Friends, I have a major announcement to make on Monday, but this weekend I plan to focus on military obligations (spending time with my Citadel teaching team) and spending the other time with my family. I appreciate that many calls and texts, and e-mails and will be in touch with everyone next week. In the meantime, I will make a special request for your prayers for my family. “The Lord is my Shepherd” and I follow Him.
Orangeburg attorney Bill Connor, who lost the 2010 Republican runoff for lieutenant governor to Ken Ard, has filed to run against U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham in next June’s Republican primary, according to federal election documents.
Connor becomes the fourth Republican to oppose Graham in the primary, joining state Sen. Lee Bright of Spartanburg, Easley businessman Richard Cash and Charleston public-relations executive Nancy Mace…
When I saw him a couple of weeks back, Lindsey Graham indicated that as far as he was concerned, he loved having three opponents.
But four could be one too many. Also, i think he has a little more reason to worry about Bill Connor than about the others who have previously jumped into the ring.
Bill Connor
He’s a somewhat more traditional conservative than his opponents — more the values-voter, God-and-Country type than the SC-should-print-its-own-money-again sort. Or at least, in the statements I’ve seen so far. He’s paid some dues in the party, currently serving as the 6th-District chairman. He’s got a solid military record, having served in a combat role in Afghanistan. He’s run a statewide primary race before (losing the lieutenant governor nomination to Ken Ard). And he’s just gone out and had new portraits taken of his family. (I still remember how deeply impressed John Courson was when Mark Sanford sent out family portraits as Christmas cards before running for governor: “Fine-looking family — Kennedyesque… Kennedyesque!” You have to imagine it in Courson’s distinctive voice and accent.)
Lt. Col. Connor could be a more likely vote-getter. That doesn’t mean the incumbent’s in trouble. But it does make things a little more interesting.
Graham, consoling the family after Lee Bandy’s funeral.
This morning, the national buzz is all about Chris Christie having positioned himself so well for the presidency in 2016. The talk is so far along that I couldn’t resist joking:
But the very qualities that make Christie attractive as a general-election candidate (Republicans are fairly swooning over his getting 51 percent of the Latino vote) get him in trouble with the national GOP base. Most of it is silly, symbolic stuff, such as his making nice with President Obama (you know, the guy who was rushing billions in aid toward his state) after the hurricane. But you know how the base (in each of the parties) can be about the silly, symbolic stuff.
In fact, the reservations harbored by many of the people who, had they been in Virginia, would have voted for Ken Cuccinelli are such that I find myself wondering about this:
Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-SC) re-election bid will evidently get a lift from one of the most popular governors in the country and a top 2016 contender….
According to the Times, Christie informed Republicans in South Carolina he intends to go to bat for Graham, who is facing a GOP primary next year.
A poll released last week showed Graham’s approval rating taking a big hit in South Carolina, including a steep drop among GOP voters. …
Yeahhh… that’s the thing. The GOP voters who are mad at Graham are likely to be the ones least charmed by Christie.
So, I ask — is Christie coming here a plus or a minus for Graham? Thoughts?
But haven’t we known that for a year — like, from the first week….?
I still don’t get the intensity and duration of Sen. Graham’s umbrage toward the administration over the horrible events at Benghazi 13 months ago. Particularly since I don’t recall the cover-up; I distinctly remember reading that administration officials were saying it was a terrorist attack within hours after first reports came in.
Sen. Lindsey Graham said Monday he will hold up “every appointment” in the Senate until more questions are answered on Benghazi.
“I’m going to block every appointment in the United States Senate until the survivors [of the attack in Benghazi] are being made available to the Congress,” Graham said on Fox News’s “Fox and Friends.” “I’m tired of hearing from people on TV and reading about stuff in books.”…
Is he not the guy who goes around saying that elections have consequences, and that the president’s wishes regarding nominees should be respected, barring strong, specific reasons to the contrary? So how can he block all nominations, regardless of the respective merits in each case, in order to try to force the administration to do something unrelated? Whatever happened to the spirit of the Gang of 14?
This escalation is said to have been brought on by a “60 Minutes” segment last night. I can see how the senator might be incensed to see CBS reporting things that the administration refuses to provide to Congress.
But this blanket blocking of nominees seems disproportionate to me…
Anyway, I mentioned standing in line with Lindsey Graham for a considerable time at the reception after Lee’s funeral, and we talked about a number of things, including the horse race stuff that was always Bandy’s meat.
I mentioned his three primary opponents, and he expressed his great satisfaction that he has three opponents. That number, he said, seems just about right for his purposes.
He seemed to marvel particularly at the great gift of having Lee Bright running against him. He said he doesn’t have to do much more than mention how it just might put a crimp in business in South Carolina if we were to abandon the U.S. dollar.
I mentioned something about Nancy Mace’s longtime partnership (just ended) with Will Folks in FITSnews, and the senator said yeah, that association might come up in the campaign.
“You mean, you might bring it up?” I asked.
Not exactly, he said. Just… it might come up.
Yeah, I guess it might…
Actually, I’m not entirely sure that would be a bad thing for Nancy with the voters she (and Bright, and Richard Cash) is going after. There are probably a lot of Will’s loyal readers in that demographic. Others, however, may be put off by the fact that news stories about the site tend to say something like this in the lede: “a website whose editor, Will Folks, said GOP Gov. Nikki Haley had an affair with him, a claim Haley denied.” Because a lot of those same voters they want love the governor, and consider that whole thing to be some kind of liberal media conspiracy to hurt their Nikki.
So, for Nancy Mace, her association with Will could be a wash…
Lindsey Graham and Mark Sanford, at reception following Lee Bandy’s funeral.
Above are some of the better-known people who showed up at First Presbyterian Church in Columbia yesterday to pay their respects to the inimitable Lee Bandy.
There were other politicos, such as Sen. John Courson and former Attorney General Henry McMaster. But far more numerous were present and former colleagues of Lee’s from The State.
With the emphasis being on “former.”
Lindsey Graham wondered whether there were more alumni of the paper in the receiving line — which wound all the way around the fellowship hall — than the present total newsroom employment, and I looked around and said yes, almost certainly.
The former certainly outnumbered the present at the lunch that some of us went to at the Thirsty Fellow after the funeral and reception. That group is pictured below. Of those at the table, only three currently work at The State. The rest are at The Post and Courier in Charleston, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, NPR, The Wall Street Journal, and various other places. Some are free-lancing. Some of us, of course, aren’t in the game at the moment.
That night was when we gave Lee a proper newspaper send-off. There were about 50 of us at Megan Sexton and Sammy Fretwell’s house. At one point in the evening, we crowded into a ragged circle in the biggest room in the house to share Bandy stories. The first couple of speakers were fairly choked up. Then Aaron Sheinin of the AJC cheered us up by saying, “What would we all say if he walked in that door right now?” And immediately, we all raised our glasses and shouted, “Bandy!”
So we went around the room, and after each testimonial — some poignant, some humorous, some both — we hoisted our glasses and cried out his name again. Just the way we did during his lifetime, in a tone infused with delight. That was the way everyone greeted him, from presidents to senators to political professionals to his fellow scribes. Everyone was glad to see him.
And everyone was deeply sorry to see him go.
There was in the room a rosy glow of remembrance of what we had all meant to each other once, and a joy at regaining that comradeship, if only for an evening. But none of the rest of us will have a sendoff like Bandy’s, nor will any of us deserve it as much…
My friends here on the blog love to abuse Lindsey, for one of the very things I admire him for — his refusal to go along with either herd. (And when I say “either,” I refer to the only two that our pathetically inadequate modern political vocabulary allow as conceivable possibilities.)
We know how the right despises him — to the extent that “right” adequately describes those who despise him. I refuse to use the word “conservative,” because these destructive bomb-throwers don’t deserve it. They care for nothing but purity — a kind of purity produced by a distillation process like that of moonshine: It, too, will make you go blind.
My friends on the left love to applaud him when he is infuriating those on the right the most. Then, when he acts like what he is — an actual conservative — they talk about how disappointed they are in him. Even though he is the best, by their own lights, that they are ever likely to see representing South Carolina in the U.S. Senate.
Since I don’t subscribe to either of these temples of purity, I like him most of the time — probably most of all when he’s alienating both extremes of the spectrum.
Do I strongly disagree with him? Yes, frequently. But I expect that. There’s no one on the planet with whom I agree all of the time. That’s the way it is among people who think, rather than buying their positions on political issues off the shelf, as a package, all from column A and none from column B.
Anyway, bottom line, he’s a stand-up guy because he’s there when his country needs him, as it did earlier this week:
WASHINGTON — Sen. Lindsey Graham was the only Republican in South Carolina’s GOP-dominated congressional delegation who voted for the deal that reopened the federal government.
President Barack Obama signed the shutdown bill into law late Wednesday after the Senate passed it by an 81-18 vote and the House approved it by a 285-144 margin. Three-fifths of the Senate’s 46 Republicans voted for the legislation, while a similar share of the House’s 232 Republicans opposed it.
Graham, a second-term senator facing a contested re-election campaign, broke with Sen. Tim Scott, a North Charleston Republican in his first year as a senator.
“This agreement is far from great news, but it brings to an end, at least temporarily, a disaster” Graham said….
A lot of folks, particularly those of the liberal persuasion, have been bemoaning how Graham is “running to the right” as he faces re-election next year. But is it really wrong to emphasize the things on which you agree with your base, as you face a primary?
But at this dramatic moment, when the “purity” caucus is looking to you for a purely symbolic vote, but voting that way will push the U.S. and global economies down the stairs, what does he do? He does the right thing, for the country and the world.
Becoming Obama’s Top Spokesman on ObamaCare, Shutdown
Lindsey Graham went on Fox News yesterday to continue undercutting Ted Cruz and other conservatives on their strategy to defund and delay ObamaCare, and force the President’s hand on the budget. Graham stated that stopping ObamaCare was “unrealistic” and “a bridge too far”.
Lee Bright, the upstate Senator challenging Graham in the 2014 Primary, quickly responded, saying, “Lindsey Graham’s time in Washington is a career too far. He is so astonishingly out of touch with American conservatives, and he obviously has no idea how the leadership of Ted Cruz is playing outside the beltway. He and John McCain are the best friends of the Obama-Reid-Pelosi agenda, and it’s time we bring Graham home, and leave McCain to surrender to the Democrats by himself.”
Bright went on to add that “Lindsey Graham really doesn’t understand what a train wreck and an abomination that ObamaCare really is. If he did, he wouldn’t have been on the wrong side of the cloture vote, wouldn’t have taken his office phone off the hook, and wouldn’t have advocated for preferential treatment for himself and his staff. His behavior is just shameful, and yet, I feel like every time he speaks he’s airing an attack ad against his own campaign.”
Bright predicted that there would be continued outrage and backlash against Graham as his Fox News quotes penetrate the internet and talk radio, saying, “Graham may be below 30% in the next re-elect poll. He may be so blinded by the beltway group-think that he believes South Carolina Republicans are like New York or Massachusetts Republicans, but he’s about to find out this is not the case.”
Two prominent advocates of the GOP’s strategy to defund Obamacare in a government funding bill, Sens. Ted Cruz and Mike Lee, have seen their favorability numbers drop in separate new polls.
Lee’s favorability in his home state of Utah is down 10 points since June, according to a new poll from Brigham Young University. Overall, voters see Lee unfavorably, 51 percent to 40 percent. Broken down by degree, 40 percent had a “very unfavorable” view of Lee, and 11 percent had a “somewhat unfavorable” view of him.
In June, the same poll found almost the mirror image, with 50 percent of voters viewing him favorably and 41 percent viewing him unfavorably….
Cruz was the focus of another poll out Thursday from Gallup, which found since June, more Americans know Cruz but they think less of him.
In the poll, 62 percent of Americans knew the Republican enough to form an opinion, compared with 42 percent in June, but his unfavorability has gone up 18 points in the same time frame.
Cruz has gone from being viewed favorably, 24 percent to 18 percent, in June to being viewed 26 percent favorably and 36 percent unfavorably in the latest poll.
Of course, Lee doesn’t care about what the people of Utah, in the aggregate, think of him any more than Bright cares about what the South Carolinians overall think of him. They only care about what a plurality of GOP primary voters think. So they’re paying more attention to polls such as this one.
CAROLINA CONSERVATIVES UNITED URGES CONGRESSIONAL DELEGATION TO VOTE “NO” ON MILITARY ACTION AGAINST SYRIA
(YORK, SC) — Carolina Conservatives United has announced its opposition to the use of United States military force and assets against the Syrian government and urges the entire South Carolina Congressional Delegation vote against this measure.
Chairman Bruce Carroll today issued the following statement:
We share the humanitarian concern for the Syrian people who have been killed and injured by conventional weapons and chemical weapons and the millions of refugees that are suffering due to that nation’s two-year civil war.
However, we strongly believe the situation in Syria will not improve, and could well deteriorate, due to American military involvement. Additionally, we do not believe President Obama has adequately made the case that any national security interests are at stake, a minimum requirement for military actions abroad.
Therefore we would like to, in the strongest terms, urge our Members of Congress, especially Senators Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott, to vote against military action against the Syrian regime. We urge our fellow citizens in South Carolina to call their Congressmen and Senators immediately so that our elected officials are completely aware of the views of the people on this important matter.
September 4, 2013
Page 2
Carolina Conservatives United will be sending a letter today to each Member of the South Carolina Congressional Delegation requesting a “NO” vote on Syria use of force. Our organization will also track the vote for authorization of force in Syria as a “key vote” for purposes of our ongoing Congressional scorecard that aligns to our organization’s fundamental principles.
# # #
Carolina Conservatives United is a grassroots, non-profit political association based in South Carolina.
CCU supports and promotes the long-standing American values of limited Constitutional government, low taxes, freedom of the individual, entrepreneurism, free enterprise, and strong national security and sovereignty. CCU’s mission is to support political candidates who support conservative values and oppose those who do not.
The first was the same reaction I have when I see anything referring to “Carolina,” as though North and South Carolina were one state or something — or as if they had any more to do with each other than SC and Georgia, which they don’t.
That reaction is, “This must be out of Charlotte.” Because only people from that ambivalent city, lacking a clear identity with either state — sort of the Danzig Corridor of the Deep South — use the term “Carolina” in an inclusive way like that.
And sure enough, there’s a 704 area code on it.
The second reaction is, Yeah, boy, I bet old Lindsey is just sittin’ up nights wondering what the folks at DefeatLindseyGraham.org want him to do…
WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) made this statement today on the reports that Russia has granted Edward Snowden temporary asylum.
“If these reports are accurate, Americans in Washington should consider this a game changer in our relationship with Russia. Mr. Snowden has been charged with serious crimes and has put American lives at risk at home and abroad.
“Today’s action by the Russian government could not be more provocative and is a sign of Vladimir Putin’s clear lack of respect for President Obama. It is now time for Congress, hopefully in conjunction with the Administration, to make it clear to the Russian government that this provocative step in granting Snowden asylum will be met with a firm response.”
#####
Basically, Putin has just flipped a gigantic bird at the United States. He has shown a gross disrespect for the United States and its laws, protecting Snowden from prosecution on charges of doing things for which — and here’s the ironic part — were a Russian citizen to do them to his country, Putin would put him under Lubyanka Square.
So, what do we do about it? For his part, Sen. Graham has suggested that we consider boycotting the winter Olympics to show our displeasure. Some have reacted as though that were crazy talk. I don’t know why. Jimmy Carter kept us out of the real Olympics in 1980 to protest the Soviet incursion into Afghanistan.
But it doesn’t seem to me the best response to this situation. Right off, it would seem to accept the fact that we’re not getting this mutt back before February 2014, because that’s when the games are. On the other hand, if we got him back before then, we could then go ahead to the Olympics.
There must be a better approach, but I don’t know what it is. What does Putin want that we could deny him without hurting our own interests further? Someone must know.
I wasn’t watching the news all that closely yesterday, so, as sometimes happens with Twitter, I saw the jokes about John McCain sneaking into Syria to talk to the rebels before I knew he had gone. Here’s the first I saw:
Best wishes to @SenJohnMcCain in Syria today. If he doesn’t make it back calling dibs on his office.
Anyway, no doubt to Graham’s chagrin, McCain apparently made it back out of Syria OK (at least, that’s how I read this reference to Yemen). The White House has said today that yeah, they knew he was going, and no, they don’t have anything else to say about it, but look forward to hearing from the senator about his trip.
Yesterday, Bryan complained that I didn’t put the IRS official taking the Fifth on my Virtual Front Page. I explained that that had been big news the night before, not on Wednesday.
A Senate committee approved a sweeping immigration reform bill Tuesday that would provide a path to citizenship for up to 11 million illegal immigrants, setting the stage for the full Senate to consider the landmark legislation next month.
After five days of debate over dozens of amendments, the Judiciary Committee voted 13 to 5 in support of the bill, with three Republicans joining the committee’s 10 Democrats. The legislation emerged with its core provisions largely intact, including new visa programs for high-tech and low-skilled workers and new investments in strengthening border control…
Late as this is, I wanted to take note of it. Because it’s what Joe Biden would call a BFD. Or, in more polite language, “sweeping” and “landmark.”
Some notes about developments since Tuesday night:
John Boehner, with zampolit Eric Cantor’s concurrence, said today the House isn’t just going to pass the Senate bill, whatever emerges from the Senate. Because, you know, his caucus is et up with Tea Party types these days, which means the speaker can’t just say he’ll do the reasonable thing on immigration.
Further complicating Boehner’s life is the fact that, according to a new poll, 58 percent of Americans favor a “path to citizenship” for current illegals. Of course, his Tea Party members couldn’t care less about what America as a whole wants; they only have to please the portions of their gerrymandered districts who vote in GOP primaries. This could present problems down the line for the Republican Party, if the Senate passes something like the current bill and the House doesn’t also pass something very like it.
By the way, I should probably share with you this release that I got from Lindsey Graham a few hours before the bill passed Judiciary:
WASHINGTON – Yesterday, the Senate Judiciary Committee passed three amendments introduced by U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina).
The Graham Amendments to the bipartisan Senate immigration bill would:
· Require Extra Background Checks for Aliens from Dangerous Countries. The Graham Amendment requires additional background checks be performed on aliens petitioning for legalization that come from countries or regions the Secretary of Homeland Security and the Secretary of State determine represent a threat to the national security of the United States.
· Close a Potentially Dangerous Loophole in our Asylum and Refugee Program. Another Graham Amendment would terminate an individual’s asylum or refugee status in most cases where the person returns to his or her home country. The amendment would limit the ability of those seeking asylum in the United States to travel back to their home country without approval from the Secretary of Homeland Security or Attorney General.
· Toughen Up on Visa Overstays. About 40 percent of the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants did not illegally come across the border but simply overstayed their legal visas. A third Graham Amendment requires visa overstay information collected under a new integrated mandatory exit system be shared with federal law enforcement, intelligence, and national security agencies and that the Secretary of DHS use that information to locate and remove aliens unlawfully present.
####
Lindsey is working hard to simultaneously accomplish his two conflicting purposes:
To pass a rational comprehensive immigration bill.
To persuade portions of his base that even though he is pushing a rational immigration bill, he’s still being really, really tough on them furriners.
There’s a scene in “Bananas” in which Woody Allen’s character is discussing the economy of his new, adopted country, and when he’s told that bananas are its greatest export, he cries, “Bananas, bananas!” in a tone that conveys that he’s heard enough about that particular fruit. (I tried to find a video clip of that, but couldn’t. And is it my imagination that that movie used to be available on Netflix, but is not now?)
There were times in recent months when many of us would have a similar reaction to Lindsey Graham’s (and John McCain’s, and Kelly Ayotte’s) repetition of the word, “Benghazi.”
Subsequent events have indicated that further inquiry into what happened there last Sept. 11 is at least worth further investigation. There should be bipartisan agreement on that much. Unfortunately, it seems unlikely that any investigation that involves the Congress will be tainted by consideration of the 2016 presidential election, and the anticipated candidacy of Hilary Clinton.
For that reason, I though it particularly unfortunate that Lindsey Graham should say, just as everyone is finally paying attention, the following:
If it had been known by the American people seven weeks before the election the truth about Benghazi, I think it would have made a difference in the election…
No, it wouldn’t have. You still would have had Barack Obama going up against Mitt Romney, and the outcome would have been the same. It’s hard to imagine any sort of statement that might have been made about Benghazi. I mean, really, what would it have been? Are you saying the president should have said, “I’ve done a rotten job of protecting the American people, because I just don’t care. I could have saved the ambassador, but I personally decided not to, because I just didn’t like him. And I’ll do it the same way next time…”
It was a terrorist attack in a politically unstable place where there are tremendous numbers of weapons circulating, and it ended tragically. It should cause us to review consulate security across the globe. That’s the “truth about Benghazi,” and if the administration had said that on day one, and continued to say it through the election, I see no way it would have affected the election outcome.
Anyway, you and your fellow senators were being heard as you cried in the wilderness about this topic, before the election. But you were being dismissed by some as Republicans who were trying to wring electoral advantage from the tragedy. So… why would you want to give credence to that by saying something like this?
BOSTON (AP) — The surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings acknowledged to the FBI his role in the attacks but did so before he was advised of his constitutional right to keep quiet and seek a lawyer, U.S. officials said Wednesday.
Once Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was read his rights on Monday, he immediately stopped talking, according to four officials of both political parties who were briefed on the interrogation but insisted on anonymity because the briefing was private.
After roughly 16 hours of questioning, investigators were surprised when a magistrate judge and a representative from the U.S. Attorney’s office entered the hospital room and read Tsarnaev his rights, the four officials and one law enforcement official said. Investigators had planned to keep questioning him…
Authorities say they have more than enough evidence without a confession, but they no longer have a font of information on the Tsarnaev brother’s actions, plans or associations.
Which sort of makes this a perfect way of raising yet again the question which so divides the left and right of the political spectrum: Should terrorism be treated as a crime, with emphasis on what it takes to get a conviction, or should we shove prosecutorial considerations aside in order to get information to prevent future attacks?
In a way, we got both approaches here, and perhaps the best of both: A few days of interrogation that led to a preliminary conclusion that the brothers acted without confederates and that now that one is dead and the other in custody, there’s no further danger. Now, the prosecutors can do their thing.
And maybe that’s the way to do it. But I’m sure some would argue that he should have heard his Miranda rights immediately, while others would like to have him continuing to sing to investigators. The latter seems the preference of our own Lindsey Graham, according to Politico:
… Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who had been calling for Tsarnaev to be tried as an enemy combatant rather than as a criminal, on Thursday slammed Attorney General Eric Holder and said he sympathized with the FBI.
“This is the Eric Holder crowd basically refusing to embrace interrogation techniques available to us to make us safe,” he said on “America Live with Megyn Kelly.” After reiterating that Tsarnaev should have earned enemy combatant designation, Graham added, “I know that the FBI agent and the counter terrorism experts have to be incredibly frustrated that they could not continue to interview this suspect about what awaits us as a nation. This was a big mistake.”
There’s been a lot of overwrought reaction to Lindsey Graham’s suggestion that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev should be tried by military tribunal rather than under our criminal system.
For instance, there was this writer over at Forbes who moaned, “Why is it that those who spend an inordinate amount of time professing their dedication and fealty to the United States Constitution seem to always be among the first to toss our founding document out the window the moment it becomes inconvenient to their desires?”
Which is a grossly unfair mischaracterization of Lindsey Graham and what he said.
The reason you see some repetition in those Tweets is that Graham was responding to comments by others, and reiterating points.
As it happened, so far Graham’s wishes have been followed — the prisoner has not been Mirandized, and apparently has been interrogated to the extent that his wounds (he was shot in the throat) will allow. It is not necessary to consider him an “enemy combatant” to withhold the Miranda warnings, under the public safety exemption — in other words, to gather the intelligence that Sen. Graham values.
As to his being considered an “enemy combatant” — well that’s a war of words that Republicans have been carrying on with Democrats for 12 years now. Republicans prefer the rules of war; Democrats prefer to treat terrorism as a cops-and-robbers thing.
This case seems to be to dwell in sort of a twilight area — and arguments to treat it as war and as crime both seem to have some legitimacy.
Tsarnaev — the one who still lives — is a citizen. And not a citizen off in Yemen somewhere working with al Qaeda, whom President Obama might kill with a drone (just to help us remember that Democrats, too, have gone far beyond the bounds of due process in pursuing what can only be called a war — else there’s no justification for such actions). He’s a citizen who went bad like the Columbine killers.
His brother’s recent fascination with radical Islamism does suggest something that fits within the “War on Terror,” but I think we need to see more evidence that these attacks were somehow coordinated with a hostile foreign organization before we consider this something other than a mass murder. Perhaps such evidence will emerge.
When he is criminally prosecuted on state and federal charges, I wonder if there will be a charge — along with multiple counts of murder and many more of attempted murder — having to do with bringing Boston to a halt? I wonder what that cost, in terms of lost economic activity. This is on my mind after reading about the guy who we are told ran off naked on acid, and all the resources devoted to trying to find him. How much more did the Tsarnaev brothers cost the city, state and federal governments, plus untold thousands of businesses?
But I digress. By the way, while I was traveling over the weekend — driving to Memphis and back for a wedding — Bryan Caskey already did a post on this subject, which you might want to check out.
First, I saw this release from the state Democratic Party:
Columbia – Today, Winthrop University released its latest public polling data showing that once again, the majority of South Carolinians do not approve of the job Governor Nikki Haley is doing. The Governor made meager gains from within her Republican base but continues to turn off moderates in South Carolina with her politics before people approach that is standing in the way of creating 44,000 jobs by expanding health care, and is costing South Carolina’s taxpayers millions of dollars as a result of the corruption and dysfunction in the state government. The poll also contained bad news for the governor who got elected on a Tea Party wave and consistently chooses to put Tea-Party politics ahead of sound policy – the approval rating for the Tea Party continues to wan with only a quarter of respondents approving of the Governor’s Tea Party movement.
COLUMBIA — A pair of major 2014 candidates in South Carolina watched opinions about them go in different directions in a new poll released Wednesday.
Gov. Nikki Haley’s job approval is rising among voters — especially those in her Republican party, while U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham saw his support within the GOP falter over the past two months, according to a new Winthrop University poll…
So was she down or up? Well, while both reports were technically true, the reality is that statistically speaking, the level of support for Haley is the same as it’s been. The reported shift is within the margin of error:
Haley’s approval rating among South Carolinians rose to 43.5 percent, up a percentage point from two months ago.
The first-term Republican scores 45 percent among registered voters — also up a percentage point and the fourth straight gain in the past year of Winthrop polls.
More than one in three does not like the governor’s performance in office.
But Haley’s popularity among Republicans rose two percentage points to 69 percent since February — a high in two years of Winthrop polls…
The poll’s margin of error among registered voters was 3.5 percent.
Also… while Haley was “up” and Graham was “down,” Graham is still doing better than the governor is among all voters — although again, the difference between them is less than the margin of error:
His approval among registered voters dropped four percentage points to 44 percent in the past two months and slid among all South Carolinians two percentage points to 45 percent…
The most significant change for Graham was among Republicans, dropping “57.5 percent from 71.6 percent in February.”
Oh, by the way, though — if you think Graham’s numbers are bad, Tim Scott has a 38-percent approval rating among all voters, and 54 percent among Republicans.
It’s coincidences like this that make people think there’s some sort of conspiracy among news media. The story on thestate.com this morning, from the NYT news service, was headlined, “Rubio offers full-throated support for immigration bill.”
On Tuesday, the bipartisan “Gang of Eight” is set to unveil a proposal that would represent the most far-reaching overhaul of immigration laws since 1986. The process of developing the legislation, which features a path to citizenship for up to 11 million immigrants who are in the country illegally, was hammered out in two dozen meetings led by veterans of earlier immigration battles, including Sens. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.).
But in many ways, the senators’ negotiations, behind the scenes and in public, have hinged on a party of one. Rubio, the tea party favorite whose parents emigrated from Cuba, has been considered the most crucial player all along. Although he has seemed to waver at times, his full-throated endorsement of the bill Sunday, in a marathon round of seven television interviews, put at ease a group of colleagues who have been working hard to ensure he stays the course. I don’t know how full his throat was, but his calendar was certainly crowded on Sunday.
Sort of makes you think there was an emergency meeting of the Press Establishment yesterday, and “full-throated” would be the modifier of the week.
The chances are good that I, too, will be offering “full-throated” endorsement of the bill when it’s unveiled tomorrow. Partly because, as you know, if both Lindsey Graham and John McCain are for it, I have a tendency to agree. (When Joe Lieberman was in the Senate, and all three of them agreed on something, I was almost always with them — the big exception being health care policy.)
Beyond that, after months of work by this bipartisan group, the pragmatic truth is that politically speaking, whatever they have come up with is the best chance this country has to achieve comprehensive immigration reform. Whatever this one’s flaws may be, I can’t imagine where a better bill would come from. And the country is overdue to address this issue.
I have another rule of thumb — if both David Brooks and E.J. Dionne are for it, I usually am. And I heard them praising the effort on Friday, in a way that implied they’d had a look at the bill. In fact, I thought for a moment that I’d missed something in the news, since they were talking about it as though it were already out there.
But to return to where we started, the fact that Marco Rubio is so “full-throatedly” on board is a good sign that this will be something worth supporting. While McCain and Graham are taking a big political risk with this — Graham faces re-election next year, and as we know, there are elements in his party who despise him specifically for such things as this — for Rubio, the stakes are bigger. Everyone’s speaking of him as a presidential candidate for 2016 (on NPR this morning, they were talking about him being “the GOP’s Obama”).
Presidential ambitions would help explain why he would support something like this, as it helps move him and his party toward the center. It also presents a big risk, since he’s already alienated much of his base just by being one of the Gang of 8.
Which is why all the political talk shows wanted him yesterday.
Whatever happens with Rubio, though, here’s hoping that, after all this buildup, the Gang’s bill doesn’t disappoint.
Two days ago in SC 1st district GOP primary, it was creationism, now it’s gay marriage. Ridiculous. Obsession with using the coercive power of the federal government in such “social conservative” matters is inconsistent with the principle of limited and constitutional government. I wish one of the candidates had answered the gay-marriage question like this: “I oppose federal government efforts to redefine marriage as something other than a union between one man and one woman, and my personal belief is that marriage should be between a single man and a single woman. But I also oppose federal government efforts to define marriage as only the union between a single man and a single woman. The federal government has only those powers delegated to it in the constitution and defining what constitutes a marriage is not one of them.”
The Twitterverse is still buzzing over Lindsey Graham’s criticism of Rand Paul’s filibuster last week, as the über-libertarian wing of the GOP desperately seeks a Great Right Hope to oppose him in next year’s primary.
How desperate are they? Well, they were floating Lee Bright‘s name last week.
Since then, other names have emerged. Tom Davis — again — and Nancy Mace. You’ll know Nancy as the first woman to have graduated from The Citadel, and more recently as a PR and web design consultant, and Will Folk’s partner in his well-read blog (Will handles content; Nancy handles the technical side).
WASHINGTON — The first woman to ever graduate from the Citadel — who is also the co-owner of a controversial South Carolina political blog — is weighing a primary challenge to Senator Lindsey Graham in 2014, two Republican sources suggested Saturday.
Nancy Mace
Conservatives have long mulled a challenge to Graham, seen in some circles as too establishmentarian for the state’s conservative grassroots, and allies of Senator Rand Paul — whose filibuster last week Graham denounced — hope State Senator Tom Davis, who backed Paul for president, will enter the race. But another conservative candidate could be Nancy Mace, best known in local political circles as the partial owner of FITSNews, whose name is short for “Faith In The Sound” after a George Michael lyric and which has for several years served as the center ring of the state’s sometimes hallucinatory political circus.
“She’s got an inspirational personal narrative, a gorgeous young family, the right ideological mooring and all sorts of political connections. Oh, and her name fits nicely on a 4X8,” FITSNews founding editor Will Folks said in an email. “Obviously I’m a little biased, but there’s a lot to like about her as a potential candidate in the event Tom Davis decides to stay out of it.”
In a separate email, Mace didn’t rule out a run, though she downplayed its likelihood…
Between the two possibilities, the one that seems more likely is that Tom would run, and Nancy would help run his campaign — since the senator is one of her clients.
Of course, that depends on which of his many actions you choose to focus on. As I noted in my last post, our senior senator went back and forth between hugging and slapping Barack Obama yesterday.
At the height of tea-party fever in spring 2010, Sen. Lindsey Graham walked out of talks on a bipartisan climate-change bill, saying he was angry about Democratic plans to move first on comprehensive immigration reform. It almost seemed like he was anticipating a hypothetical, hyperconservative primary challenger more than four years before his reelection race.
But now the South Carolina Republican is in the thick of bipartisan talks on immigration reforms that include a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants; making overtures on a fiscal “grand bargain” that would include higher taxes along with entitlement trims; and praising President Obama for reaching out to him and others in his party. On Wednesday, Graham held a press conference to announce a bipartisan bill to strengthen mental-health provisions in gun background checks. He also attended Obama’s dinner party with Republicans at a Washington hotel. In fact, Graham drew up the guest list…
In 2010, Graham’s pal John McCain tacked hard right to fend off a tea-party challenger in Arizona. In 2012, Orrin Hatch did the same to survive in Utah. Graham could eventually back away from some of his bipartisan projects, and some skeptical Democrats expect he will. But for now he is gambling that changing times and his own political skills will keep him safe in 2014. And for now he is in a commanding position in his party. Among self-identified Republicans and GOP-leaning independents in a Winthrop University poll last month, he was at 71.6 percent approval.
Not surprisingly, no strong primary challenger to Graham has emerged. The antitax Club for Growth is keeping an eye on the race and will consider getting involved if a viable candidate surfaces, says spokesman Barney Keller. Graham scored 72 percent in the Club’s 2011 report card, close to what the group considers a “bottom-of-the-barrel” Republican. But he did better in 2012 and “obviously you can’t beat someone with no one,” Keller says. GOP consultants in the state predict Graham will have an opponent, but probably a weak one.
That reckoned, however, without the reaction to Graham and John McCain criticizing Rand Paul’s filibuster, which Politico says led to “Lindsey Graham’s very bad day on Twitter:”
Laced throughout the thousands of tweets cheering on the filbustering Kentucky Republican was a vicious, visceral anger aimed squarely at the South Carolinian up for reelection next year.
Of course, a couple of things stand in the way of Graham being in serious trouble: First, there’s the lack of an opponent, since Tom Davis said he wouldn’t run. Then, there’s that $6 million Lindsey’s sitting on. Politico quoted Wesley Donehue about that:
One name that surfaces regularly as a likely primary challenger is state Sen. Lee Bright of Spartanburg. His name was floated again by callers on Glenn Beck’s radio show Thursday, and although he’s undeclared, sources say he already has a campaign manager in place.
What may be holding him back is money. Graham has a war chest in excess of $6 million, which South Carolina-based GOP digital strategist Wesley Donehue said “goes a long way in our cheap media markets.” Donehue doubts the anti-Graham flare-up over Paul’s filibuster will last long because “there is no one for the pissed-off Internet crowd to give money to.”
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