Category Archives: Parties

They could have just waited two weeks

I am engaged in the Herculean task of trying to catch up with my email (each day I skim for things that seem urgently important, and save the rest to look at later — now I’m going back through it all to trying clean up).

And I ran across this scary item from Michele Bachmann on Oct. 17:

Donald Trump and I want to call you tonight

Dear Fellow Conservative,

I have an exciting announcement: Tonight, Donald Trump will join me for a national tele-townhall — and you’re invited.

Would you like to discuss the election and my campaign with Donald Trump and me at 8:00 p.m. ET today? Click here to register. It’s free and will only take a minute.

This is an incredible opportunity for you and everyone from Team Bachmann to hear from a businessman who knows firsthand that Barack Obama’s failed policies are crippling our nation’s job creators. I know I’m eager to hear Donald Trump’s thoughts about the race so far and why he thinks retiring Barack Obama is a top priority for our businesses and families.

Why couldn’t they just have waited two weeks, until Halloween. I’d have been glad to give them a treat, to avoid such a phone call…

I’m seeing a movie here, “Hallowe’en 2012.” If it succeeded at the box office, it could be followed by a sequel in which Michele and The Donald come to your house and try to sell you on Amway.

Kidding aside, what must Michele Bachmann think of me, to think that having Donald Trump accompany her would make me more likely to welcome such a call?

Dems, don’t repeat GOP’s Tea Party mistake

1 Reply

When I saw this Tweet this morning,

@postpoliticsPostPolitics

How the Occupy Wall Street movement could help Democratshttp://wapo.st/vIrMv8

My first thought was hopeful: By… making them look moderate by contrast?

But I was whistling past a political graveyard. I knew that’s not what I would find when I followed the link:

The Occupy Wall Street movement is very much in its infancy, and many Americans still don’t know what to think of it. But there is also growing evidence that it could become a boon to Democrats.

A new CBS News-New York Times poll shows 43 percent of people agree with the aims of the movement, while just 27 percent say they disagree.

Set aside the unanswerable question, “agree and disagree with what?” Read on…

This is ominous. Expect Democrats to start sounding much more like populist class warriors than they already do. Expect them to go gaga over this movement the way Republicans did the Tea Party in 2010. Expect there to be no candidates out there trying to appeal to sensible independents who just go to work every day and try to earn a living and hope and pray, often in vain, that their political leaders might approach things as seriously as they do.

Think I’m wrong? Well, Phil Noble — who seems determined to turn the old Third Way movement (in SC, at least) into a vanguard of the populist left — is now using his SC New Democrats as a megaphone for OWS. From his Facebook page:

OCCUPY IN SC NEWS 10/26…TOP STORY: ‘Meet Rick Perry” in Cola and Occupy media http://bit.ly/sP332P … STATEWIDE – Occupy Your State Capital, National event, Oct 29, 12 -3, Columbia http://bit.ly/nSYBGD … Occupy the Streets / Occupy the World Nov 11, http://on.fb.me/nkgtw6 … COLA – 10 days, State House Occupation continues, Site with daily schedule http://bit.ly/nVmW80 Media on Occupy at Rick Perry event http://bit.ly/sP332P …CHAS – GA will be at the ILA Hall on Morrison Dr at 6pm on ThursdayOct 27 …G’VILLE – Sunday Oct 30, McPherson Park at 2, Main Street march at 4 http://grnol.co/pCBBlQ Nov 7 Occupy Concert 7pm, The Handelbar http://bit.ly/rufODV media: http://bit.ly/tBbyuL … S’BURG – pix from recent events http://on.fb.me/nrgPgz … MYRTLE BEACH – GA Sat, October 29 • 2:00pm – 5:00pm Chapin Park http://bit.ly/usVR88 … GREER – March Nov 5, N Main & College 12am http://bit.ly/psITUI … CLEMSON – Event Oct 27, 12pm Bowman Field http://bit.ly/roRWaD NEW Facebook pagehttp://on.fb.me/r85P0d … AIKEN – 1st GA meeting, Sun Oct 30, 2:30- 4:30 at Odell Weeks Park http://bit.ly/vLXk7Y new Facebook pagehttp://on.fb.me/nD18hp … Cache of good Occupy designs http://bit.ly/pLV62r … SEND INFO to phil@philnoble.com

Yeah, I couldn’t make much out of that, either, but I get the general idea. He’s all for OWS, or at least wants to persuade them that he is.

Dang. There’s just not going to be anyplace for the rest of us to go, is there?

OK, DCCC, I agree with you on this one

31 Replies

Another of those fund-raising appeals that never stop coming arrived this morning, ostensibly from Donna Brazile. It starts out,

Brad —

If President Obama found a cure for the common cold, Republicans would oppose it.

I’ll ignore the laughably transparent attempt to pretend you know me (“Hey, Donna!”), when you obviously don’t if you think I’d give you money, and move on to the first full sentence.

You’re absolutely right. Now, will you agree with me on the following statement, which is just as obviously true?

Brad —

If President Bush had found a cure for the common cold, Democrats would have opposed it.

You can’t agree, Donna? Oh, well. Perhaps I don’t know you that well, either.

Too bad. Because you had hit on a punchy, terse way of expressing how pointlessly partisan Congress has become, and how destructive it is to the country for anyone to give you money for your cause, or to do the same for your Republican counterparts.

Vote UnParty, y’all.

Perry’s SC visit turns up one key endorsement at least — SC House Speaker Bobby Harrell’s

1 Reply

This morning, I saw some speculation out there that Rick Perry — who met with Nikki Haley today — was trying to get the endorsement of the fellow governor with who he shares one key friend: Eleanor Kitzman.

Well, I haven’t seen anything out of that yet, but he did come up with an announcement that might mean more to the more establishment types in the GOP: Speaker Bobby Harrell. Here’s the release:

House Speaker Bobby Harrell Joins South Carolina Legislators
Endorsing Rick Perry for President

AUSTIN – South Carolina House of Representatives Speaker Bobby Harrell today joined more than 20 other prominent South Carolina GOP leaders in endorsing Texas Gov. Rick Perry for president.

“Speaker Harrell is a proven conservative and respected leader,” said Gov. Perry. “His endorsement speaks to the growing support of our campaign and my conservative record, and I look forward to working with him and the rest of our South Carolina team as I continue to travel the nation sharing my vision for how we will get America working again.”

Gov. Perry has previously been endorsed by the following South Carolina GOP leaders:

U.S. Congressman Mick Mulvaney

State Commissioner Hugh Weathers

Ambassador David Wilkins

State Senate Majority Leader Harvey Peeler, Cherokee

State Senator Paul Campbell, Berkeley

State Senator Ronnie Cromer, Newberry

State Senator Larry Grooms, Berkeley

State Senator Mike Rose, Dorchester

State Rep. Todd Atwater, Lexington

State Rep. Liston Barfield, Horry

State Rep. Eric Bedingfield, Greenville

State Rep. Alan Clemmons, Horry

State Rep. Marion Frye, Saluda

State Rep. Dan Hamilton, Greenville

State Rep. Bill Hixon, Aiken

State Rep. Chip Limehouse, Charleston

State Rep. Philip Lowe, Florence

State Rep. Chris Murphy, Charleston

State Rep. Bill Sandifer, Oconee

State Rep. Gary Simrill, Rock Hill

State Rep. Tommy Stringer, Greenville

State Rep. Bill Taylor, Aiken

State Rep. Mark Willis, Greenville

For more information about Gov. Rick Perry’s record, presidential campaign and plan to get America working again, please visit: www.rickperry.org.

Interesting. Last time around, Harrell and Henry McMaster were among the few who stuck with John McCain through thick and thin, even when everybody was saying he was out of it and would never get the nomination.

This time, McMaster (and John Courson, who is also accustomed to seeing his candidates win in SC) are supporting Jon Huntsman. But Harrell’s taking a separate path…

Lindsey Graham fighting good fight again, this time to preserve essential foreign aid

20 Replies

Just when you thought Lindsey Graham had collapsed back into a complete defensive mode to protect his right flank, he has stepped out again to lead on an issue that could cost him political support across the spectrum.

This is good to see. This is the Lindsey Graham who more than earns his pay. Because a politicians who isn’t willing to risk his position to do the right thing has no business holding office at all:

GOP’s Sen. Graham works to protect foreign aid

By JAMES ROSEN – McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who has taken on tough tasks from immigration reform to climate change, faces another one as he calls for spending billions of dollars overseas on unpopular foreign aid programs that he insists are vital to U.S. national security.

With Congress facing mandatory spending cuts and previously sacrosanct military programs on the chopping block, Graham is trying to protect funding for foreign aid even as most Americans oppose it – 71 percent in a recent poll – and other Republican leaders call for focusing U.S. resources at home.

“It is a tough sell, but you can be penny-wise and pound-foolish,” Graham, a Republican in his second term, told McClatchy Newspapers…

As Rosen correctly notes, this is classic Graham, the one we saw stepping out on rational immigration reform, and (until county parties back home starting censuring him, pushing him toward the defensive posture) on energy and climate change.

This is good to see.

Today, I was walking through Charleston, past 39 Rue de Jean, and mentioned to a friend that the first time I ate there, it was with Alex Sanders. Which got us onto the 2002 Senate campaign, and what a bitter pill it was to the state’s Democrats that he lost — they had placed such hope in him reviving their fortunes. But, my friend noted, Graham has done a good job since then.

Yes, he has. Especially when he does stuff like this.

There’s a slight implication — perhaps not intentional — in Rosen’s story that there’s something ironic about the hawkish Graham pushing “soft power.” But the idea that there’s some sort of dichotomy between soft and hard power is a canard pushed by people who don’t understand foreign policy. Effective foreign policy includes a good deal of both, and Graham is a guy who understands, and advocates, the full DIME.

Oh, by the way — that thing about 71 percent of Americans wanting to cut foreign aid… there’s nothing new about it. Polls always say that. They also tend to say that Americans don’t know squat about foreign aid. When you ask them how much of the budget goes to foreign aid, they tend to answer that it’s something like 25 percent. When you ask them how much should go to foreign aid, they say about 10 percent.

The true amount? About 1 percent. So basically, if Graham sought to make foreign aid 10 times as much of the budget as it is now (or 3-5 times, according to some polls), they should be happy. But watch — they won’t be.

SC Dem spoof of bizarre Herman Cain advert

6 Replies

I’m not going to tell you which is the real Cain thing and which is the spoof… OK, if you see them both, I guess you can tell. But if I just showed you the Cain video alone, and asked you whether it was real or a spoof, you’d have trouble getting it right.

In fact, I’m still having trouble with it. I’m still thinking Herman Cain might be sending us up. Look at that grin.

The WashPost suspected the same thing:

A few questions come to mind….

1. Why is Mark Block, Cain’s campaign manager, smoking a cigarette?

2. Why is Mark Block blowing cigarette smoke into the camera?

3. Why is Mark Block on camera?

4. Who is holding the camera?

5. Why did anyone think this was a good idea?

6. Why is Herman Cain smiling?

7. Are we being punked?

Anyway, enjoy. And don’t y’all be smoking anything, OK? It’s all bad for your lungs.

(The spoof, by the way, is the best-executed video yet from Tyler Jones, who posts on YouTube under the handle, SCForwardProgress. Or at least, I assume he’s the one doing them, since he’s the one who always calls them to my attention.)

Do Lieberman and McCain have a new best bud?

Picking presidents not private property of political parties (nor are pickled peppers, people)

19 Replies

Yesterday, I Tweeted my indignation that some SC counties consider the coming GOP presidential primary to be, as Adam Beam reported it, “a private election” that the state Republican Party should pay for.

That position is utterly indefensible. If any election should be publicly funded, this one should be. It is the ONLY chance for South Carolinians to have a voice in deciding who the president will be.

We know that South Carolinians who voted for the Barack Obama in November of that year will have zero effect on the electoral total, because in this red state, all the electors will go into the Republican column.

So this is it, your one chance to make a choice that has any effect. You don’t vote in the GOP primary, and you have no opportunity to influence the election. And the state of South Carolina owes its people that chance.

Yeah, I know that counties are extremely strapped for basic operating funds. As a public defender in Chester wrote to me in response,

The untold story of the budget the last few years is how strapped most counties have been. The parties ought to pick up the tab…

He added:

My office hasn’t received any additional county funding in years. I just see higher priorities locally than this.

I get that. And it’s fine with me if the only slightly less strapped state government (which is largely responsible for local governments’ inability to fund basic services) pays for the election.

The selection of the president is not the private property of political parties (nor pickled peppers). Although occasionally some partisans act as thought it were.

What we SHOULD do is have totally open primaries, meaning that you get to vote in both (when we have both). We should not be barred from voting in the Democratic primary because we voted that same day in the Republican, and vice versa. Every single voter in the state has a stake in who appears on that ballot in November, because one of those people is going to get elected. You should have a say in both of them.

For those of you who say this is nonsense, that of course it’s the choice of the parties whom they nominate, I say that’s the extent to which you have been brainwashed by these parties that hold a shared monopoly on public office in this country.

I won’t get my way on that any time soon. For now, I’ll just be grateful that we’re not yet required to register by party. And continue to expect my government to provide me with the opportunity to vote, at least to that extent.

Just for the record, I am not mad at Boyd

2 Replies

Rep. Boyd Brown at Yesterday's.

About an hour after Kevin Fisher called me to set the record straight on whether he had called me, I met Boyd Brown for a beer at Yesterday’s.

We had a fine time getting acquainted — I don’t believe we’d every had a conversation before — although it was unnecessary from my point of view. Boyd had suggested the meeting because he thought I was mad at him or something, and I went along because, as my readers know, I’m always glad to spend time at Yesterday’s (see the ad at right).

It was a very South Carolina kind of conversation. We talked about Boyd’s experiences with his Daddy (who is probably younger than I, since Boyd is younger than my fourth child) being on county council in Fairfield County, and about when his grandfather was a high official in state government, and about the people he’s related to in Bennettsville (my birthplace), and partisan politics, and race, and… just a little of everything.

And, more to the point… Boyd says he did not realize until after he had said it that in the case of our governor, his remark could be construed on yet a third level that, he agreed, is inappropriate. So we had a total meeting of the minds. Except, to some extent, when we got on the subject of upcoming legislation that he’s planning to push, but more about that later…

Obama swamps would-be opponents in fund-raising — in SC, of all places!

2 Replies

Maybe it’s always this way. I don’t recall having looked at fund-raising numbers in quite this way before, at this point, in a campaign shaped like this one. Cindi Scoppe probably has — she compiled The State‘s first campaign-contribution website if I recall correctly. She’s into stuff like that. As for me — well, it’s about money, so MEGO.

But this got my attention:

Rick Perry is the leading Republican presidential fundraiser in South Carolina, and he did most of it on one day in August.

The Texas governor took in $55,000 of the $103,000 that he has raised in South Carolina on Aug. 25. Katon Dawson, who is advising Perry’s S.C. campaign, confirmed Perry held an S.C. fundraiser that day but told a reporter, “I can’t tell you anything about it.”

While languishing in the polls, former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania also is popular among S.C. donors. Santorum has raised $80,080 in the state, the second-highest of any Republican candidate, just ahead of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who raised $75,230.

President Barack Obama, a Democrat, actually was the top fundraiser in South Carolina, collecting $238,291. However, Obama is not expected to carry South Carolina, which last went for a Democratic presidential candidate in 1976.

Say what? Repeat that last?

Yeah, I get it. He’s the incumbent. But he raised way over twice as much money as the richest fund-raiser among all GOP candidates, and he raised it in South Carolina — a state he doesn’t have a prayer of winning in 2012. Which is why his bus tour somehow magically appeared in North Carolina on a trip northward without having passed through South Carolina, far as we could tell. (Did you hear his teleprompter got stolen in Virginia?)

He’s raised $238,291 in our state — more than 90 grand of it in Richland County (three times as much as all Republicans combined in the capital city) — and has spent… $2,385 (that’s according to a graphic in The State that I couldn’t find online). Yep, 1 percent.

You realize this makes South Carolina a Democratic Party donor state? So much for Democrats being all about what Washington can send to them… I guess this is payback time, huh?

Who are these rich Columbians? And how come they aren’t buying ads on bradwarthen.com? (If I were still at the paper, I’d get Cindi to go find out for me. I didn’t find names in a cursory Web glance at the data Adam drew his story from. Of course, if I were still at the paper, I wouldn’t get to sell ads and keep the money, so… Anyway, more as I know more. I just wanted to go ahead and get something up on this before the day was out.)

Meanwhile, over on the fiscally conservative side, Jon Huntsman has raised $2,550 here, and spent $277,744 in SC. According to the FEC’s website, which is where Adam’s numbers come from. Michelle Bachmann has raised $23,197 and spent $83,156. Others, such as Perry and Santorum, are staying within their SC-raised means in SC.

All told, if young Adam did his sums right, presidential candidates have raised $382,902 from SC sources and spent $719,276 here. So on the GOP side, SC is a beneficiary of political welfare — which makes sense, we being an earlier-primary state than the places where their money likely came from.

Which depends. For Perry, it’s Texas. For Obama, it’s California and the Northeast. For Romney — well, the map looks kind of the way it does for Obama, except the Republican is getting a larger proportion from Florida. Here’s where you can look all that up. Now you don’t need me. Let me know if you find the names of those donors. Get their contact info…

My seventh Pub Politics appearance

4 Replies

Pub Politics Episode 77: Brad Warthen’s 7th Visit from Wesley Donehue on Vimeo.

CORRECTION: At some time during the above video — I haven’t gone back through it to find out where — I say that Kevin Fisher did not call me ahead of time to warn me he had written a column critical of me. THAT IS NOT TRUE. Kevin called me after seeing this to tell me that he DID call me. I didn’t hear the message, but I know Kevin wouldn’t tell me that if it weren’t true. Let me add that it wasn’t important for him to have called me. I don’t call people to warn them I’ve been critical of them in something coming out. If I did, I’d be on the phone all day. I had just noted that it seemed ironic that he HAD called to warn me when he had written something noncritical about me previously, but (I thought) had not done so this time.

Above you see the embed of my last-minute, emergency appearance on Pub Politics last week. I was a replacement for Joel Lourie. Guest-hosting with Phil Bailey was Joel Sawyer.

It was my historic seventh appearance on the show. Nobody else comes close.

It’s like the Pub Politics guys are Jimmy Olson, and I’m Clark Kent, and they’ve got a signal watch. And it starts beeping (at a frequency only Kryptonians can here), and I’m like all, “Why can’t Jimmy just stay out of trouble,” but I head for a phone booth (or a reasonable facsimile, since those are getting really, really hard to find outside London, where they keep them because they’re picturesque), and then it’s up, up and away time.

I love one of his children, but not the other

20 Replies

My sons gave me birthday gift cards for Barnes and Noble, my favorite place for hanging out aimlessly and browsing, and I’m there now, contemplating a dilemma.

A couple of days ago, I saw the review in the WSJ about this new biography of James Madison by Richard Brookhiser, and they have it here. Since college — when I took so many electives (to some extent concentrating on that period) that I ended up getting a second major in history when I hadn’t planned to — I’ve been drawn to that period, and the Founders. Particularly the Framers.

But do I really want to use one of my cards for that? The publisher overpriced it a bit, for a book with such large type and so few pages. Nowhere near the heft of McCullough’s John Adams. I could get several paperbacks for this price.

Also… I’m still reading, and fascinated by, Charles Mann’s exploration of the Americas and the world pre- and post-1492.

Do I really want to delve into my mixed attitudes toward Madison right now (I inadvertently typed “Jefferson” just then, a pre-Freudian slip)?

The thing is, I revere the man as the Father of our Constitution, a political achievement I honor as much as any in human history.

But… he’s also the father (note the lower case) of a bastard child — American partisan politics. Or one of the main fathers, anyway (the mother was indiscriminate). Certainly the most successful one. The Federalists (which, if I had to pick a party, would have been my preference then) faded away, but Madison’s Democratic Republicans remain vital, although in different form, under truncated name. (And no, for those who don’t follow such things, it’s not the Republicans, a later invention.)

I love one of his children, but the other is the bane of my life as a political writer.

Another reason to hesitate, and wait until this, too, is marked down or in paperback… I have yet to read the book about his chief rival, the one by Ron Chernow, that Fritz Hollings recommended to me several years ago. Fritz thought it was great, and I asked one of my kids for it for birthday or Christmas, and it sits on my shelf yet.

Of course, if anything, my attitudes toward Hamilton lean even more toward the jaded. Despite my Federalist leanings (which is really more of a reaction to the Democratic Republicans than a love of the Federalists), and despite my great admiration for the role that he, too, played in the Constitution, there’s that nasty partisanship thing.

While Adams and Jefferson were conducting themselves more or less above the fray, Hamilton and Madison were carrying out the nastiest sort of partisan warfare in their behalfs. But at least Madison served Jefferson well in so doing. One thing I respect about Adams is that he truly hated party politics, as much as I do, and his own party worked against him perhaps more than it supported him (to name but one example, there’s the way they blackened his legacy with the Alien and Sedition Acts). Jefferson was more affected in his nonpartisanship, and carried it off well, while Madison more smoothly conducted his dirty work.

As for my decision — oh, I’ll have to read the book at some point. I just haven’t decided whether to get it now. I’ll browse a bit more first…

Some SC Democrats getting excited about Cain

20 Replies

In a previous post, I derided the widespread notion among Republicans that Democrats will work to try to praise and promote the weakest Republican candidates.

That doesn’t mean it never happens.

Today, a couple of young SC Democratic wise guys have been having fun with Herman Cain’s rise in the polls. First, Lachlan McIntosh Tweeted this:

Herman Can for President? Where do we donate? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUmdexAKLuw New SC Forward Progress video

Then, Tyler Jones echoed that on Facebook…

Endorsements that don’t help Huntsman, but should

10 Replies

Last night on Pub Politics, since Joel Sawyer was co-hosting, I brought up this Tweet from the day before in which Nicholas Kristof mentioned Joel’s candidate:

It’s odd to see Republicans struggling to find an electable candidate.They have 1: Jon Huntsman.They just don’t like him.

To me, that’s a fine thought with which I agree completely. I greatly respect Nicholas Kristof. But of course, with the great mass of GOP voters who seem determined in 2012 to run off a cliff together with the most Out There candidate they can find, it’s an invitation to like Huntsman even less. Because Kristof is a liberal. A very thoughtful, iconoclastic liberal (a guy who, for instance, persuaded me to have a big problem with Obama’s lack of support for the Colombian Trade Agreement in 2008) who is in no way like the ranting partisans of the left.

But that doesn’t matter. He’s a liberal, and that’s that. The kinds of Republicans who don’t like Huntsman — and there are a great many of them — are of the sort (and you find far too many such people in both parties) who are convinced that a person who leans the other way would only say good things about a candidate of their party as some sort of dirty trick meant to promote the weakest candidate.

That, of course, is extremely foolish in this context. If Kristof is up to anything underhanded in this instance (which he isn’t), it would be a sort of double-reverse move — I’ll praise the best candidate in their party so they’ll be sure not to like him.

This huge mass of post-2008 Republicans seem bound and determined not to nominate anyone who might win the general election. Which is very odd, given that they seem to dislike Barack Obama so much.

In 2008, a wonderful thing happened: Both parties actually chose the candidate most likely to appeal to the political center. I do not recall any time when that happened before in my adult life (or at least, I don’t remember the last time my own favorite candidates in both parties won their respective nominations).

At the time, of course, there was a faction that utterly rejected this approach, and for the longest time waged an “anybody but McCain” quest. (Ironically, the choice of the Right — such as Jim DeMint — was Mitt Romney, who this year is considered Mr. Moderate. Which shows you what’s happened since 2008.) Just as the more vehement partisans of the left insisted their party had to nominate Hillary Clinton.

Tragically, the conclusion that far too many Republicans have drawn from 2008 is that they were not extreme enough. (They fail to understand that McCain was defeated mainly by two factors: the collapse of the economy in mid-September, and his having chosen Sarah Palin as an attempt to please the very faction that didn’t like him.)

So they flit from Bachmann to Perry to, now, Cain. And in the polls, Romney remains bridesmaid to them all.

And they utterly ignore that there’s another moderate choice, one without Romney’s baggage: Huntsman.

Last night, when I brought of the Kristof Tweet on the show, co-host Phil Bailey (who works for the SC Senate Democrats) weighed in with how much he, too, liked Huntsman.

I don’t think that thrilled Joel, either.

Phil, I believe, really was employing the strategy of saying nice things about a strong candidate on the other side so that the other side wouldn’t like him. But don’t let that blind you to the fact that Huntsman is the candidate most likely to appeal to the center, and even to disaffected Democrats.

That’s more like it, Boyd. Good lad!

12 Replies

Last night, Phil Bailey called me with five minutes to go and asked me to be a last-minute replacement for Joel Lourie on Pub Politics, so of course I said yes, and they held the show for a few minutes to give me time to get there.

That’s seven times now, people. No one else comes close. The Five-Timer Club long ago became passé for me. I’m the standard fill-in guest. The one sad thing is that I can never be a stand-in guest co-host, because you have to be a Democrat or Republican. That’s the format. Speaking of which, Wesley Donehue was out of town again (China was mentioned), and Joel Sawyer filled in for him. You know, the former press secretary to Mark Sanford, now state campaign director for Jon Huntsman. He did great.

One of our topics, as it happened, was Kevin Fisher’s column about my post about Boyd Brown’s inappropriate little witticism. (When I entered The Whig, I saw Corey Hutchins seated at a table, went over and stood over him, cocked a fist back and said, “Look out — I’m liable to attack you…”) Our discussion — during which both Phil took the position that Boyd’s comment was great, and Joel held that it was Corey’s journalistic obligation to report it — led me to an ironic observation: While one of them represented the left and the other the right, I was the only real conservative at the table. They would only agree that I was the grouchy old guy upholding outdated notions of civility and propriety. (Which is basically what conservatism is, properly understood.)

We also discussed other, more interesting stuff. I’ll post the show when it’s available.

But that’s not why I come to you today in this post. I wanted to share with you this op-ed from the aforementioned young Mr. Brown, in which he expresses his thoughts regarding the “F” the governor gave him in a far more mature and appropriate manner. An excerpt:

Recently, as you may have heard, Gov. Nikki Haley released her legislative report cards for 2011. I will not venture into the sheer pettiness of this nonsense, although it is just that – petty nonsense. Instead, I’ll explain why I got the grade I received, and why, for the first time in my life, I’ll ignore the “teacher’s” advice on how to improve my grade.

According to her standards, I was given an “F.” Not since my first year of Carolina have I been awarded an “F,” and now that I’m in law school, I hope it’s not a recurring theme. I was ashamed of the “F” I received on my first test in freshman philosophy, but I recovered and did well in the course. I can’t say the same for the “F” I was awarded by Nikki Haley; instead, I am proud of it.

Some would argue that since she is our governor, she knows what the people of South Carolina want. Those who are really drunk on her Kool-Aid would probably argue that point loudly and irrationally. Here is my argument:

The “F” I received stands for Fairfield, for your family. In last year’s election, Senator Vincent Sheheen won our county with overwhelming numbers. Nikki Haley and her platform (or lack thereof) were soundly rejected. She is clearly out of touch and out of step with our community – just look at the election returns.

It is offensive to me for her to think that her agenda for our state trumps the agenda of those who I represent. For her to think otherwise shows her skyrocketing level of arrogance, which only rises higher with every national news show she visits, and every out of state fundraiser she attends….

And so forth.

This is good. This is right. Far better that you express clearly why you are offended by her actions (and you have every reason to be offended by her presumption) that for you to be offensive yourself.

That’s it. That’s my fatherly, or at least avuncular, advice for today.

The Perry media staff is very energetic

10 Replies

That’s the conclusion that I draw from the fact that I have received 16 email releases from his campaign in less than 24 hours (typical headline: “TRUTH REVEALED: ROMNEY MANDATE LED WAY TO OBAMACARE.”)

Thus far, that’s the only conclusion about them I’ve been able to reach. I certainly haven’t had time to read them all. And I have… 139 other new emails to deal with in that one account before I can get down to any actual work today. Either that, or I can ignore my Inbox and have twice as many tomorrow.

In any case, I thought I’d report the salient fact: Perry has a very eager, very energetic media staff.

Meanwhile, no word from current front-runner Herman Cain. Perhaps I should sign up for his stuff. Or wait a week, and see who the new flavor of the month is.

A weird political season.

By the way, anyone see the debate last night? I didn’t get home until after it had started, and it wasn’t on any of the few TV stations I now get, and I got out my laptop to try to find it, got distracted by some comments here on the blog, and eventually decided to eat some dinner.

Anyway, if you saw it, any thoughts?

‘Obama: A disaster for civil liberties’… Really?

28 Replies

On my way back to the office from Rotary today, I heard this guy Jonathan Turley on NPR going on and on about how Barack Obama is — gasp — “worse than Bush” on civil liberties (or words to that effect; I wasn’t taking notes while driving).

Conveniently, he wrote out his thoughts on this in an op-ed piece in The Los Angeles Times recently. An excerpt:

Civil libertarians have long had a dysfunctional relationship with the Democratic Party, which treats them as a captive voting bloc with nowhere else to turn in elections. Not even this history, however, prepared civil libertarians for Obama. After the George W. Bush years, they were ready to fight to regain ground lost after Sept. 11. Historically, this country has tended to correct periods of heightened police powers with a pendulum swing back toward greater individual rights. Many were questioning the extreme measures taken by the Bush administration, especially after the disclosure of abuses and illegalities. Candidate Obama capitalized on this swing and portrayed himself as the champion of civil liberties.

However, President Obama not only retained the controversial Bush policies, he expanded on them. The earliest, and most startling, move came quickly. Soon after his election, various military and political figures reported that Obama reportedly promised Bush officials in private that no one would be investigated or prosecuted for torture. In his first year, Obama made good on that promise, announcing that no CIA employee would be prosecuted for torture. Later, his administration refused to prosecute any of the Bush officials responsible for ordering or justifying the program and embraced the “just following orders” defense for other officials, the very defense rejected by the United States at the Nuremberg trials after World War II.

Obama failed to close Guantanamo Bay as promised. He continued warrantless surveillance and military tribunals that denied defendants basic rights. He asserted the right to kill U.S. citizens he views as terrorists. His administration has fought to block dozens of public-interest lawsuits challenging privacy violations and presidential abuses.

But perhaps the biggest blow to civil liberties is what he has done to the movement itself. It has quieted to a whisper, muted by the power of Obama’s personality and his symbolic importance as the first black president as well as the liberal who replaced Bush. Indeed, only a few days after he took office, the Nobel committee awarded him the Nobel Peace Prize without his having a single accomplishment to his credit beyond being elected. Many Democrats were, and remain, enraptured…

As you know, I have commented upon the same phenomenon myself, only not as a bad thing. From my endorsement of his tough talk about Pakistan in 2007 to my praise of his national security continuity right after the election, through my noting the end of the “Kent State Syndrome,” I’ve been pretty laudatory.

What’s really amazing about Obama is that he managed to persuade people before the election, and many after, that he’s this antiwar guy who was going to undo all the supposedly wicked deeds of the Bush administration. I wasn’t hearing that.

But even I was unprepared for how much further Obama would take things than Bush. I guess he’s able to do it because he has the political permission within his own party. Sort of like it took Nixon to go to China, Obama is allowed the latitude to more aggressively pursue the (I’m going to use the term that his base avoids) global War on Terror. As you recall, I made the analogy earlier that Bush was like Sonny Corleone (the blusterer who had trouble getting the job done), and Obama is Michael (who speaks softly and convinces everyone he’s the peaceful don, but wipes out his enemies efficiently without a word of warning). Of course, I don’t see them as heading a criminal enterprise. Others disagree.

It really does put Democrats in a weird place. Some of my most reasonable Democratic friends used to make these extravagant claims about how George W. Bush had trashed the Constitution. They really seemed to believe it. They are quieter now.

Gov. Perdue did have a point, you know

6 Replies

Speaking of emails, I just got this one from Joe Wilson:

What is Governor Perdue thinking?

She suggested recently that we shouldn’t hold a Congressional election in 2012 because you might hold your Congressional representatives accountable for the decisions they make.

Isn’t this what our country is all about? Aren’t you supposed to hold your elected officials accountable for the decisions they make?

By holding elections, you have the opportunity to send a message to your leaders, one that can have a very immediate and permanent effect.

This knowledge makes those of us in Congress aware of what our constituents want back home. It keeps us accountable. Without it, we could pass legislation in Washington that only benefited a select few.

That’s not how our country works, no matter how beneficial Gov. Perdue thinks it would be.

Your voice is important, and I consider your will as I cast my vote for any piece of legislation.

Actually, I think the lady had a point. All due respect to the Framers’ wisdom in putting “the people’s House” in perpetual election mode (which sort of got watered down when we started directly electing senators), but I have to wonder… what do we accomplish in these rituals every two years?

You know what will happen in 2012? Joe will raise a whole lot of money through emails such as this one, and the ones in which he exploits his “You Lie!” moment, and he will spend it, and he will be re-elected.

Same thing will happen with Jim Clyburn over in the 6th. I can’t speak to what will happen in the other four SC districts because I don’t observe them as closely, and the incumbents are all so new. So perhaps they are slightly more vulnerable — although probably not Tim Scott.

But Joe’s and Jim’s warchests and the power of incumbency will guarantee that no one credible emerges to run against them, and they will be re-elected.

And yes, I know that Doug and others will say this is why we need term limits. I’m not willing to drop that particular nuclear option on democracy, but we do need something. Because otherwise, these elections pretty much are a waste of time. Except to the political consultants and the media that get the advertising, of course. (See, Wesley, I didn’t just talk about you — I talked about the media, too.)

And if he’d made a different decision, he’d have been a big, fat jerk. With the emphasis on ‘fat’

3 Replies

Catching up on email, I had to smile at this one from yesterday:

Statement by Gov. Perry Regarding Gov. Christie’s Announcement

AUSTIN – Gov. Rick Perry today released the following statement regarding New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s announcement earlier today:

“Chris Christie is a friend, a great governor and rising star in the Republican Party. I’m sure this was an exciting and stressful process for Chris, Mary Pat and his family, but I know they have a bright, successful future ahead of them. Gov. Christie will be a strong asset for the Republican Party as we work to build a national movement to get America working again, reduce the influence of Washington in our lives, and defeat President Obama next year.”

Somehow, I knew before opening it that it would be laudatory. What made me smile was imagining how it might have read had Christie decided to run.

Of course now, as the AP notes, this puts him in the position to be “a kingmaker.”

So he’s a great guy to know. Really.

Defining deviancy down in our discourse

33 Replies

Corey Hutchins started this rolling on Twitter this morning, but what shocked me was that Amanda Alpert Loveday reTweeted it:

Best @nikkihaley quote ever! “She’s been busy F-ing the rest of the state. I’m not surprised that she F-ed me.”@HBoydBrown @CoreyHutchins

My shock arises partly from Amanda being the… well, something over at the SC Democratic Party (apparently they’re too democratic at party HQ for titles, but she recently appeared on Pub Politics as the counterpart of Matt Moore, the GOP executive director). I know that her Twitter feed says “My tweets reflect my personal opinions…..,” but still…

The second is that, well, Amanda just seems like such a sweet “little girl” (to use our governor’s term) to an alter cocker like me. I mean, look at her; I ask you.

Amanda, Amanda, Amanda…

And Corey, and Boyd — what are you boys doing using language like that around Amanda?

Seriously, folks… This is not only grossly inappropriate language to be used when referring to the governor of our state, it’s not an appropriate topic, even if you used euphemisms.

And why am I writing about it? Well, I wouldn’t have if this had come from one of the usual sources for such. But this was said (apparently on the record) by a state representative, repeated by a representative of the Fourth Estate, and picked up by a party official.

And that’s wrong, on all counts. Daniel Patrick Moynihan had a term for it, or at least one that can be adapted to this purpose: Defining deviancy down.

We don’t need to be on this downward spiral, people.