor, to distract him from any plans he may have to pursue a standup career.

But seriously, folks…

You do see some of Vincent’s character on display here in the beginning of his speech to the Columbia Rotary Club — his casual, self-deprecating manner. And there’s a certain contrast to be drawn to Nikki Haley (who will speak to Rotary next Monday).

Whereas the joke is at the expense of a theoretical “South Carolina politician,” the gentle, warmly mocking way that Vincent makes a serious point stands in contrast to the angrier, grab-the-torches-and-pitchforks approach to “South Carolina politicians” that one might encounter at a Haley event. How Nikki manages to fool her supporters into believing that the South Carolina politician is “the Other,” that she is not herself one, is beyond me…

Ultimately, the issue of who will replace Mark Sanford is rightly a question of character. So I thought it worth sharing a tidbit from which you can infer something along those lines.

If anything, Vincent takes the whole lollygaggin’, easygoin’ thing to the point of being a fault. It’s why, I expect, Dick Harpootlian wanted Dwight Drake to run — Vincent is perceived as such a nice guy, and Dick wanted someone who would GO AFTER the Republicans. (One problem with that is that Dwight’s a pretty nice guy, too. But nevermind.)

And yes, I DO plan to post something more substantive about his speech yesterday. It’s just that I’m running out of time today, and this short clip was right at hand…

“The Brad Show” is BACK! Our guest — Caroline Whitson

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Well, I told you it was coming back, and here it is!

After a well-received pilot episode, “The Brad Show” got put on the back burner — not by network twits like the ones who canceled “Firefly” (and who will no doubt go to the “special hell” that Shepherd Book preached about) — but by me, because I was way busy trying to keep a blog going while working a new job.

But now it’s back, and it has cool new intro and theme music, compliments of ADCO Interactive’s Jay Barry. I told Jay I wanted something sort of NPRish, or Dick Cavettesque, and with that crystal-clear direction, this is what he came up with.

Watch, enjoy, and be edified. Not by me, but by my guest, the president of Columbia College, and leader in the effort to pass the penny sales tax for transportation — which is what we talked about.

We also talked about Caroline’s plans to don a Catwoman-like costume for the Ludie Bowl festivities over the weekend. She promises pictures, which I’m looking forward to seeing, and posting…

A thought-provoking note from SC Citizens for Life

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Still catching up with my e-mail…

I got this message from Holly Gatling in response to this post:

Dear Brad,

Do you have a marriage license?  A piece of paper you were willing to sign your name to as a statement of commitment?

That’s the difference between Sheheen and Haley.  Haley put her name on a statement of the agenda of South Carolina Citizens for Life and Sheheen declined.  How sad.

And why is there such hatred across this land for conservative, pro-life, Republican women?  The misogyny is grossly apparent.  Conservative, pro-life women are the greatest threat in politics today to the abortion industry, the greatest destroyer of human life on the planet.

We’re in this economic crisis because 50 million members of the human family have been wiped out by abortion.  That’s 50 million members of a tax-paying workforce and ALL their progeny.

I urge and encourage you to THINK with the body part men and women share equally — the brain.

Committed candidate v. undecided. The choice is clear.

Your friend,

Holly Gatling, Executive Director
South Carolina Citizens for Life

I appreciate my friend Holly — we worked together at the paper years ago — taking the time to respond. Here are some thoughts that her note generates for me:

  • Regarding the marriage license analogy: It makes the very good point that Vincent does not want to be married to S.C. Citizens for Life — a fact that has nothing to do with his own convictions as a Catholic. Vincent wants to work with everybody — Republicans, pro-choice Democrats, Zoroastrians should any show up at the State House — on issues having nothing to do with abortion. So why should he want to draw a bright line that says I’m one of these good people over here, and you’re one of those bad people over there? Which is the purpose of such endorsements, from the perspective of a Nikki Haley. Nikki wants to make sure everyone knows she’s on THIS side and therefore against THOSE people. And as long as she accomplishes that, she’s happy. As someone who presided for years over an editorial board that was sharply divided on abortion, I never tried to force us to take a position on it, for two reasons: It did not bear upon the issues that were important to moving South Carolina forward (which is what we were about), and it would have been foolish to create ill will on the board that would have spilled over into areas where, if we could achieve consensus, we might be able to make a difference. I wrote a column on the subject once. So I understand Vincent’s position, even if Holly doesn’t.
  • Who has “hatred” toward “conservative, pro-life, Republican women?” Certainly not I, and I would challenge anyone to demonstrate the opposite. And if they go looking for such women whom I “hate,” they’ll definitely have to look for someone other than Nikki Haley. Yeah, I’ve been pretty appalled at some of the things I’ve learned about her the last few months, but my one big beef is that she’d be disastrous for South Carolina as governor. That could be said about a lot of women — and men — against who I hold no malice. I really don’t know where that statement in the note comes from.
  • Finally, THINK is exactly what I’m urging people to do in this election. That, in fact, was all I was saying back before the primary in this post (“Don’t vote with your emotions, people. THINK!,” June 6), which some thought was way harsh on Nikki. But all I was saying was, THINK before you vote. Don’t base your vote on such emotional nonsense as being excited that she’s an Indian-American woman (or that she’s a “conservative, pro-life, Republican woman”), any more than you should be excited that Vincent is the first Catholic, and the first Lebanese-American, to win a major-party nomination for governor in this state. Still less should you vote because of the ENTIRELY irrelevant fact that you don’t like Barack Obama, which has absolutely zero to do with who should govern this state. THINK. Please, it’s all I want.

Mind you, in the past I have praised SC Citizens for Life for THINKing rather than going with the emotional flow, such as in this column on Feb. 7, 1996:

The endorsement of Jean Toal by S.C. Citizens for Life last week constituted one of those little epiphanies that have the potential to enlighten public life, if only we would pay attention.

In this case, the lesson to be learned was this:
The terms “liberal” and “conservative,” as they are popularly used today, serve virtually no useful purpose. They help not at all in the increasingly onerous task of meeting the challenges that face us in the political sphere. In fact, they often get in the way.
The Toal endorsement, while making perfect sense to the objective observer, momentarily demolished the world view of self-described “liberals” and “conservatives” as surely as Galileo messed with the heads of the geocentric crowd. “Conservatives” lost their cozy view of there being two kinds of people — Christians and “liberals.” Meanwhile, “liberals” couldn’t quite bring themselves to celebrate the endorsement because having common cause with those “conservative” right-to-lifers makes them queasy.
It’s nice to see nonsense knocked on its rear end.

My purpose at the time was to contrast the good sense demonstrated by Holly’s organization, as opposed to the mindlessness of her frequent allies among “conservative” Republicans who wanted to boot Justice Toal for the sin of being a Democrat (and therefore, in their small minds, a “liberal,” a word they use with all the thoughtfulness, subtlety and understanding of the mob crying “Witch!” in Monty Python’s “Holy Grail”).

My point then, as now: THINK.

Loose women should stay in the home, where they belong

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As noted back here, Lindsey Graham is about acting on principles, while Jim DeMint is about posturing on them. And now, he’s posturing on loose women. Personally, I’d rather see the loose women posturing, but we don’t always get what we want. This has The Slatest positively chortling upon reading the Spartanburg paper:

It’s almost enough to make you hope for an Alvin Greene upset: The Spartanberg Herald-Journalreports that Sen. Jim DeMint, a South Carolina Republican, recently reaffirmed his belief that certain categories of people aren’t fit for the nation’s classrooms, including gays, lesbians, and unmarried women who are living in sin. DeMint was speaking at the “Greater Freedom Rally” at First Baptist North Spartanburg when he made the remarks, which rehashed comments he first made in 2004. TheHerald-Journal characterized his statement thusly: “DeMint said if someone is openly homosexual, they shouldn’t be teaching in the classroom, and he holds the same position on an unmarried woman who’s sleeping with her boyfriend—she shouldn’t be in the classroom.” No word on what areas of public life men who sleep with their girlfriends should be barred from. Steve Benen is a little troubledby the fact that DeMint “is not just some random right-wing voice —he’s a prominent U.S. senator, a kingmaker in GOP primaries.” Josh Dorner points out that “two political action committees controlled by DeMint—MINT PAC and the Senate Conservatives Fund—are spending millions of dollars to elect GOP candidates from coast-to-coast.” Benen thinks this would be a fine time to find out how “the Junior DeMints” feel about gays and loose women. “It’d be interesting to know if they’d be willing to put some distance between themselves and their far-right hero,” he says. “Of course, there’s always the possibility that these folks agree with DeMint, and with a month to go before the election, that’d be good to know, too.”

Now, let me say I take a back seat to no one in longing for traditional values. I think I would have been at home in the Victorian era, I really do. As long as I was in the social class that had indoor plumbing. And I believe firmly that the best environment for kids is a stable, loving home headed by a mother and a father, married to each other. That’s a value worth standing up for, and it is NOT outlandish or comical for anyone to wish that the role models influencing our children also model that value.

But this is NOT the Victorian era. And DeMint’s chances of imposing Victorian values upon society are slim. He is also speaking of things that should be (if one has a conservative view of the purview of the federal government) outside his scope of legitimate action. And what this illustrates to me is his penchant for striking a pose in favor of a value, with neither any hope or realistic prospects of advancing the cause. Rather, he uses the value to draw a line between himself and his detractors, not in the hope of getting anything done, but in order to gain electoral advantage.

And this is problematic.

Poll shows Sheheen starting to gain on Haley

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As I said earlier about the Crantford survey — I don’t know whether this is right, but I certainly hope it is. This just in from the Sheheen campaign:

A new poll released today proves what we already knew – Vincent Sheheen has captured the momentum in the race to be South Carolina’s next governor.

News reports stated just a few weeks ago that Nikki Haley had a 17-point lead.  Yet a national pollster just released two polls conducted a week apart that show a dramatic shift towards Vincent Sheheen.  Hamilton Campaigns conducted a survey last week that gave Haley a 51%-41% lead with 8% undecided.  The second poll, conducted this week, shows Vincent cutting the lead in half to 49%-44%.

Read the pollster’s analysis:

“Bottomline – As voters have begun to tune in to this race, the margin between the two candidates has been cut in half in a short period of time. Given the rapid movement and voter discontent with Mark Sanford, this race has certainly become one to watch over the closing weeks of the campaign.” (View entire poll results)

This race is a dead heat and Vincent Sheheen is the candidate on the move.  It’s not surprising that Vincent has the momentum in this race because voters are learning troubling new things about Nikki Haley on a daily basis.  Trust has become the dominant issue in the last few weeks and South Carolinians are beginning to realize that they cannot trust Nikki Haley.  Help keep the momentum going.  Donate today and spread the word by forwarding this email to friends and family.  We need your help to close the deal.

For some time, I’ve been having some pretty dark thoughts about the state of democracy in South Carolina. First Alvin Greene, then a fall electorate perversely bent on ignoring all the negatives about a candidate who would be very bad news as governor of our state.

Each bit of news like this makes me feel less cynical, and gives me greater hope in the wisdom of the voters as they finally begin to pay attention…

What worries me is that this may not be enough movement, fast enough. It does South Carolina no good if the majority completes its shift to Sheheen in mid-November….

Tucker Eskew remembers when governors governed

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Tucker Eskew at the Summit Club Tuesday.

Yesterday at the Summit Club, Tucker Eskew spoke to a luncheon meeting of the local chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators. (And OMG, I just committed one of the cardinal sins of Newswriting 101. I just wrote what is termed a “The Ladies Auxiliary met on Wednesday” lede! Which is to say, a lede that tells you a scheduled event occurred, but doesn’t tell you what happened, or why you should care. Well, so what? I don’t have an editor or anyone else to get on me about it. Perhaps you’ve noticed.)

The first thing that interested me about this was how many former staffers from The State were there — Michael Sponhour, Jan Easterling, Jeff Stensland, Preston McLaurin and others, all there to represent their various clients. It was Old Home Week. And I think I was a bit of a curiosity at the gathering, because it was the first time many of them had seen me NOT as an editor at the paper. But perhaps I’m just thinking of myself as the center of the universe again. My wife says I do that.

Anyway, the interesting thing was hearing Tucker ramble about his experiences with the politicos he’s worked for. Some of it was familiar ground — stuff I lived through as well, but experiencing it from a different vantage point — but other parts told me something new. In case you don’t know Tucker, here’s the promo the IABC put out before the event:

High-stakes strategist and high-visibility spokesman Tucker Eskew will share some stories and lessons from his time in the South Carolina State House, the White House, No. 10 Downing Street and his consulting firm, Vianovo. Tucker is a spokesman and strategist whose career began with Ronald Reagan, Lee Atwater and Carroll Campbell. It then continued with George W. Bush and Sarah Palin. Drawing on these experiences, Tucker will reflect on the statecraft and stagecraft he’s witnessed and practiced over 25 years as a communicator. Register now for this inside look into the politics of media and communications from a man who’s been there and done that.

Tucker has come a long way since he was that punk kid we had to joust with when I headed the governmental affairs staff (10 reporters, back in the day) at The State and he was Carroll Campbell’s press secretary. He’s been behind the scenes at a number of interesting moments in history, and I enjoyed hearing his stories about:

His biggest mistake ever. This one made me smile, because it had nothing to do with handling Sarah Palin or anything you might expect. It was when we caught him, the governor’s press secretary, parking in a handicapped space in front of the Capitol Newsstand on Sunday mornings to pick up the papers. As he noted, the item ran in the “Earsay” column, a feature I started as a place to put all those interesting tidbits that reporters always avidly told their colleagues when they got back to the newsroom, but seldom got around to writing for the paper.

The BMW announcement. Probably the high point of the Campbell administration. Tucker sort of lost his temper at the time with reporters who reported cautiously on the announcement rather than playing it as being as big as it would eventually be — reporting just the initial employment, for instance, instead of the likely (and the predictions were borne out over time) economic impact over the long run. Of course, the reporters were just being the kind of healthy skeptics they were trained to be, in keeping with the rule, “If your mother says she loves you, check it out.” I mean, you certainly don’t give her any points from promising to love you at some point in the misty future. I got the sense Tucker understands that now. But he also takes satisfaction in knowing that BMW was as big a BFD as he maintained at the time.

Then and now. The hardest part of his job in the days before the BMW announcement was keeping the lid on the deal until it could be completed. He said he learned to say “no comment” 150 ways. When it was all done and he met the head guy from BWM, the German said, “So you’re the man who says nothing so much.” He urged us to remember that “This was an era when newspapers were large, well-staffed and aggressive.” That was indeed a long time ago.

The 2000 South Carolina Presidential Primary. This is the one part of his speech I had a real beef with. At some point — I didn’t write down the exact quote — he said something about being proud of the Bush victory. McCain supporter that I was, I would have found such pride distinctly out of place. Tucker had been on the Bush team so long — Campbell had been instrumental in getting Bush pere elected in 1988 — that he could see it no other way, I suppose.

The Long Count in Florida. At the point at which the campaign should have been done, he was asked to pack his bags to spend two or three days in Palm Beach. A week later, his wife mailed him a full suitcase. This was shortly after they had had a baby, and as he and an expectant world stood on one side of a glass wall looking into a room where the chads were being counted and obsessed over, it struck him how like standing outside the hospital nursery the experience was. And all he could think was, “That was one ugly baby” he was looking at in Palm Beach.

September 11, 2001. He was working in the White House press office. As everyone was still reeling from the impact of the first three planes, Whit Ayres called to ask him if he was all right. Sure I am, he said. Ayres said that on TV it looked like his building (the Eisenhower Office Building) was on fire. That was an optical illusion caused by the angle from which a network camera located downtown was shooting the smoke rising from the Pentagon. At around that time, some staffers asked whether they were supposed to be evacuating the building. No sooner had he said “no” than alarms went off. Everyone had been trained to walk, not run, to the exits in an emergency. So they were particularly alarmed to see and hear Secret Service agents yelling at women — including nice, soft-spoken women from South Carolina — to “Take off your shoes and RUN!” That’s because the agents had heard there was another plane headed toward them. Later in the day, he would advocate for the president to come back to the House and be seen leading. And he would write some of the first words released publicly from the administration, by Karen Hughes.

The great missed opportunity. He spoke of how writers right after 9/11 were hailing “the end of irony and cynicism.” Of course, it was just a pause before intensifying, as the partisan bitterness from both sides later exceeded our worst imaginings.

London during the media blitz. It was decided that in the War on Terror, London was the world media center, particularly for the Arabic press. So Tucker was sent there to represent the administration in liaison with Tony Blair’s staff at No. 10. He said it was “the most corrosive, cynical media environment that I’d ever been exposed to.” And he had thought we were bad back in Columbia. At least we didn’t Photoshop pictures of his boss with blood dripping from his fangs. (Tucker urged us to read Tony Blair’s new book. I certainly will, since I just asked for and got it for my birthday.)

Sarah Palin on SNL — In 2008, he was sent from the McCain campaign to become one of the handlers of someone he had known nothing about — the surprise running mate. A high point of that experience was accompanying her backstage when she went on “Saturday Night Live” — something Tucker had urged her to do. He actually had fun for once. But there was work to do as well. He had a role in nixing some bits of the script, such as a line that rhymed “filth” with “MILF.” And the bit that had McCain being “hot for teacher.”

South Carolina’s national image. “We were a shiny piece of trash on the side of the road for awhile,” he said of our time in the “Daily Show” limelight, but he thinks our image is better now. Nevertheless, he knows that South Carolina business people and others who have to travel outside the state pick up on a distinct impression of South Carolina, and “it’s not a good impression.” Someone had asked him whether we just had too many “characters.” He suggested that “it’s not about the characters, but it is about character.” After all, Thurmond and Hollings managed to be characters without reflecting too badly on our state’s character. That is less the case today.

Back in the day, Tucker used to get on my nerves, mostly because he advocated so tenaciously for his boss, whom at the time I saw as more of a partisan warrior than a guy interested in governing. (This was due in part to the fact that he was building his party, and doing so quite successfully. I kept comparing him unfavorably to Lamar Alexander, whom I had covered in Tennessee. Alexander had worked with Democratic lawmakers as full partners and accomplished a lot as a result. Campbell had more of an in-your-face style, doing such things as holding press conferences to rub it in when a Democratic lawmaker switched parties.) Now, I look back on the Campbell administration as halcyon days, a time when a real governor got things done, a state of affairs we haven’t been so fortunate to experience since.

Time matures our perspective. And it’s certainly matured Tucker. My Democratic friends will no doubt see him as anathema because of the names with which he has been associated. But I see him as that brash kid who has grown into a Man of Respect among people who do communications from that side of the wall — the side I’m now on, by the way.

And why is it so easy for me to see him that way now? Because he harks back to a time when we had a governor more interested in governing than posturing. A couple of times he proudly quoted someone — I missed who — calling Campbell an “exemplar of governing conservatism,” with emphasis on the “governing.” Campbell believed in it.

Tucker is too professional to put it this way, but he was obviously appalled at having to work for someone as insubstantial as Sarah Palin — the exemplar of the sort of Republican politician that dominates the scene today. He was at pains to explain her appeal in positive terms, describing her as an unaffected person who causes crowds to think approvingly, “She doesn’t talk down to me.”

He was asked whether he was the one who said Ms. Palin had “gone rogue.” No. But he marveled at being charged with promoting a candidate who was so startling unprepared to run for such a high office. He spoke of the kinds of experience and knowledge that one took for granted in a candidate at that level, and said, “We had never worked with someone who had never done those things.” As far as seasoning experiences were concerned, “Almost none of that had ever transpired.” But he didn’t call her a rogue. “I didn’t say it, but I observed it and was charged with dealing with it.”

And deal with it he must, because, as he realized after a time on the campaign, “She doesn’t have a lot of people who have been around her a long time.”

It was interesting, in light of these observations, to think back on what he had said a few minutes before, in a different context, about how amazing it is to see Nikki Haley “rise, in relative terms, from nowhere…” He had meant it in a good way. But the comparison to Palin is rather unavoidable.

Asked what he thought of the state’s two U.S. senators, he diplomatically spoke of his respect for both, but emphasized that they are very different. DeMint is about the “principle,” and Graham “stands on principle, but still gets things done” — making him another “exemplar of governing conservatism.” With distinct understatement, he noted that “DeMint has made himself a lot of friends around the country, and probably some opponents within” the Senate — the place where one has to work with people to get anything one believes in done.

A longtime Republican operative in the audience asked whether President Reagan could even get elected in today’s political environment. She — Christy Cox, longtime aide to David Wilkins — seemed to doubt it. Tucker said he would hope Ronald “Morning in America” Reagan could “change the climate.”

But the point was made. The climate would indeed have to be changed for the Great Communicator to be successful today.

So that’s why I can appreciate Tucker better today. Once, I saw him as a sort of partisan guerrilla warrior, part of the problem. Now, he joins me in harking back to a time when those who called themselves conservatives ran for, and served as, governor because they believed in governing. And as I said earlier, that was a long time ago…

Every time you turn over a rock…

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… another problem from Nikki Haley’s past crawls out.

This time, it has to do with the House member leaning on the Employment Security Commission to suspend an audit of her family business:

Republican gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley called a commissioner at the state’s workforce agency while she was a sitting lawmaker to ask that an audit of her family’s business be suspended.

Haley’s Democratic opponent, Vincent Sheheen, made Haley’s request public this afternoon while responding to Haley’s campaign statement that unemployed South Carolinians should submit to drug tests in order to collect unemployment benefits.

Haley says she asked for an extension.

Former Employment Security Commissioner Becky Richardson confirmed to The Post and Courier that Haley made the request. Richardson said she couldn’t recall all the specifics but said that the audit was indeed suspended, though she doesn’t remember for what length of time. Richardson said Haley told her “that it was a real busy time” when she made the request in early 2005. Haley has served in the statehouse since 2004…

How many more things will we learn about — before and after the election — that just don’t quite pass the smell test? It’s bizarre that she keeps trying to hammer Vincent over worker’s comp. Well, I guess Vincent decided he’d heard enough of that nonsense — particularly in light of how Nikki has tried to use the system.

And what on Earth is wrong with the people who still plan to vote for her?

I mean, isn’t this kind of abuse of power by politicians the very thing that riles up the Tea Partiers who are her base? Do those folks believe in anything?

Pro-life snub of Sheheen misses huge opportunity

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Pat pointed out back here the fact that my old friend Holly Gatling (formerly of The State‘s Pee Dee bureau) and her compatriots at South Carolina Citizens for Life endorsed Nikki Haley for the thinnest, most procedural of reasons. That is indeed true:

Citizens for Life director Holly Gatling says Haley scored a 100 on its 19-question election survey. She says Democrat Vincent Sheheen has voted with the anti-abortion group and has “never been hostile to our issues.” But he did not return the survey, so the group backed the candidate who put it in writing.

The fact is that in Vincent Sheheen, the pro-life movement has that most rare and precious of commodities, a creature that those who care should want to warmly embrace, cosset and nurture — a pro-life Democrat. Not since Bob Casey won his Senate seat from Rick Santorum in Pennsylvania, despite the nasty blowback from the likes of NARAL, has there been such a chance to support a pro-life Democratic nominee for high office.

And SCCofL has blown that opportunity for the sake of a piece of paper not obediently filled out.

Thereby the pro-life movement misses the opportunity to demonstrate it is more than a lapdog of the Right, to be taken for granted, to be bought for a piece of paper filled out with the answers that everyone knows they want to hear. The state Chamber of Commerce has had the guts to demonstrate in this race that it is not slavishly Republican. Even Republicans, from Cyndi Mosteller to Bobby Harrell, have to varying degrees expressed their differences with the nominee of their party. Why pass up this opportunity to demonstrate some real, conscience-based, independence for the sake of a piece of paper?

As The State noted a month ago, the pro-life movement has TWO strong candidates in the major-party nominees for governor (the subhed was, “Voters who support procedures left in cold by major candidates for governor” — those of you who want to pause and hold a moment of silence for the folks Holly calls the “pro-aborts” because for once they don’t have a champion, go right ahead; I will move on), and one of them is someone who, being a Democrat, actually takes some political risk, who actually gets out of the comfort zone of a member of his party, for his support for life. Me, I’d want to give a guy like that some props. But that’s me.

Haley 45%, Sheheen 41%: Are the voters starting to pay attention?

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I don’t know whether to be greatly encouraged or suspicious at the numbers. I’m going to choose to be cautiously encouraged by the poll numbers I learned about this morning from Tim Kelly’s blog:

A new poll completed just last evening shows some significant positive movement for Vincent Sheheen, with the race a virtual dead heat. Nikki Haley leads Sheheen 45%-41%, within the poll’s margin of error of 3.9%. Thirteen percent remain undecided.

The poll was conducted by South Carolina pollster Crantford & Associates. The survey involved 634 active registered South Carolina voters. Data collection occurred Thursday September the 30th between 6:00 PM and 9:00 PM.

While Rasmussen surveys have shown Haley maintaining a strong lead, the new results might signal that the accumulation of negative stories about Haley’s financial dealings is finally taking a toll. On Sunday, John O’Connor of The State explored the $110,000 fundraising job created specifically for Haley by Lexington Medical Center.

The Crantford poll also included the U.S. Senate race between incumbent Jim Demint and surprise challenger Alvin Green. Not surprisingly, Demint holds a 56%-23% lead in that race.

A copy of last night’s survey is available here (PDF).

I don’t know anything about this Crantford outfit. When I asked Tim what he knew, he said:

Carey does solid work. The knock on him would be that he’s a Democrat, but I’ve never known that to sway his numbers or sampling.

Could the voters finally be starting to pay attention to what we’re all learning? That would be wonderful news for South Carolina.

About that “business endorsement” Nikki got…

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As you know, the premiere organization for South Carolina’s business leadership, the state Chamber of Commerce, is backing Vincent Sheheen for governor — as are most serious people who know how the world works and care about the future of this state.

Nikki Haley keeps looking for ways to counter the fact that she, a Republican, does not have such support. Yesterday, her campaign announced that it had received the endorsement of the National Federation of Independent Business. My first thought was yeah, she’d have to go to a national organization for such a nod, because the locals know better — but then I saw that this was the South Carolina affiliate of that organization. So I didn’t really know what it meant.

But then somebody brought this blog post to my attention:

Will the NFIB please go away…..

Let’s be honest–I absolutely abhor the so-called National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB). It’s not a representative business group. In 2004 95% of their members said they voted for Bush, compared to 53% of all small business owners. (Remember that election was 50–50) Nonetheless, the first line of the recent NY Times article on NFIB joining the Republican Attorneys-General lawsuit on the individual mandate is that they’re trying to depoliticize the “largely Republican assault” on the new health care law. Ha, bloody ha.

But I’m not grumpy that the NFIB is joining this pointless lawsuit. I’m grumpy that they’re so blatantly going against the interest of small businesses. And yes I run one! So to remind you how stupid the NFIB is (in global not political terms) I’ve reprinted an article I wrote on Spot-on back in 2006–-and sadly nothing has changed. (The great thing about being a relatively veteran blogger is that I can really recycle material!)…

If all that is right, that would tend to explain the Haley endorsement.

Better to ask questions about Nikki NOW than after it’s too late

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The emergence of this small band of Republicans daring to ask the questions that every Republican — as well as every independent and Democrat — should be asking themselves about Nikki Haley (there’s little point of asking them of Nikki) is interesting.

On the one hand, it seems a spur-of-the-moment thing. “Conservatives for Truth in Politics” is sending out hurried press releases that are shot through with typos (here’s a somewhat cleaner version of the one they sent me via e-mail), and announcing a website that’s still under construction. The Facebook page had eight fans when I checked a few minutes ago, one of them being me — I had signed up to see if being a “fan” would get me more info.

But on the other hand, it may have been awhile in the making. Group Leader Cyndi Mosteller — former chair of the Charleston County GOP and sister of staunch Sanford ally Chip Campsen — wrote an op-ed piece that ran in The State Sept. 22, headlined “Haley puts GOP principles at risk.” An excerpt:

Since the June 2009 Sanford-Chapur expose, our state’s reputation has been tarnished by a leader compromised. A decade earlier, Congressman Mark Sanford stood for Bill Clinton’s resignation on the Lewinsky affair, declaring that “it would be much better for the country and for him personally” to resign. Unfortunately, a lack of shame is often the closest companion to lack of honor, and both leaders held tight their power of title, even after having lost the power of principle. With Nikki Haley, Republicans might be approaching that unfamiliar crossroads where victory of title and victory of principle are more perpendicular than parallel.

As former vice chairman of the state Republican Party, my political hemoglobin runs iron-strong red. I’m down the line for Republicans Alan Wilson, Mick Zais and Tim Scott — not just for their stands, but for their character. In contrast, facts and allegations regarding Mrs. Haley raise valid questions in many a Republican conscience.

Though running on a platform of transparency and accountability, Mrs. Haley has not paid her taxes by April 15 for the past five years, and has not even filed them by the end of her extension in three of those years — years she served in our General Assembly. And Mrs. Haley’s company, where she was the accountant, incurred three liens for withholding and income taxes not paid until 19 months past due. Yet Mrs. Haley continues to campaign on such statements as: “I know I’m the right person to go into this next position because I’m an accountant, who knows what it means to stretch a dollar.”

And what of the sexual allegations? They are so removed from core Republican values that if it weren’t for Mark Sanford, we could never imagine them possibly being true — nor imagine that any candidate would consider himself or herself worthy of governing if they were. When former Sanford press secretary Will Folks asserted “an inappropriate physical relationship with Nikki,” released more than 60 damage-control texts made to Haley’s campaign and published a detailed log of late night-calls with Mrs. Haley, she called them “categorically and totally false” and insisted, “I have been 100 percent faithful to my husband throughout our 13 years of marriage.” That denial drew an unequivocal “that is not true” from Republican lobbyist Larry Marchant, who said he had sex with Mrs. Haley and “I know in my heart it happened, and she knows in her heart it happened.”

But what do We the People know?

Ms. Mosteller was a county co-chair for Henry McMaster. Henry, a big believer in traditional GOP lockstep loyalty, has dutifully lined up behind the Haley insurgency, while Cyndi isn’t going so meekly into that dark night.

Yesterday we saw Henry’s successors as party chair, Katon Dawson and Karen Floyd, doing their duty by standing up to denounce the Mosteller group as being unrepresentative of Republicans. That will no doubt keep most of the rank and file in line.

But among your more knowledgeable Republicans, I suspect that there are a lot who are privately thinking what Ms. Mosteller is saying out loud. That’s one reason, I suspect, why Henry McMaster is the only one of Nikki’s primary opponents who is visibly supporting her, which is a fairly radical departure from the norm in this state.

Others, if they’re thinking at all, have to be wondering what else they will learn about Nikki after they elect her governor. Thus far, every rock that has been turned over in her general vicinity has had something troubling crawl out from under it.

Better to ask the questions now, rather than when it’s too late.

“Goldilocks planet:” Good news for the disaffected

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For those of you who are wondering what to do, and more specifically, where to go, if Nikki Haley becomes governor of South Carolina (and if people actually continue to speak seriously of Sarah Palin as presidential material), there’s good news:

WASHINGTON — Astronomers say they have for the first time spotted a planet beyond our own in what is sometimes called the Goldilocks zone for life: Not too hot, not too cold. Juuuust right.

Not too far from its star, not too close. So it could contain liquid water. The planet itself is neither too big nor too small for the proper surface, gravity and atmosphere.

It’s just right. Just like Earth.

“This really is the first Goldilocks planet,” said co-discoverer R. Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institution of Washington.

The new planet sits smack in the middle of what astronomers refer to as the habitable zone, unlike any of the nearly 500 other planets astronomers have found outside our solar system. And it is in our galactic neighborhood, suggesting that plenty of Earth-like planets circle other stars.

Finding a planet that could potentially support life is a major step toward answering the timeless question: Are we alone?

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been talking with a learned gent, name of Jor-El, about a prototype spacecraft he has that’s capable of interstellar distances…

I’d much rather hear talk of DeMint than of Palin

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A friend, obviously seeking to appall me, sent an e-mail saying, “Oh, you’ll enjoy this…” and linking to this blog post, which I quote in part:

And speaking of factions, and again I’m not a reporter, just a consumer of news, it sure seems to me that Jim DeMint is the current leader of the hard-core conservative faction of the Republican Party.  He’s far more consistent with his endorsements than any other conservative leader, and unlike Palin he can claim that he’s actually been doing something effective for the cause.  For the conservative/Tea Party faction, presumably the trick is to be as far to the right as possible without actually sounding crazy to those outside the faction (and thus perhaps drawing vetoes from more pragmatic conservatives, and possibly some GOP-aligned interest groups).  At least as I read the reporting, DeMint seems to be pretty good at keeping to that line, and he certainly must be more reliable both for that crowd and for more pragmatic types than Palin.

To know more, we need more solid reporting.  Hey, reporters!  We know activists hate TARP; is it a make or break issue for them?  What about other important groups within the GOP?  And, while of course Tea Partiers and conservatives generally are fond of the Sage of Wasilla, do leaders of those groups seem more likely to turn to her or to DeMint (or perhaps to another candidate) for leadership?  How much good will did DeMint buy with his endorsements and support in primary season 2010?

And yeah, I groaned, but was not shocked or surprised. After all, a guy makes a naked power play like the one DeMint’s made, and one should expect such talk.

And I’ll say this for him: Better DeMint than Palin.

Don’t get me wrong: I would think it horrible to contemplate either of them becoming POTUS. But at least my intelligence, my sense of propriety, is not nearly as offended by talk of DeMint as of Palin. Or for that matter, the absurd idea of Nikki Haley presuming to become governor of South Carolina when she has done nothing in public or private life to indicate any sort of suitability or qualifications for the job.

The thing is, Jim DeMint is a uomo di rispetto, a man of respect, in the Godfather sense. Sure, he might be doing some things that I

Al Lettieri as Virgil "The Turk" Sollozzo.

consider to be infamnia, and he might be trying to start a war among the Two Families that rule inside the Beltway, but he is a man to be taken seriously, a United States Senator who has demonstrated considerable political leadership skill. I respect him the way Don Corleone respected Sollozzo when he agreed to meet with him even though he wasn’t interested in his proposal, because drugs is a dirty business, as we all know — but I digress.

Contrast that to the utter lack of accomplishment that Sarah Palin embodies — she’s sort of to politics what Paris Hilton is to fame, or Reality TV is as a testament to a highly evolved species — and you can see why, though I don’t want either of them to become Leader of the Free World, I am less offended by loose talk about him than I am about her.

Talk about Sarah Palin as a presidential contender has become so routine that many have probably become inured to it, and now think nothing of it. But it is bizarre in the extreme. Like Alvin Greene — or Christine O’Donnell — being a major party nominee for the Senate.  Or like Nikki Haley.

Does no one but me notice this? Has Reality TV dumbed down American expectations to the point that we think it’s OK for anybody who’s shown up on the Boob Tube enough to presume to be presidential material?

Apparently so.