Category Archives: Mark Sanford

GOP leadership continues war of words with Sanford

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Just got this release a few minutes ago from Bobby Harrell’s office:

State Needs True Transparency, Not Pandering
Governor proves statewide fly around is about headlines, not delivering true reforms

(Columbia, SC) – Today, Governor Sanford embarked on another statewide fly around to hold a series of press conferences.  Upon learning that the governor’s intentions were only to make a media splash instead of fighting for real reforms, House Speaker Bobby Harrell gave the following statement:

“I have always supported more transparency and responsibility in government.  More transparency is good for our state, and more roll call voting in the General Assembly would be a good idea, but we must be fighting for true transparency and not just pandering to voters and grabbing for headlines.  In the House, we believe in working together to accomplish real transparency.  That’s why the House has passed earmark reform, spending limits, government restructuring, tax cuts and many other important reforms to our state government.

“Demanding that we should spend taxpayer money to take a roll call vote on a resolution congratulating a state championship high school team is not true transparency, it’s pandering.  Real reform in government is fixing the workers comp system, tort reform, and immigration reform, all of which became law because of actions by the General Assembly. 

Tom DeLoach, President/CEO of South Carolina Business & Industry Political Education Committee (BIPEC), commented, “Roll Call voting in the South Carolina General Assembly is not uncommon.  In fact, over the last 10 years business and industry related roll call votes have increased significantly to the point where a roll call vote when not taken is an exception to the rule.  President Pro Tempore Glenn McConnell and House Speaker Bobby Harrell have provided a roll call record on business and industry issues that is both plentiful and verifiable.”

Obama, Ayres, and another kind of ‘school choice’

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Now that everyone has been totally desensitized by the ranting of Lee et al. about Obama, probably not much attention will be paid to an accusation of substance that appeared in The Wall Street Journal today. But if you do pay attention, it’s intriguing — and disturbing. It’s an op-ed piece headlined "Obama and Ayers Pushed Radicalism On Schools."

Basically, it provides fairly strong evidence to believe that Bill Ayres — unrepentant Mad Bomber and live-in of Bernardine Dohrn — has been considerably more than "a guy who lives in my neighborhood" to Barack Obama. Sen. Obama was the chairman, from 1995-99, of a foundation that the author, Stanley Kurtz, describes as Ayres "brainchild":

The Chicago Annenberg Challenge was created ostensibly to improve Chicago’s public schools. …. Mr. Ayers co-chaired the foundation’s other key body, the "Collaborative," which shaped education policy.

… The Daley archives show that Mr. Obama and Mr. Ayers worked as a team to advance the CAC agenda.

… Mr. Ayers was one of a working group of five who assembled the initial board in 1994. Mr. Ayers founded CAC and was its guiding spirit. No one would have been appointed the CAC chairman without his approval.

The CAC’s agenda flowed from Mr. Ayers’s educational philosophy, which called for infusing students and their parents with a radical political commitment, and which downplayed achievement tests in favor of activism. In the mid-1960s, Mr. Ayers taught at a radical alternative school, and served as a community organizer in Cleveland’s ghetto.

In works like "City Kids, City Teachers" and "Teaching the Personal and the Political," Mr. Ayers wrote that teachers should be community organizers dedicated to provoking resistance to American racism and oppression. His preferred alternative? "I’m a radical, Leftist, small ‘c’ communist," Mr. Ayers said in an interview in Ron Chepesiuk’s, "Sixties Radicals," at about the same time Mr. Ayers was forming CAC.

Until now, the Obama/Ayres connection had been a minor worry at the back of my mind. This rachets that up a notch.

On a less serious note, I was amused to see that Ayres shared with Gov. Mark Sanford the goal of divorcing school funding from the institutional model: "Instead of funding schools directly, it required schools to affiliate
with "external partners," which actually got the money. Proposals from
groups focused on math/science achievement were turned down. Instead
CAC disbursed money through various far-left community organizers, such
as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (or Acorn)."

No, it’s not the same as what Sanford would do. Of course, if we did have vouchers and tax credits, parents would be free to spend it on Mr. Ayres’ idea of a good education, or some other loony alternative, with no accountability to the public from whose school coffers that funding would be diverted. Maybe that’s why I was reminded.

What the locals say about Palin (not much)

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As you know, the nation dodged a bullet last week — at least, a rumored bullet — when John McCain didn’t go off his rocker and choose Mark Sanford as his running mate.

Even though his status as a likely choice was the figment of fevered imaginations on the WSJ editorial board and elsewhere on the libertarian fringe, they mentioned him often enough, and their pulpit was bully enough, that I still worried a tiny bit right up to the last. In that corner of my mind, I pictured myself turning into Paul Greenberg, the Arkansas editorialist who has spent years of his life explaining to the country what a mess Bill Clinton is.

I didn’t want that role.

Anyway, having that perspective, I was curious as to what the Alaska press would tell us that we didn’t know about Sarah Palin. Editor & Publisher anticipated that curiosity on my part, but its first offering in that vein is pretty vanilla. The closest thing to a local insight provided by the Daily News-Miner in Fairbanks — going by the E&P excerpt, was this:

There was also some pandering right from the start.
“I told Congress `Thanks but no thanks on that bridge to nowhere,’ ”
Palin reported to the crowd in Dayton, Ohio. “If our state wanted a
bridge, I said, we’d build it ourselves.”


But the state kept the bridge money. That’s because
Alaskans pay federal gas taxes and they expect a good share to come
back, just like people do in every other state. We build very little by
ourselves, and any governor who would turn that tax money down likely
would be turned out of office.

That’s it? The woman’s been governor for two years and that’s all you’ve got to tell us that we didn’t know? That could have been written by somebody in Washington, for Pete’s sake! E&P says that’s the first installment in a series; let’s hope later installments get into some substance. It’s not like I’ve got time to browse Alaskan Web sites.

Anyway, until I read something out of Alaska in the vein of what I wrote about the Sanford rumors, I’ll assume McCain did all right choosing Sarah Palin.

Tom Davis on the Jasper Port deal

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Tom Davis dropped by to see Cindi and me Tuesday morning — his first visit since the one I wrote about back here and here — and we talked about a number of things.

Tom, you will recall, is the governor’s former chief of staff who is now the GOP nominee for what is for the moment Catherine Ceips’ Senate seat.

Anyway, one thing Tom talked about was progress that’s been made on the Jasper Port deal. Tom continues to believe that his ex-boss, Mark Sanford, doesn’t get enough credit for bringing the deal with Georgia along to this point (even though my former colleague Mike Fitts did a column awhile back pretty much covering Tom’s talking points on the subject).

But Tom expects that years from now, when some of the more southern Corridor of Shame counties have benefited greatly from the economic development the projected port will bring, Mr. Sanford will get the credit, and deservedly so. This, he says, will be Mark Sanford’s legacy.

It will also be, if it turns out as hoped, Tom Davis’ legacy. He was, near as I could tell, the most ardent advocate for the Jasper Port in the Sanford administration, and the one who worked hardest to make it happen. I think you can probably see some of Tom’s passion about the subject in the above video.

What? Only $25 more per month for smokers?

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Yes, of course smokers covered by the state health plan should pay more, because they cost more.

But $25 a month? What is that, a joke? That’s not enough either to cover the added cost of their filthy habit, or to encourage them to quit. It’s desultory. As the story said:

State health insurance system officials said an extra $25 a month would
not cover the full cost of smoking-related expenses. It is more
effective, they said, to encourage smokers to quit.

And $25 a month won’t do that.

Who even notices a $25-a-month increase in insurance premiums, the way they go up these days? That’s less than the increase most of us deal with in most years, without engaging in stupid and harmful behavior.

Two cheers to the governor for supporting the increase, pathetic though it is.


footnote: I have a shorter answer to the question posed in the sidebar with this morning’s story, QUESTION: I’m a state employee. How will the state know I’m a smoker? Answer: By the smell.

Maybe because he really, REALLY is?

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Working on catching up on e-mail — just getting started, really; I probably won’t get it done today — I ran across this one:

Dear Mr. Warthen,
    I thought you might be interested in a piece I’ve written for Governing Magazine’s blog, pondering why Gov. Sanford is so frequently described as a libertarian: http://ballotbox.governing.com/2008/08/south-carolinas.html .
All the best,
Josh Goodman

Before following the link and reading the post, I hazarded a guess as to the answer: "Because he IS?"

I suppose Josh has a point in noting that more and more people are calling him that these days. I remember when I was the only one I knew of. That’s because I got an early start. One day in his first months as governor, I was visiting him in his office, and after we had touched on various topics that seemed to have a recurring theme, I blurted out, with the tone of one who just realized he’d been a chump, "You ran as a ‘conservative Republican, and you still call yourself that. But you’re not. You’re a libertarian." As I recall, he nodded soberly — I guess "soberly" is how you describe the expression in my mind’s eye. In any case, he didn’t argue about it.

As for people using it as a "pejorative" — perhaps they do. I know I wasn’t thinking happy thoughts when I realized the sort of governor we had. You see, a libertarian is not a good thing to has as governor of one of the most undergoverned states in the union. Maybe it would be a good thing to be in Massachusetts. But in a state that lacks so much in the way of basics that citizens of other states take for granted, the anti-government stance is at best superfluous, and at worst positively malevolent.

Of course, some purists may do what Josh does and quibble that not all of his views are purely libertarian. But you can say that about Ron Paul, too; that doesn’t take away from the fact that he’s America’s best-known libertarian.

Working around the governor

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At first glance, when I saw this story this morning, and my eye fell on the word "governor," I thought, "Hey, that’s new — Sanford working with others to grow the knowledge economy in South Carolina."

Then I actually read the story. An excerpt:

    Legislative, business and education leaders Tuesday announced a new
partnership designed to draw high-paying technology and research jobs
to South Carolina — the types of jobs, lawmakers said, Gov. Mark
Sanford and the Department of Commerce have failed to bring to the
state.

    The
new effort was the brainchild of House Speaker Bobby Harrell,
R-Charleston; Rep. Dan Cooper, R-Anderson; Senate President Pro Tem
Glenn McConnell, R-Charleston; and Senate Finance Chairman Hugh
Leatherman, R-Florence — arguably the state’s four most influential
lawmakers. The idea was also endorsed by new University of South
Carolina president Harris Pastides and others in the business community….

So it was, of course, the work of every state leader except the governor. The governor, of course, maintains through those who work for him that he and his Commerce Dept. are getting the job done. But they are the only ones in state government, or apparently in academia, who think so.

It’s really unfortunate for Gov. Sanford that the state is run by Republicans. He would be much more at home with a Democratic Legislature, so that his dismissals of criticism as "political" would be more readily accepted. For instance, I might be able to dismiss the complaints of my friend Samuel. Samuel, as you probably know, was the guy who came up with the idea of the endowed chairs. He served on the governing board of that until the gov replaced him. But he’s a Democrat who’s been dumped on by the gov, so you take his complaints about the gov not caring about economic development with a grain of salt, right?

But as things are, the governor doesn’t work well with others, period, regardless of party.

And that’s why others work around him.

Sanford and McCain: How many times must a horse be beaten to death?

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Since yesterday, I’ve seen the question posed several different ways, both mockingly and in dead seriousness: Does Mark Sanford’s blank-out on CNN (now being compared unfavorably to the Miss Teen USA contestant from SC), hurt his chances to be John McCain’s running mate?

Let me pause now and count to ten before answering that. In fact, let’s discuss an unrelated point, which is that I wouldn’t be able to answer the question either. It’s not the sort of question I think about. If you asked me to say what was different in the economic policies of Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, or John Kerry, or Alfred E. Neuman, I wouldn’t be able to answer you on the spur of the moment, and in fact would probably spurn the question as unimportant to me. Sanford’s problem is that he lacked the cool or presence of mind to do that. Perhaps he didn’t think he could get away with it. That’s too bad for him, because insouciance is what he does best, and once you take it off the table, he’s got a problem.

Now, as to our main point? Who out there still thinks Mark Sanford’s got a snowball’s chance on a Columbia sidewalk of being asked to carry John McCain’s freaking luggage, much less be his running mate? Didn’t we beat this horse to death some time back? And then beat it again? And again? What’s it doing clop-clopping down the street in the middle of summer?

I’m beginning to lose patience on this point, the whole concept is so offensively stupid.

Here’s a corollary to that: The presumption in Wolf Blitzer’s question is that Mark Sanford is somehow well situated to speak as an apologist for Sen. McCain. This is almost, but not quite, as idiotic as the idea of his being a running mate. There is probably no Republican in South Carolina LESS invested in the McCain campaign than Mark Sanford. This is the guy who expressed his "support" in the most insulting way possible, AFTER it no longer mattered — and after the other two most prominent Republican officeholders in the state had put their reps on the line for their chosen candidates.

I wouldn’t ask Mr. Sanford if he knew how to SPELL "McCain," much less ask him to defend his policy positions. Maybe that’s why I’m not in TV news…

If you’re one of Howie Rich’s GOP targets, how do you feel about Katon Dawson right about now?

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For a very short news item in today’s paper, this one raised more than its share of questions and observations:

    The New Yorker pouring money into South Carolina’s political races in a
push for school choice says he won’t give up anytime soon.

    “I
am not going away, and my groups are not going away,” real estate
investor Howard Rich says in a video released Thursday by South
Carolinians for Responsible Government.

    The Rich-funded school
choice group taped the conversation at the Columbia home of state
Republican Party chairman Katon Dawson on Monday. The GOP has written
into its platform support for school choice, vouchers and tax credits.

Of course, we all knew about what the first sentence says — this is one New Yorker who doesn’t give a flying flip what people in South Carolina think or want; he’s determined to make us do what he wants. His way of doing that is to finance misleading campaigns ostensibly based on other issues, since his issue doesn’t sell with the voters, until he gets enough people in the Legislature to back his boy Mark Sanford, and he can remake South Carolina to his liking.

As for the other two grafs:

  • Does this sort of behavior remind you of anybody? You know, a guy with deep pockets, an extreme vision of how the world ought to be, and the willingness to go to extreme lengths to make it so? A guy you never see, except that periodically he puts out these videos through his faithful followers, and the message in the videos is along the lines of "I’m still alive, and still committed to the cause, and I’m not going away?" Isn’t there somebody this reminds you of? Sheesh. Some of y’all were so sensitive about the link I put on that last sentence, that I cut it out, even though it was simply a straightforward link to what this video reminded me of. So I’ll try the subtle approach, and ask YOU again: What does the above description remind YOU of? (Man — if a guy can’t do free-association type HTML links, what’s the point in blogging?)
  • This was taped at Katon Dawson‘s house, and with his willing participation? Katon, the chairman of the same party that most of Howard Rich’s targets are in — the very lawmakers he wants to take out — is part of the Howard Rich conspiracy? If I’m one of a number of GOP officeholders this guy has paid for lying ads about, I’ve got a lot of questions to ask Katon right about now. I don’t have a lot of respect for political parties anyway, but even I thought they didn’t do stuff like this to each other. If you’re chairman of a party that is split between Mark Sanford and Jim DeMint on one side, and Lindsey Graham and the majority of legislative incumbents on the other, in what way is it considered kosher to do something like this?
  • Howard Rich was in town, and he didn’t drop by to see me or even call? Kidding aside, there are a lot more straightforward ways to get your message out than funneling money through surrogate entities and taping subterranean videos. That is, if you are at all interested in open, honest political debate. Which some people aren’t.
  • How come I can’t find the video on the SCRG Web site? Am I looking in the wrong places?

Sanford? Jake? No Republicans here

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One more thing I meant to say before this runoff was over, and AFTER the Sunday page was done sort of wish I’d written my Sunday column about…

There are few things more ridiculous than Mark Sanford and Jake Knotts arguing over who is NOT a "real Republican."

Folks, neither of them is. Jake certainly isn’t. He is a populist, and will act in accordance with that philosophy, or non-philosophy, pretty much all the time. Once, that would have meant he would have been a Democrat. In recent decades, white populists in the South have flocked to the Republican party.

And Sanford? Come on. Do a poll of the real-life Republicans who serve in the State House — in the aggregate, a pretty good cross-section of the party today — and ask them if they think the governor’s a "real Republican." They’ll laugh in your face. And they probably haven’t been privy to some of the gestures of contempt toward the party that he used to exhibit to me back when we were closer, I suppose because he knew the degree to which I held all parties in contempt. It was sort of a bond between us. Still is, I suppose. Here’s one of those anecdotes, which I wrote about at the New York convention in 2004:

    I got a floor pass every night so I could mix with our delegates, but the truth is, theScbushrnc
South Carolina delegation could hardly be said to be "on the floor." They were at the very back, up off the floor, where the risers begin their climb up to the nosebleed section – behind Vermont and Idaho, right next to that other crucial electoral factor, the Virgin Islands.
    "Obviously, what they’ve done is put the battleground states up front and personal," says Rep. Harrell from Charleston. He quickly adds, "I want to be clear, it is fine with all of us."
    Besides, "I’m closer to the floor than I am during Carolina basketball games." Which is saying something. I’ve seen where he sits.
    But on the big night, the night the president speaks, South Carolina was no longer in the cheap seats. In fact, now only New Mexico was between South Carolina and the president as he spoke. It was a choice spot, looking straight into the president’s right ear from about 20 feet away. Any closer — say, where New Mexico was sitting — would be too close. You’d have to crane your neck too much.
    …
    That night, Gov. Sanford was standing in the shoulder-to-shoulder aisle, quietlySanfordrnc2
observing the process of whipping up enthusiasm before the acceptance speech. Suddenly he leaned over to me to say, in his usual casual tone, "I don’t know if you’ve read that book, Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds . . .."

    It was a classic Sanford moment.

Folks, I know Republicans. I’ve known Republicans all my life. As my father has told me, the one thing he knew about HIS father’s politics was that he was a Republican. One of his earliest memories is of Granddaddy Warthen arguing with the man down the street about FDR.

My Granddaddy wouldn’t have recognized either of these guys as members of his party.

Sanfordrnc1

NOW DeMint’s making things LESS clear

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Remember last week when Jim DeMint took Mark Sanford’s side in tomorrow’s Senate 23 primary runoff, and I said that helped clarify things a bit on one of those endorsements that I couldn’t possibly feel good about either way?

Well, forget the clarifying part. Now I learn from the Spartanburg paper that in this Upstate race, Jim’s making like Lindsey Graham and supporting the Republican officeholder, rather than joining the gov in trying to do remake the state GOP in his (Sanford’s) image:

     The District 12 race has been the most contentious over the past two weeks. Talley has hit Bright for receiving support from "out-of-state special interest groups" such as the S.C. Club for Growth and South Carolinians for Responsible Government and for having two tax liens — one as yet unresolved — placed against his business, On Time Transportation. Bright has painted Talley, a real estate attorney and the co-owner of three Marble Slab Creamery ice cream shops, as a trial lawyer.
    Both candidates have garnered some high-profile endorsements. U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint came to town Saturday to stump for Talley, while Gov. Mark Sanford gave his nod to Bright on Monday.
    Bright said he wants to go to Columbia to support Sanford’s agenda. That agenda includes using taxpayer money for parents to send their children to private schools and a one-school-district-per-county system. Bright said the consolidation issue is one on which he disagrees with the governor.

Of course, if the gov didn’t come out for this Bright guy until last Monday, that one is nowhere near as important to him as getting rid of Jake Knotts. Sometimes when you whack a guy, it’s just business. Other times, it’s personal, so you have to do it yourself, as Tony had to do with "Big Pussy" Bonpensiero, or Michael with Sollozzo and McCluskey. And you want to make really sure that your capos are with you.

In a way, that’s what makes the Lexington County race so unusually interesting. It’s SO personal for both Jake and the gov, and Republican capos have had to choose sides in a difficult war. And it’s interesting for the rest of us to see how they line up.

What the Knotts endorsement is really about

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On today’s page, you saw our endorsement of Jake Knotts in the runoff in the Republican nomination in Senate District 23. You also saw Cindi Scoppe’s column that was her way of thinking through, and explaining to readers, what was for the whole board a difficult decision. (And despite the little bit of fun I had about DeMint "clarifying" things, it was and is a difficult one.)

It’s worth reading, if you only get one thing out of it: This isn’t as simple as being about whether this person is for vouchers (or, worse, tax credits) or that one is against them. This is about what video poker was about — whether a group that does not have the state’s best interests at heart is allowed to intimidate the Legislature into doing its will.

It’s easy to say that, but very hard to communicate to readers. It’s hard to understand if you don’t spend as much time as I have, and as Cindi has (and she has a lot more direct experience with this than I do) observing lawmakers up close, and watching the ways they interact, and the way issues play out among them. I know it’s hard for readers to understand, because all these years later, folks still seem to have trouble understanding what the video poker issue was about for the editorial board, and why we took the position we ultimately did (to ban the industry).

I know we’ll be explaining this one for the next 10 years, and possibly longer. It’s just tough to communicate, and made tougher in this case because video poker was at least unsavory on its face. The face of this campaign funded by out-of-state extremists appears to be perfectly nice, ordinary people like Katrina Shealy and Sheri Few.

But it’s not about them. And it’s not about Jake Knotts, either. It’s certainly not about whether one or two candidates who favor (or might favor) vouchers get elected to the Legislature. By themselves, those one or two candidates can’t change the fact that spending public funds on private schools is (quite rightly) an unpopular cause. What this is about is the fact that if Jake Knotts loses, Howard Rich and company win, and that will play in the Legislature this way: Our money took Jake down. We can do the same to you. And at that point, lawmakers who don’t believe in vouchers and know their constituents don’t either can be induced to vote along with those interests anyway.

We saw it happen with video poker — until the industry was put out of business, cutting off the flow of cash that was corrupting the legislative process. We’re seeing a similar dynamic here. And that’s what this is about.

Anyway, as I mentioned, Cindi had a column about that. On Sunday, I’ll have a very different column about this endorsement. At one point in the column, I refer to one of the big differences between our editorial board and Jake Knotts — his populism. So it is that I post the video below, which features Sen. Knotts talking about that.

DeMint helps clarify things

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This has happened twice now, and it was helpful both times.

As is my usual pattern with these either-way-I’m-unhappy endorsements, I came in on the morning of June 4, the day the original Jake Knotts endorsement ran, with my usual now-it’s-too-late sense of buyer’s remorse. Not that I wished we’d endorsed Katrina Shealy (or Mike Sturkie), it was just one of those that I wasn’t going to be happy any way you looked at it.

Fortunately, Gov. Mark Sanford came to the rescue, making me feel so much better, so much more confident that we did the right thing — or as confident as I could be. We had said the governor was too fixated on getting rid of this guy — meaning that if he succeeded, it would intimidate the whole Legislature — that it was best to re-elect him. And right on cue, the governor stops everything, on the day before the end of the legislative session, to write an op-ed about why Jake’s got to go. It was highly vindicating.

Then this morning, after we’ve gone through Round Two of the Jake wars here on the editorial board, and endorsed him again in the runoff (not doing so was actually on the table, yes), and I pick up my paper today wondering whether that really was necessary, and along comes Jim DeMint to the rescue.

Things are so much clearer now. Let’s see:

This makes everything so much clearer. Oh yeah, in case you didn’t know: We endorsed McCain in the GOP primary. That’s one we were utterly sure of. And unlike the governor, we actually did so when the outcome was in doubt.

Supreme Court justice calls Sanford groups ‘the new face of the Klan’

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First we had the Knotts endorsement — which was about, as much as anything, whether we would stand by while the governor and the outside groups that support him would be able to take out a guy at the top of their hit list.

Then, we had the governor’s response to the endorsement — which, in case you missed it, made our point for us. Here you have the governor of our state stopping everything on the day before the end of the legislative session to write an attack on a single lawmaker. Extraordinary piece, really.

Now, I see that S.C. Supreme Court Justice Don Beatty saying some way harsh things about the groups that are the governor’s main cheering section:

Beatty: Third-party groups are ‘new face of the Klan’
    State Supreme Court Justice Don Beatty said Wednesday that third-party groups using him as the "poster boy" to attack candidates across South Carolina are the "new face of the Klan."
    Beatty accused organizations such as the S.C. Club for Growth, South Carolinians for Responsible Government and Conservatives in Action of distorting his record as a legislator in the 1990s to scare voters away from candidates they oppose. He said they’ve never cited any of the decisions he’s handed down in more than 12 years on the bench that would support their claims that he’s a liberal judge.
    "It makes me wonder what their real reason is for attacking me," Beatty said. "It’s because I’m an easy target, and they can use code words and my black face to appeal to voters that they might be able to enrage against legislators that supported me…These people give conservatives a bad name. I’ve heard them referred to on more than one occasion as the new face of the (Ku Klux) Klan. I’m almost about to believe that."

The piece goes on in that vein. I thought y’all might be interested.

No, but he’s got time for THIS

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If you read Elizabeth Holmes’ recent story in The Wall Street Journal, you know that the reason Mark Sanford couldn’t endorse John McCain back before the S.C. primary — and he was asked not once, but three times — was that his schedule was just so darned tight:

    Mr. Sanford says the time commitment needed to fully support a
presidential campaign was too great, given his responsibilities as
governor and as a father. "If you hop in, it’s not like you can just
sorta hop in halfway," Mr. Sanford said in an interview. "If you gotta
do it, you really gotta do it."
    … "You do not have an unlimited number of hours," he said.
    …Even though the time commitment to campaign with Sen. McCain would be minimal — maybe a week — Mr. Sanford still refused.

I wonder what McCain — or any of the other GOP candidates who could have used a kind word from the gov back in those days — would think of this release I just got:

              Contact: Danielle Frangos
              For Immediate Release – April 23, 2008                                             

KATRINA SHEALY ENDORSED BY GOVERNOR MARK SANFORD
LEXINGTON, SC – Governor Mark Sanford today endorsed Katrina Shealy in her campaign for State Senate.
    “I’m supporting Katrina in this race quite simply because I believe she’s committed to the conservative ideals of lower taxes and limited government that people I talk to in Lexington County believe in very strongly,” Gov. Sanford said. “I believe Katrina will be a real leader in terms of working to make South Carolina a better place to do business, work, and raise a family, and to that end I’m pleased to endorse her.”
    Katrina Shealy thanked the Governor for his endorsement, saying, “I am so pleased to receive Governor Sanford’s endorsement.  The Governor’s support is truly a validation of my pro-business and pro-taxpayer message of fiscal responsibility.  I look forward to working with the Governor to improve our state’s business climate and help create new jobs and opportunities for our hard working families. I believe the Governor’s support is a major step towards the Republican nomination for the State Senate.”
    Katrina Shealy is the former Lexington County Republican Party Chair running for State Senate in District 23. Katrina resides with her husband Jimmy in the Red Bank area of Lexington County.
                # # #

Well, I guess that we should all feel glad that the infamous "list" never materialized. If the governor’s just going after Jake Knotts, that’s way better than trying to remake the whole Legislature in his image.

One thing I will say for Jake, though — he did manage to find a few minutes in his busy Sanford-baiting schedule to endorse Sen. McCain, well before the primary.

Not everyone at the Journal is clueless about McCain and Sanford

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My earlier post reminded me of something — a couple of weeks back, someone at the Journal was trying to reach me to talk about Sanford and McCain. Elizabeth Holmes and I traded phone messages, but never got in touch. Then I forgot about it.

Remembering that today, I sent Ms. Holmes a link to today’s post on the subject. She wrote a quick line back asking whether I had ever read her story, which I had not. I just found it. It ran on Saturday, March 29. I don’t know if this link will work for you or not, but essentially the piece drew the sharp contrast between 2000, when Sanford co-chaired McCain’s S.C. campaign, and 2008, when he wouldn’t give the McCain campaign the time of day:

    Mr. Sanford didn’t endorse anyone during the primaries this year, after having co-chaired Sen. McCain’s bitter battle in South Carolina during the 2000 race. He brushed off requests for support by the McCain team at least three times, according to people familiar with the matter, including a period last year when the campaign was at a low.
    The snub could cost him his chance at the vice presidency. "Loyalty is a big, big commodity in McCain-land," said a McCain aide familiar with Mr. Sanford’s involvement…

As for why there’s so much talk out there about Sanford in defiance of all reason… Ms. Holmes is hip to that as well. After the 2000 campaign, Mr. Sanford became governor, and as she notes, "As governor, he began speaking at conservative think tanks — such as
the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute — and continues to do
so."

Add to that the governor’s most ardent cheerleaders at the Club for Growth. The Club was pushing Sanford for national office as early as the Republican National Convention in 2004. Here’s an excerpt from a piece I wrote at the end of that week in New York:

    Even our own Sen. Lindsey Graham and Gov. Mark Sanford were being mentioned. As I wrote earlier in the week, Sen. Graham spent the convention going between interviews like a bee going from flower to flower.
    For his part, Mr. Sanford calls all the talk "the last thing in the world I’m looking at or thinking about." But that’s about all he’s got time to say about it because he’s too busy participating in things like a "Four for the Future" panel over at the Club for Growth.
    On Wednesday, he invites the delegation to a soiree at a friend’s home on the Upper East Side. He urges them to come see "how a real New Yorker lives. They live in small boxes." His host’s home may be a little narrow, but if that’s a box, it’s from Tiffany’s — and it’s gift-wrapped.
    At the reception itself, when the governor silences the assembled gathering to thank Howard Bellin for the use of his home, the host says, "I fully expect to be his guest at the White House in another four years."

One nice thing about the Club, though — maybe nobody else reads my blog, but they certainly do. This appeared on the S.C. chapter’s Web site roughly an hour (either 47 minutes or an hour and 47 minutes, depending on how their site treats time zones) after my last post went up.

So, let me close with a big shout-out to my pals at the Club, which believe it or not actually has a blog devoted to pushing Sanford as Veep.

Forget Real ID; Big Brother’s going private

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While Gov. Mark Sanford and other opponents of Big Gummint are busily fighting that hyper-scary Threat to All We Hold Sacred, the Real ID program, Big Brother’s turning to the private sector to get the dirty deed done.

The Financial Times reports that, under a program (that’s "programme" to you Brits) run by Homeland Security, air travelers are voluntarily turning their most intimate identifying info over to private contractors:

    Until recently the only thing apart from love that money could not
buy was a guaranteed place at the front of an airport security queue.
That is changing, as an additional 500 US air passengers a day agree to
hand over a $100 (£50) annual fee, plus their fingerprints and iris
scans, for the right to become “registered travellers” in private
programmes supervised by the Department of Homeland Security.

    Once
the authorities have run an applicant’s background checks to ensure he
or she is not a threat to airline security, the successful RT receives
a credit card-style pass containing biometric information and the
privilege of joining specially designated fast lanes at a growing
number of US airports. The market leader, Verified Identity Pass (VIP),
has received about 100,000 applications, of which 75,000 have been
approved.

I suppose the reader reaction to this news will serve as a sort of litmus test: Libertarians will say, "See? Told you the private sector can get the job done better than gummint!"

Others among us would far rather give up such information only to Uncle Sam, who is constrained by laws written by the representives we elect, than to someone with a profit motive, who might choose to do whatever he pleases with it. Different strokes.

First we outsource warfighting. Now this.

Graham slaps down Sanford again — politely

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You’ll recall Lindsey Graham’s rebuke to his old friend Mark Sanford last week over the governor’s continuing efforts to divide the Republican Party.

As you can see on the video, he was polite and used mild language, but the rebuke was fairly firm nonetheless. Obviously, the Senator had decided it was time for someone to act like a party leader rather than an insurgent.

Well, he’s done it again, this time over the South Carolina reaction to Real ID. This release came in late Monday:

March 31, 2008

Graham on REAL ID and South Carolina
WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) made this statement on South Carolina and REAL ID. 
    Graham said:
    “I am pleased South Carolina has been granted an extension by Secretary Chertoff regarding REAL ID compliance.  The decision was more than justified. 
    “The Governor has done an excellent job in explaining his concerns to federal officials, many of which I share.  Our state already meets 16 of the 18 compliance benchmarks – about 90 percent — called for in REAL ID.  Governor Sanford’s efforts to reform our state drivers’ license program has made the system more secure and efficient.
     “REAL ID grew out of recommendations made by the 9-11 Commission over the need for more secure forms of identification.  It was viewed as an effective means of cracking down on the use of fraudulent documents like those used by the 9/11 hijackers.  In addition, REAL ID would make it more difficult for illegal immigrants to obtain employment by tightening acceptable forms of identification.
    “I will do my part to help ensure the federal government addresses the unfunded mandate burden imposed on the states by REAL ID.  Governors and state legislatures across the country are rightfully concerned about these requirements.   
    “However, in this age of international terrorism we must secure the homeland.  We need better identification to protect air travel, access to federal buildings, institutions, and other high value terrorist targets.
    “I believe we can accommodate the legitimate national security needs of our nation with the concerns raised by Governor Sanford and the state legislature.” 

                    #####

As he said, there’s no excuse for unfunded mandates. At the same time, we need a better identification system for citizens, both for national security and immigration control reasons.

He points out that for all the hollering, South Carolina is already most of the way to compliance.

And as he concludes, we can address these important matters without all the ideological posturing and brinksmanship. We just have to act like grownups.

Those gutless feds

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We shouldn’t be a bit surprised that the feds caved in response to our governor’s libertarian snit-fit over Real ID. After what they’d done with Montana and New Hampshire, they couldn’t go all regulation on SC.

Of course, I suspect the governor was counting on that. However much the anti-government rebel he may want to seem, he tends to make his most dramatic gestures when there is somebody ready to break the fall. He knew the Legislature wouldn’t let him veto the budget. He knew somebody else (Will Folks?) was there to clean up the piglet poop. And he knew Michael Chertoff wouldn’t really inconvenience South Carolinians, which would have made 4 million people really ticked off at Mark Sanford.

Yes, unfunded mandates are bad. And yes, reasonable people can present arguments that Real ID has problems beyond that. (Gordon Hirsch presented a strong set of arguments back on this comment thread.)

But this little anticlimactic confrontation wasn’t about those things. It was about political theater, and everybody played his part. The Federal Government appeared in the role of The Wimp.

And don’t you just love the way they caved — pretending to give South Carolina the waiver that the governor petulantly refused to ask for?

The Department of Homeland Security isn’t even willing to stand its ground against political tantrums on the home front. Do you really think it’s prepared to do what it takes to defend the country?

Tom Davis predicting Rod Shealy attack

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A reader yesterday asked what I thought about the smear job, reportedly engineered by Rod Shealy, that hit Tom Davis this week at the outset of his attempt to unseat Sen. Catherine Ceips.

When I read about it, I just nodded. Tom, the subject of my column this past Sunday, indicated last week that he expected something of the kind, and that it would probably be worse than even he expected:

    I hadn’t even thought about that, to be honest with you… I hadn’t even thought about what it’s gonna be like having a guy who wakes up in the morning who just wants to strip the bark off me. I mean, and that’s what Rod Shealy’s gonna wanna do… I’ve never been through a campaign. I’ve been told just to expect, whatever it is about you that you don’t want people to know, expect it to be known.

Tom thought it would be about something true about him — such as the fact that he was a Democrat when he was young — instead of this illegal-alien nonsense. But that’s Tom’s great liability in this race: He’s a Mr. Smith type. He’s a very open, candid, straightforward, sincere kind of guy (I would have added "thrifty, brave, clean and reverent," but you get the idea), so he figured whatever he was hit with would be something real.

So he was right: He hadn’t really thought through what it would be like with Rod Shealy after him. That’s because Tom Davis is incapable of thinking like Rod Shealy.

It’s a helluva thing, isn’t it, when honest people have to fear running for public office because of sleazy stuff that will be done to them that has nothing to do with their suitability for office?

Oh, but wait! Rod Shealy is reformed! It’s got to be true… PBS said so…

Anyway, in the video above, you’ll see and hear Tom talking about this subject.