Category Archives: Parties

You can still find good stuff in the NYT

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After a bunch of y’all piled on with me as I criticized The New York Times for that Haley piece, I felt a little bad for the Gray Lady. Especially since I know they do have good writing in the paper still. Or at least in the magazine. I enjoyed this passage from a piece by Andrew Ferguson of The Weekly Standard:

Gingrich’s inattention to detail is one reason his speakership was so chaotic, as readers of a certain age will recall, and the primary reason he was shunned by his own party after four years with the gavel. “Lessons Learned the Hard Way,” released months before his defenestration, is a more conventional memoir than anything else Gingrich has written, and it was supposed to serve as a mea culpa for his mistakes as Speaker, as well as a bid to regain the loyalty of members who had grown tired of his boyish exuberance. It didn’t work.

Admitting mistakes comes easily to no public man — as memoirs from figures like Bill Clinton and Donald Rumsfeld demonstrate — but in “Lessons Learned,” Gingrich gave it the old West Georgia College try. This didn’t work, either. There’s lots of mea in “Lessons Learned,” but the culpa is all on the other side.

Early in the book, he offers an account of the drafting of the Interstate Transportation Bill of 1997. Most readers, he admits, might think such a story uninteresting. “But in this case most readers would be wrong.” In fact, in this case most readers would be right. The point of the story, though, is that Gingrich handled the transportation bill pretty damn well. Indeed, he handled nearly all his duties pretty well — except for when he worked too hard or cared too deeply or thought too much or trusted too many of the wrong people.

I only shared that for the play on mea and culpa. Good stroke, that.

I also appreciated the next paragraph:

Democrats, for instance. One lesson Gingrich claimed to learn the hard way was, as a chapter title has it, “Don’t Underestimate the Liberals.” As speaker, Gingrich discovered that Republicans are too good for their own — um, good. “The difference between the well-thought-out, unending and no-holds-barred hostility of the left,” he wrote, “and the acquiescent, friendship-seeking nature of many of my Republican colleagues never ceases to amaze me.” Democrats flatter themselves with the mirror image of this fantasy, of course, pretending to be envious of the robotic efficiency of Republicans and the freedom of action allowed them by their utter lack of conscience or shame. Self-awareness is not listed in the catalog of traits required for faithful partisanship. About the true nature of their enemies, however, if about nothing else, professional Republicans and Democrats are both exactly right.

I like it when partisans are described just as they are.

Cindi Scoppe explains the state budget

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A couple of weeks ago, in response to some outrageous statement about the state budget put out by someone over at the Policy Council via Twitter — I forget now who it was, or what it was he or she said, but I think it was something like “this is the biggest budget ever” — I got worked up enough to go out and get some numbers showing what total nonsense that was. Because I knew we hadn’t caught up to pre-crash spending levels.

And I got the numbers, covering the last few years. And there were supporting documents, which are hard to link on WordPress (I usually go back and use TypePad on my old blog to link a file, then copy the code over here, which is tedious), and then there was the post itself to write talking about the numbers, and somewhere in the middle of it I fell asleep or something.

Oh, wait, I know — I sent Ashley Landess a Tweet asking her something about the numbers they had used, and while she answered my initial question, she didn’t (unless I missed it) answer a follow-up, and I used waiting for that response as an excuse to just let the whole thing drift, because I had satisfied my own curiosity and justified my own outrage (this is not, of course, the biggest budget ever), and it’s hard for me to maintain interest in numbers for very long. (By the way, I’m not blaming Ashley for not answering me a second time. In fact, maybe she did and it got lost in the ether. Nobody can watch that stuff all day, or read all of it, even when alerted to it.)

Then, a few days ago, Doug got on this kick of throwing HIS favorite numbers at us (similar to the Policy Council numbers, including federal spending and probably lottery money and the kitchen sink and all kinds of stuff that the Legislature has no control over, even though what we were talking about was the budget the Legislature was voting on), and did his usual thing of “Where are YOUR numbers?” and thumping his chest and all, and I thought about going back and digging up the real numbers and answering him, but I was then filled with ennui, because I knew it wouldn’t make any difference, and I just wasn’t interested enough.

Because I know how bogus the whole conversation is. I experience state government. I follow what’s happening. I see the cuts, year after year. After all, we have 8,000 fewer state employees than in 1994, as Cindi Scoppe notes today (see, I just threw number at you, but I didn’t have to spend time digging them up, which is what matters to me)…

In fact, that is my purpose in posting on this subject. Cindi never gets bored looking at the budget, and she understands it better than most people, certainly better than most of the people who get to vote on it. Consider her an enabler of my fecklessness on the subject. I had her to worry about the budget for me for most of 22 years.

And she’s still doing it. In her column headlined “The fable of the spendthrift Legislature,” she summed it up pretty well. (It would have been a wonder if she hadn’t. The freaking thing was 30 inches long. But as I told her, “It read like 18.” Old editor joke.)

It’s worth a read. It puts things into perspective. It explains why it’s so bogus for Nikki Haley to perpetuate the myth (as did Mark Sanford) that the lawmakers are a bunch of spendthrifts out there “growing government” at a rate that exceeds the kind of bogus arbitrary caps that those two governors AND House leaders are always on about.

By the way, while the Senate won’t go along with arbitrary caps (thank goodness; they still believe in representative democracy instead of government by formula), in recent years we’ve stayed well within that population-plus-inflation formulation. The average annual increase in the general fund has been 2.4 percent since 1994 (the year the Republicans took over), including the non-recurring portion. The recurring part has grown by 1.8 percent a year.

And lawmakers are still appropriating less than they did five years ago. So these are not the biggest budgets ever.

Man, this is boring…

It’s just not hip and edgy to criticize Nikki Haley any more. What am I going to do now?

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Back in 2008 (when this was taken), before she reinvented herself and started running for offices for which she was completely unqualified, I used to write supportive things about Nikki Haley. Could I do so again?

I’m going to have to start sticking up for Nikki Haley. If I can possibly rationalize a way to do so.

The thing is, everybody — except the people on her staff who are paid to say otherwise — is criticizing her. Especially, of course, Republicans. Just as with Mark Sanford.

That makes criticizing Nikki Haley, well… popular. Like Reality TV. Like, you know, “The Situation.” This is disturbing. It is so uncool. So unhip.

More to the point, what’s the use of sitting down at a laptop to say critical things if everyone is doing it? It’s just… redundant. If you don’t have anything new or original to say, why write?

I mean, speaking of “The Situation,” look at this one:

  • The “Wide Chasm:” Kenny Bingham — the House Majority Leader, from Lexington County no less — got a standing ovation when he stood up to light into her in the House the other day, furious that GOP lawmakers had done what they thought she wanted, only to have her veto it. If senators had been there, they’d have applauded too. It’s taken Nikki WAY less time to alienate the State House than it took her predecessor.
  • The Departing SLED Chief: Reggie Lloyd says he totally blew off the gov’s effort to get him to refuse raises to hard-working, lower-ranking agents.
  • Michael Haley’s list: The SLED chief also said the “first man” presented him with a list of people he wanted Lloyd to hire as agents.
  • He can’t hold it back any more: After trying to hold it in for a year, Wesley Donehue has taken to expressing typical Republican frustration with the gov via Twitter: “Very proud of the SC General Assembly for overriding Gov Haley’s presidential primary veto today. Great work team!” And especially with her campaign manager… I mean, chief of staff: “This is what happens when your Chief of Staff isn’t from South Carolina. Everyone say THANK YOU TIM PEARSON!” Poor Wesley. He’s been trying to control himself for so long.

This creates a dilemma. Every once in a while, Nikki does something right. Should I just not mention her at all until those occasions arise?

Or maybe I should just try a little harder, and find ways to explain the problems with her leadership in original terms, ones that others aren’t thinking of. That could work…

Going through vetoes like a hot knife through butter

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Good thing that Adam Beam is really into Twitter, too. Because I have relied upon John O’Connor to keep me up on what’s happening at the State House.

And today, he’s Tweeting about lawmakers rapidly working their way through Nikki Haley’s vetoes. Eventually, he put it all together on thestate.com. (That is, he put together what they’d done so far. They appear to still be going.) An excerpt:

The House voted to override Haley’s veto of $56 million for K-12 education by a 97-8 margin. Members of the Republican-controlled House then voted 103-6 to restore $12.4 million for new school buses. Haley, also a Republican, had vetoed the money, saying she wanted to privatize the bus system. The House also voted to restore another $20 million for schools, 89-18, which Haley had vetoed.

In other overrides, the House voted to restore:

• $1.9 million for the state Arts Commission.

• Almost $6 million for S.C. ETV.

• $1.1 million for University Center in Greenville by 89-22.

• $594,000 for Greenville Technical College by 78-31.

• $1.4 million for a program to help students with the high school-to-college transition by 82-28.

• Some state financing for next year’s GOP presidential primary.

Sounds like lawmakers have gotten just about as impatient with Nikki as they had with her predecessor.

A photographic slice of SC political history

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Thought y’all might be interested in this huge (about as tall as I am) poster over at GOP HQ. Chad Connelly and Matt Moore showed it to me when I arrived for the interview this morning.

They didn’t know where it came from — they found it when they moved in to the HQ — but they assume from the available clues in the photo that it’s from 1960. Note (if you can; this being too big to put on a scanner, I just shot a picture of it with my iPhone — and it was pretty grainy to start with):

  • The prophetic declaration, “DIXIE IS NO LONGER IN THE BAG” — which was not yet true from a GOP perspective.
  • What you can’t see around the slogan “ALL FOR NIXON” is the names of Old South states (they were hard to see in the original, too).
  • At least one, and probably other, leaflets on the ground say “Kennedy!”
  • I was amused at the van near the State House steps that said “Wilson” on the back. Seems like Joe’s always been in politics, doesn’t it?
  • The flags, which are located far below the dome, and of course do not include the Confederate flag. This is before the General Assembly and Fritz Hollings put the Dixie flag up to mark the Civil War centennial. Are there also flags atop the dome, or were there no flags there then? I don’t know.
  • The men wearing hats. After JFK won South Carolina and the presidency, he put a stop to that style. Or so they say.
  • The license plate on the hearse, which provides proof that Paul was dead before we’d even heard of the Beatles.

OK, I was kidding on that last one. Y’all have fun with the picture, too.

I guess if you’ve seen one John Wayne, you’ve seen ’em all — according to her, anyway

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Ya gotta love this:

Michele Bachmann spent plenty of time Monday letting everyone know that she was born in Waterloo, Iowa, a small industrial town she credits with instilling within her many of her conservative ideals.

But in one interview surrounding her formal campaign rollout, the Tea Party favorite seems to have gotten a little confused about some of the finer points of the Hawkeye State’s history.

Speaking to Fox News, Bachmann said that she had the same spirit as Waterloo’s own John Wayne. One can only assume that she was referring to the movie star, who was born in Winterset, Iowa, roughly a three-hour drive from Waterloo. The problem, however, is that Waterloo appears to have much closer ties to serial killer John Wayne Gacy, the “killer clown” who had his first criminal conviction there.

Hoh, boy… When they unfreeze the Duke, he’s gonna be ticked.

OK, I was kidding about that. I have only Denis Leary to go by on the Duke being frozen. But I do have a question — didn’t she launch her campaign a couple of weeks ago? She announced it at the debate…

“The Brad Show:” SC GOP Chairman Chad Connelly

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Welcome to another guerrilla edition (as in, shot by me out in the field rather than the studio) of “The Brad Show.”

Our guest today: Chad Connelly, the new chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party.

I spoke with Chad over at the party HQ this morning. Since this was my first sit-down with him, I wanted to cover the bases — ask him to talk a bit about his background, etc. So we did.

But the hot topic — and if you can’t wait to get to it, it starts at 4:15 on the clip — was Gov. Nikki Haley’s threatened veto of funding for the SC GOP presidential primary in January.

Some highlights of that discussion:

  • He said there will be a presidential primary here, “no matter what.”
  • He said presidential primaries are so important that next time the Democrats have one, he’d be the first to support their bid for similar funding.
  • Total cost is a million dollars. Or maybe 1.5 million.
  • He expects to speak with the governor about it, and try to impress upon her the importance of the funding, this week. He’ll also be talking with legislative leaders.
  • Can General Assembly override a veto? “Yes,” he said.

Enjoy the show. This one is actually a bit shorter than most, which I hope you will appreciate. I asked about as many question as usual, but Mr. Connelly is a very focused speaker, which I guess adds up since that is his profession. It’s not that his answers were so short. It’s just that he said what he had to say to answer me, and stopped. Not many people do that.

Congressman Joe Wilson, antiwar activist

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Here’s another chapter in what I wrote about back here, in the post headlined “Are we starting to see a geologic shift between left and right on national security?”…

I’ll give you the two items backwards. Friday afternoon, I received this release from Joe Wilson:

(Washington, DC) – Congressman Joe Wilson (SC-02) released the following statement after the House of Representatives voted against authorizing the limited use of the United States Armed Forces in Libya:

“The President’s decision to ignore the Constitution along with the War Powers Resolution has led us to this point. Choosing not to consult with Congress on this conflict was complicated even further by this Administration’s failure to explain and outline a plan of action to the American public.

“NATO is one of America’s closest allies. I do not want to jeopardize the progress it has made in removing Muammar Gaddafi from power. However, the President’s failure to actively engage Congress forces me to vote against committing our Armed Forces on the ground in Libya.”

I hope y’all didn’t get whiplash in that last paragraph. Let’s see, would not want in any way to jeopardize NATO’s mission in Libya (which, last time I checked, was not officially removing Gaddafi, but we can wink and nod at that one), on account of NATO being our great friends and all. BUT… he wants to tie Obama’s hands in supporting that mission, on account of, you know. Obama being Obama.

There are just so many bizarre things going on here. Republicans (especially Republicans of the strong national defense wing, like Joe Wilson) caring about the flippin’ War Powers Resolution. I mean, normally you hear folks in that camp saying the War Powers Resolution is what violates the Constitution. Then… well, I’ll let y’all figure out all the bizarre things about it. Here’s a news story on what Joe’s talking about, by the way.

I wanted to share something else with you. That morning, before the vote, this piece by Kimberley A. Strassel (normal world view: Obama bad, Republicans good) appeared in The Wall Street Journal. It was headlined, “The GOP’s War Powers Opportunism: Republicans abandon principle in a rush to score political points on the president.” I’m going to take a chance here of getting into trouble with the Journal by quoting large chunks of the piece, because it just makes so many good points. Here goes:

But what fun is there in criticizing Democrats on national security when the GOP is offering up a much more embarrassing spectacle? In their rush to score points on the president, what congressional Republicans have actually managed to do is hurt themselves. They’ve highlighted their own divisions and given voters reason to question whether the party is throwing over principle in favor of political opportunism or, more worrisome, a new form of GOP isolationism.

In the space of a few months, Republicans have gone from coherently criticizing Mr. Obama’s timid approach to the Arab awakening, to a few weeks ago incoherently losing 87 members to antiwar Democrat Dennis Kucinich’s resolution to end military engagement in Libya. This caused an open rift in the party, compelling Sen. John McCain to stand up for U.S. victory and sponsor a resolution giving Mr. Obama freedom of action for another year.

House Republicans have very publicly let it be known that they intend to hold a vote on Mr. McCain’s resolution—solely so that they can very publicly vote him down. Not satisfied that this is an ample enough rebuke to those who would win a war, the GOP is now working to pass legislation to defund the president’s Libya mission. That’s right, House Republicans (not House Democrats) intend to kneecap a commander in chief….

… House leaders are of the view that failing to take action against the president is the equivalent of letting him “get away” with his snubs and bad policy and to “win” on this issue. The only real winner of a Libya withdrawal is, of course, a terrorist named Moammar Gadhafi. But try telling that to a GOP that has come full circle to congressional Democrats, circa 2006, who masked their ambitions to undermine President Bush behind lofty arguments of Iraq “oversight.”

Speaking of 2006, some of this is also the consequence of a party with no obvious leader. Mr. Bush kept his caucus (barely) on Iraq only by constantly reminding members of the stakes. Those GOP candidates who would follow Mr. Bush have been mostly craven on Libya and Afghanistan, with Mitt Romney and Michele Bachmann more worried about winning the next public-opinion poll than winning a war. House Speaker John Boehner remains reluctant to openly engage his excitable freshmen. Rather than lead on Libya, his default has been to try to make the best of a fractious GOP—for instance, by offering up a less-bad version of the Kucinich resolution.

To the extent there is political pressure, it comes from the tea party, which has no interest in foreign policy but is instead focused on spending and federal powers. This has helped to drive the growing group of self-described constitutionalists and war-deficit-hawks who are giving rise to a new brand of Republican isolationism.

The prevailing antigovernment feeling has allowed folks like Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul to spin the Libya mission as some sort of affront to the Constitution, since Mr. Obama failed to beg Congress’s approval for Libya, as required by the 1973 War Powers Act. Never mind that conservative scholars will point out that it is the War Powers Act itself that is unconstitutional. That used to be the general GOP view, but with “Obama violated the Constitution” making for such a delicious sound bite among base voters, Republicans are willing to forget the past.

Really, I wanted to quote the whole thing, but restrained myself slightly, giving you only the parts that best address what Joe Wilson and the majority did yesterday.

I urge you to go read it all — and browse the site, and give your custom to the Journal’s advertisers, so they will forgive me for quoting so extensively. It will be worth your while.

By the way, other “conservative” pundits are not getting on the House’s case here. George Will is attacking John McCain for, as Ms. Strassel wrote, daring “to stand up for U.S. victory and sponsor a resolution giving Mr. Obama freedom of action for another year.” Mr. Will’s column is headlined “John McCain’s never-ending war.” Mr. Will seems angry with Sen. McCain for daring to call the latest trend among Republicans “isolationism.” But that (coupled with Obama Derangement Syndrome) is precisely the right word. And it’s not entirely a new thing. We’ve been here before.

Why can’t we let her stay over there? No, really; what would be wrong with that?

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Notice how all of my posts the last couple of days are either about Dick Harpootlian or Jon Huntsman? What’s up with that?

Anyway, right when I got back from the Huntsman thing, Dick sends out this video. He’s big on videos. Well, he missed the mark on this one.

It makes two dubious points — the rather painfully populist one about how YOU, the taxpayer, paid for Nikki’s trip to Paris, and his point that the gov should come back and tend to South Carolina business, or as he put it, “the people of South Carolina would rather her worry more about the unemployment rate and the education sector in our state.”

Here are my thoughts on those, in reverse order:

  1. You really think that if she were here, she’d be doing anything for our schools? Anything at all?
  2. She is far more likely to stumble on something of economic use to our state, something to create jobs in SC, over there than she is here. I can far better see her charming some air industry exec who doesn’t know her very well (she makes a great first impression) than I can see her pursuing policies back here that boost our prosperity. After all, the one thing Mark Sanford accomplished in that sphere in 8 years was landing Boeing, and he did that, at least in part, by going to the air show.

Huntsman files in SC, speaks to sweltering audience

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Having noted that Dick Harpootlian had singled him out for abuse, I thought I’d check out one of Jon Huntsman’s appearances in Columbia today. (Here’s what he said at an earlier appearance.) I thought, “I hear the Republicans have this nice new building, and that would be better than going to a barbecue.” I had reckoned without the event being outside the building. In case you wondered, a seersucker suit does not keep you cool standing in the sun on a day like today. The things I put up with for y’all…

This was my first actual official 2012 presidential event. I’m hoping they don’t have any more until October. Or have them inside. Or in England.

Anyway, I’m uploading some video to YouTube now, which may or may not be ready by the time I finish typing this.

When it’s up, you will see the following people standing up with Huntsman and his wife and (some of their) kids: Mike Campbell, John Courson, and the inimitable Henry McMaster. Henry played master of ceremonies, as he did so often four years ago for John McCain. That got me to thinking about something. I asked Henry, after the Huntsman speech, how many of the presidential candidates he had personally backed had won their SC primaries. I said I couldn’t remember him NOT having backed the eventual winner. He thought for moment, standing there sweltering, and said he wasn’t sure, but he wouldn’t to my saying that. So I just did.

This provides an interesting perspective. Jon Huntsman may seem to some like a bit of an outlier in the GOP — at least at the moment. But here we had him with the GOP establishment in SC, just about anyway you slice it. A Campbell. Two of South Carolina’s most ardent Reaganites, McMaster and Courson. He’s got Richard Quinn in his corner, too.

Now you may say that those guys are the OLD establishment, that not it’s about the Nikki Haleys (who swamped Henry and every other establishment type back in the Year of the Tea Party) and the Mark Sanfords. Well, Huntsman has Joel Sawyer running his campaign. And I thought I saw Rob Godfrey posing for a picture with the candidate, but I could have been mistaken.

And indeed, many of the folks there were just there out of curiosity, or to be polite because they were invited — such as Eric Davis, who as chair of the Richland County GOP was sort of there ex-officio. Among those I spotted, but did not get around to asking why they were there, were Frank Barron, Katrina Shealy, Kelly Payne, Mike Green, Adam Piper, Andrew Williams and our own sometime commenter Walter Durst. You may see others on the video. I did not look at it closely because I was in a hurry to upload it. It’s raw, and unedited. Enjoy.

John Courson (his grin, anyway), Jon Huntsman, Henry McMaster...

A candidate to be taken seriously

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I don’t know a whole lot about Jon Huntsman. I mean, I know a few things, but not enough to reach critical mass for a judgment in my own mind.

But I know I’ll be watching him closely, now that he’s announced:

JERSEY CITY, N.J. — Jon M. Huntsman Jr. officially launched his White House bid here Tuesday morning, setting up a campaign for the GOP nomination that, if successful, would lead to a matchup against his former boss.

“I’ve been a governor … I’ve been a businessman and a I’ve been a diplomat. I’m the husband of the love of my life … and the father of seven terrific kids,” Huntsman told a crowd of supporters at Liberty State Park, the Statue of Liberty rising just behind him. “I’m from the American West, where the view of America is limitless with lots of blue sky.”…

I look at it this way: Jon Huntsman has a reference that is almost as good as having the UnParty seal of approval — Barack Obama. The president hired him for a job of considerable responsibility, ambassador to China. You know, that big place across the water that owns all that U.S. debt. The place where all that stuff at Walmart comes from.

So if Obama thought enough of him to hire him, and now he’s turned in his notice in order to run against Obama — well, that’s a guy who might have something to say worth listening to. He might be a credible, informed critic.

So I’m going to listen.

Speaking of listening, I listened in to a conference call Dick Harpootlian had today with media types to talk about Huntsman, after which he put out this release:

Harpootlian welcomes “ambassador, governor, Democrat, Republican Jon Huntsman to South Carolina”

Columbia, S.C. –  South Carolina Democratic Party Chair Dick Harpootilan held a conference call today to welcome Jon Huntsman to South Carolina.

While Huntsman travels to our state to kick off his Presidential campaign Harpootlian welcomes him by saying, “we always welcome Obama administration officials in South Carolina.”  Harpootlian called Huntsman a political “schizophrenic” who’s “very similar to Mitt Romney” in his flip-flopping on key issues such as the Recovery Act.

“Between Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman, we have, actually, four candidates rather than two,” said Harpootlian.

That’s pretty much what he said to us on the phone. Afterwards, I asked him whether he was more worried about Huntsman than he was the other Republicans. He said he wasn’t. But I think he should be.

Yeah, Huntsman has a challenge before him getting the nomination with his party momentarily in the thrall of the Tea Party. But from what little I’ve seen so far, he seems like he could have a better chance in the general if he could get that far.

But as I say, that’s how it looks so far. I’ll keep watching.

There are more of US than there are of Democrats or Republicans

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First, take a look at the awesome image that combine Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan into one face, and the one that does the same with Kennedy and Nixon. Cool. There was another that did the same with Obama and Bush, but I can’t seem to locate it as a still image online — oh, there it is.

I got excited when I saw those, and thought the piece, headlined “Death of the Duopoly,” would be a sort of UnParty manifesto. But no. When  I want an Unparty Manifesto, I have to write it myself.

Unfortunately, this was one of those pieces that saw the WSJ’s sort of libertarianism as the natural successor to the two parties, going on about how the American people, in their supposed wisdom, are turned against the drug war, and toward paying people to abandon public schools. Ho-hum, the usual. Nothing paradigm-breaking at all.

But the pictures were cool. And while the author of this piece may be confused as to the implications, these data were at least confusing:

Perhaps the most important long-term trend in U.S. politics is the four-decade leak in market share by the country’s two dominant parties. In 1970, the Harris Poll asked Americans, “Regardless of how you may vote, what do you usually consider yourself—a Republican, a Democrat, an independent or some other party?”

Fully 49% of respondents chose Democrat, and 31% called themselves Republicans. Those figures are now 35% for Democrats and 28% for Republicans. While the numbers have fluctuated over the years, the only real growth market in politics is voters who decline affiliation, with independents increasing from 20% of respondents to 28%.

These findings are consistent with other surveys. In January, Gallup reported that the Democrats were near their lowest point in 22 years (31%), while the GOP remained stuck below the one-third mark at 29%. The affiliation with the highest marks? Independent, at 38% and growing. In a survey released in May, the Pew Research Center found that the percentage of independents rose from 29% in 2000 to 37% in 2011…

Yes, there are now more of us than there are of either Democrats or Republicans (at least, according to Gallup and apparently Pew). Maybe when we grow to exceed all the partisans combined, we’ll get somewhere. But at least we’re on our way.

Corey quotes me well in The Nation

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Several weeks back, Corey Hutchins of The Free Times called to say he was working on a profile of Nikki Haley for The Nation magazine. He wanted to talk with me about it, and asked if I’d meet him for a beer at Yesterday’s. He didn’t have to twist my arm. (Note the ad — be sure to check out Yesterday’s. Good food, good beer, good company, reasonable prices.)

So we met, and I said a bunch of stuff, and later I got a call from a fact-checker at The Nation, so I knew that the piece was coming out soon. (Yeah, just like in “Almost Famous.” To a newspaperman, the whole “fact-checker” thing is weird. If you’re going to have a staffer check all the facts, why not just send them to do the story to start with? But when you’re using freelance, which magazines do, I guess this is something you have to do to protect yourself. When a reporter works for you, it’s different. You can fire his butt if he tries to put one over on you, and he knows it.)

Anyway, Corey did a pretty good job. Personally, I don’t normally enjoy reading The Nation, but this was good. And he did an excellent job of extracting something intelligent-sounding from my ramblings:

Still, like so many Palmetto State chief executives before her, Haley seems to be angling for a spot on a national ticket. She is already penning her memoir. “Every governor we’ve had since Carroll Campbell has had national aspirations, but with her it’s more naked and obvious,” says Brad Warthen, a Columbia advertising man who until 2009 was the longtime editorial page editor of the State. Warthen endorsed Haley in two legislative elections and chronicled her rise beginning about seven years ago. In that time, he says, she has morphed from a naïve newcomer, to a politician he thought could become a good force in the legislature, to something approaching megalomania.

“I think she’s had her head turned by discovering where demagoguery will get you,” Warthen told me. “I don’t think that’s totally who she was before. I think she has developed in this direction. It’s a B.F. Skinner behavioral reinforcement thing; she has been rewarded and rewarded and rewarded. This has worked for her. And she continues to charm the national media. Because you know what? They don’t care. It’s just a story.”…

You see what just happened? Yep. For the first time ever, after a 35-year career in newspapers, I was just identified in a national magazine as an “advertising man.” Move over, Don Draper. You’re about to be replaced in the national imagination.

There were other good bits. Such as this, the result of an interview with John Rainey:

But Haley has been navigating a series of land mines—IRS disputes, questionable business deals and appointments, multiple adultery allegations—any one of which threatens to blow up her political career. “I believe she is the most corrupt person to occupy the governor’s mansion since Reconstruction,” declared John Rainey, a longtime Republican fundraiser and power broker who chaired the state’s Board of Economic Advisers for eight years. A 69-year-old attorney, Rainey is an aristocratic iconoclast who never bought the Haley myth. “I do not know of any person who ran for governor in my lifetime with as many charges against him or her as she has had that went unanswered,” he told me on a recent afternoon at his sprawling horse farm outside the small town of Camden. “The Democrats got Alvin Greene; we got Nikki Haley. Because nobody bothered to check these guys out.”

OK, so John was way more provocative than I was. But I think I sounded more erudite.

It’s worth a read.

And that’s all the Post has to say about it?

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Just saw this on Twitter:

The Washington Post

The Washington Post
18½-minute gap in Watergate tape remains a mystery http://wapo.st/kXHbBc

And clicked on it to find that, instead of some exhaustive Woodstein-type report, the paper that (according to legend, anyway) owned the Watergate story was basically offering an AP story that… didn’t say anything.

Not that there was anything to say. I mean, we know what happened, right? Rose Mary Woods stretched way, WAY over, and it just happened. It was like a miracle or something. What? You don’t believe in miracles…?

Anyway, don’t you hate it when Tweets seem to promise something interesting, and then you get there, and there’s not much more than the Tweet itself? I do.

Are we starting to see a geologic shift between left and right on national security?

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This is something I’ve been thinking about the last few days, and I haven’t written about it because it’s complicated and I haven’t had time to do something pulling all the threads together. But when I saw this development, I decided I’d better go ahead and throw out the general idea and get the discussion started:

Obama Says War Powers Act Doesn’t Apply to Libya Mission

White House maintains that the president doesn’t need lawmakers’ permission for U.S. role in NATO-led effort.

The White House on Wednesday told skeptical lawmakers that President Obama doesn’t need their permission to continue the nation’s involvement in the NATO-led mission in Libya because U.S. forces are playing only a supporting role there.

Administration lawyers made their case as part of a larger report sent to Congress responding to complaints that the president had yet to provide a sufficient rationale for continuing the Libya campaign, the New York Times reports.

“We are not saying the president can take the country into war on his own,” State Department lawyer Harold Koh told the paper. “We are not saying the War Powers Resolution is unconstitutional or should be scrapped, or that we can refuse to consult Congress. We are saying the limited nature of this particular mission is not the kind of ‘hostilities’ envisioned by the War Powers Resolution.”…

OK, digest that. Here’s the NYT version, and here’s the WashPost. And then consider some of the other things I’ve been noticing lately:

  • The fact that, in the GOP debate the other night, we heard some Republicans moving more toward the “get out of Afghanistan ASAP” line. Ron Paul, treated as an outcast for saying such things four years ago, got cheered by the Fox News crowd.
  • The bold way Obama decided to go in and GET bin Laden, without any of that multilateral consult-the-allies (as in, tell the Pakistanis we’re attacking in the heart of their country) touchy-feely stuff. No fooling around.
  • The way the administration is playing on having stunned the world with the bin Laden thing to get its way elsewhere. That prompted me to write that the difference between Bush and Obama is that Bush was Sonny, while Obama is the far-deadlier (that is, more effective) Michael.
  • The way Obama is taking advantage of chaos in Yemen to just GO AFTER terrorists there, without asking Congress or the UN, or presenting arguments about the War Powers Act, or anything like that. Read this, and this.

This has been building ever since the election, with a lot of Obama’s antiwar base feeling pretty disoriented (wait — is this who we elected?), and people like me being reassured by his steady pragmatism.

But lately, the process has seemed to be accelerating. Obama still talks a good war-as-last-resort, multilateral, we-don’t-want-to-be-a-bully line for the base… but watch what happens. (And how about the way he threw everybody off-balance on Libya, letting the FRENCH of all people take the lead, while still managing to get in there and go after the bad guys? That enabled him to have it both ways. The allies couldn’t do it without us, but it came across looking like we were a reluctant junior partner, which bought Obama some support for the move among liberals.)

And I find myself wondering, is anyone else noticing? I mean, while the Republicans get more timid about the U.S. role abroad (in some ways) and obsess more and more about domestic issues (because that’s what the Tea Party cares about), Obama is out there going all JFK and LBJ. He’s going Old School. He’s defining Democratic presidential leadership back to where it was before Vietnam.

Are the parties moving toward switching places?

This is a fascinating development. I think it has the potential to completely realign the country politically, and on more than national security.

Anybody else noticing this?

Could it (finally) be over for Grover Norquist?

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Who’da thunk the day would ever come?

Mark Sanford buddy and guru Grover Norquist — whose anti-tax pledge has verged on paralyzing South Carolina government in recent years because he had so many GOP lawmakers signing it and afraid to cross him (thereby preventing comprehensive tax reform, among other things) has apparently miscalculated, leading to a very public rebuke, by Republicans, in the age of the Tea Party:

WASHINGTON — Grover Norquist’s grip on the Republican Party’s tax policy slipped dramatically on Tuesday, a development that is likely to have significant repercussions on the debate over spending, revenue and the federal deficit.

Norquist, the head of Americans for Tax Reform and a leading party power broker for a generation, drew a hard line in the sand against repealing ethanol subsidies, arguing that ending the tax breaks is equivalent to a tax increase and therefore a violation of The Pledge — a document nearly every Republican has signed promising never to vote to raise taxes.

Thirty-four Senate Republicans walked nonchalantly across that line on Tuesday, voting to move forward on an amendment sponsored by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) that would repeal the subsidies.

Norquist has been vicious in his recent talks on Coburn, charging that his amendment means he “lied his way into office” and is breaking the pledge.

Coburn was unmoved. “I think you all think he has a whole lot more hold than I think he has,” Coburn told reporters before the vote. “I don’t disagree with him on a lot of principles. The fact is it’s not a good position to put yourself in when you say, ‘Here’s a tax expenditure that nobody needs, and yet we have to give somebody else a tax cut to take away this.'”…

Could this be the end?

I mean, it should be. Even if you agree with Norquist, for the guy who famously wanted to shrink government to where he could drown it in a bathtub to make his stand on KEEPING one of the more wasteful government boondoggles is not calculated to win credibility.

Drat! Foiled again! Curse you, Snidely Obama!

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I was WAY busy last night with real-life stuff until about 1:30 a.m. (just wait until YOU have five kids and four grandchildren and everybody’s coming and going and having to be picked up at the airport in the middle of the night), and barely found time to watch some of that presidential debate. I didn’t even have time to think about Nikki Haley’s national TV appearance. Good thing, too.

I did glance at the coverage of it on CBS, and even managed to read on a bit after the horrible shock of the opening words:

Four of the biggest names in the Republican Party – Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, Rep. Allen West of Florida, South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley and Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahom…a

Really. “Biggest names.” Take THAT, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, Mitch McConnell, Jeb Bush… I could go on, but what does it matter? They’re nobodies! The peanut gallery is taking over!

It is just absolutely stunning how little one has to accomplish to be one of the “biggest” these days. In fact, in the GOP, accomplishing anything actually counts against you. Look at Romney and health care.

Of course, Nikki Haley is about as accomplishment-free as anyone can get, and by the new standards, that makes her golden. Of course, she likes us to think that she wants to accomplish stuff, but that uncontrollable forces prevent her.

What, you ask, has kept our gov free of the blemish of achievement? Could it be that she lacks good ideas? Could it be that she is clueless when it comes to working with other people who would have to be involved in making these things happen, such as the Republican leadership of the General Assembly? Could it be because of her inept, ham-handed approach to everything from USC trustee appointments to her own tax returns?

No, it’s none of that. There’s another villain, one that no rational person would have suspected in a million years:

Haley went on to say that “everything I’ve tried to do to govern in South Carolina has been stopped by President Obama,”…

Yep, it’s her favorite Snidely Whiplash, the guy she ran so hard against in her election last year (Vincent Sheheen? Who’s he?). He is still foiling her beautiful plans! Curses!

It’s OK, Mr. President; you don’t have to have a position on this — in fact, please don’t

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Just got this little email update from the WashPost:

—————————————-
Politics News Alert: White House calls Rep. Weiner’s actions a ‘distraction’
June 13, 2011 11:32:22 AM
—————————————-

The White House says President Obama believes Rep. Anthony Weiner’s actions have been “inappropriate” and a “distraction.”

But spokesman Jay Carney wouldn’t say whether the president thinks the New York Democrat should resign — something other Democratic leaders have called for.

Wow…

I’ve been bemoaning for years the degradation of the presidency to the point where we expect the president to take a position on EVERYTHING that happens, whether it bears on his job responsibilities or not. I think the moment where it first hit me how bad it got was when I was watching a guy on a cable news station standing outside the White House with a microphone on the night of the Columbine shootings. This guy kept coming back on to assure us that the president would soon have a statement. And I’m like WTF? In what sense is a shooting at a high school in Colorado the responsibility of the president of the United States? Why on Earth would I expect him to say anything about it, or care what he said? I wrote a column about this at the time.

By comparison, though, Bill Clinton making sure to vibrate to the correct emotions over Columbine was the height of relevant leadership, compared to the White House being expected to have a position on some wanker who sends dirty pictures to women. We’ve really sunk low now.

If you have trouble seeing this, try for just a moment to look at the world the way I do, instead of the way the Beltway media does. To me, being the “leader of his party” is NOT a role I expect or want my president to play. To me, playing that role is actually inimical to the one that he is paid to perform.

So please, Mr. President: Don’t have an opinion on this. Ignore it. It’s beneath you personally, and certainly beneath the dignity of your office. Stick with the “inappropriate” and “distraction” thing, if you must say anything. Those characterizations are at least accurate.

Recalling the national overreaction to that Edwards column

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A few days ago, Mike Fitts posted this on Facebook:

This seems like a good day to re-post my former boss’ column, written not all that long ago in the summer of 2007, about his gut feeling that John Edwards was “a big phony.” Got Brad Warthen national attention then, but all too obvious now.

Which I thought was nice of him to remember. I suppose it was because a certain person was back in the news…

Mike linked to the version at thestate.com, which is appropriate because that’s the one that got all the page views — 190,000 the first day, as I recall. Totally screwed up the stats for the paper’s website for the next year. Whenever the online folks presented stats at senior staff meetings, they had to explain, “We’re actually doing well, it’s just that is looks down because we’re up against that Edwards column of Brad’s…”

I was jealous of that traffic; it certainly would have been cool if it had gone to my blog. That would have been a huge hit — like months worth in a day. (Back then, I only got about 20,000 or 30,000 page views a month. You may be surprised to know that today, my traffic is closer to 200,000 a month — sometimes more, sometimes less.) Also, the version I had posted on my blog was better. I had written the column at home on my laptop and didn’t realize how long it was, and had to chop it down much more than I would have liked to get it into the paper. The version on my blog — the “director’s cut” — was shorter than the original, but quite a bit longer than the paper version. My point came across better in the blog version, because the anecdotes weren’t quite as truncated.

But still, the lesser version created a weird sort of splash. Still does. I got a letter just a week or two ago from a reader who says that he was an Edwards supporter and gave me grief in a letter at the time (I don’t recall), and is sorry now. But a lot of smart people didn’t see the problems with this guy at the time. In fact… I’ve told y’all before how I talked myself hoarse in a three-hour meeting to get the board to endorse Lieberman in the 2004 primary, right? What I may not have mentioned was that a couple of my colleagues wanted to back Edwards, and I was determined not to let that happen — so determined that I just won my point by exhausting everyone. I’m very glad not to have an Edwards endorsement on my record. (By the way, when people give me a hard time for how horribly Joe did in that primary, I have a ready answer: “Yeah, the voters went with Edwards. I’m more satisfied than ever that I was right.”)

I was shocked at the reaction the column got. It was just something I had had on a back burner for months. I had said something on my old blog about Edwards being a phony, and readers demanded to know what I meant, and when I realized how many words it would take to explain (being based on several encounters with the guy), I told them I would do a column sometime. I had been on vacation the week before I wrote this, and for one reason or another decided to take one more day — the following Monday — off as well. Feeling guilty, I told my colleagues that to make up for it, I’d whip out a column over the weekend, so nobody else would have to write one for Tuesday. This was an easy one to do, the “legwork” for it having been done inadvertently years before. So I dropped by the office Sunday just to check my memory on a couple of dates and such, wrote it that night at home, and turned it in on Monday morning — and didn’t think about it any more.

Then, the next morning, two people stopped me on the way into the building to talk about the column, and the reaction that was already manifest. I think Drudge had already picked it up. Later in the day, the column — or rather, the Edwards campaign’s reaction to it — was the LEDE political story on the Fox News site. As the week wore on, I was about worn out with media interview requests. I did as many as I could, including Dennis Miller’s show, which was fun. It was a day or so before I had any actual contact with the Edwards campaign (it led to no more than a lunch with the lovely Teresa Wells, in which she told me how wrong I was and I told her that no, I wasn’t). But I had heard that Mrs. Edwards, among others, had gone somewhat ballistic.

The media reaction surprised me. I hadn’t thought much of the column myself, and it was some time later before I figured out why the reaction was so much bigger than anything I could have imagined: The thing is, I had SO completely dismissed Edwards in my mind by that time. I had decided years earlier that I didn’t take him seriously, in spite of his having won the primary here in 2004. So who cared what I thought of him at that point, right? I mean, the column was still worth doing on a day when I just needed a column because he WAS still in the news. But I was convinced the nominee was going to be Obama or Clinton. And I just wasn’t seeing the enthusiasm for him in SC that had so alarmed me in 2004.

But a lot of folks, including national media, were very much taking him seriously still. Hence the reaction… And when I saw how the news stories about it were written, I realized: Oh. Everybody’s thinking, the editorial page editor of the largest newspaper in a state where Edwards HAS to win has just totally dismissed him. That’s the deal. The situation reminded me of that Mark Twain quote: “I was born modest; not all over, but in spots; and this was one of the spots.” It was one of those rare occasions when other people thought my opinion was a bigger deal than I thought it was. Doesn’t happen much.

I was reminded of this when the Mark Sanford Argentina thing broke. Sure it was a big story here, and pretty big nationally as well. I got that. But there’s a difference between a big story that everybody talks about, and something important enough to be the lede story in The New York Times. I’ve written before how the NYT has a VERY conservative, old school idea about its lede position — which I respect. As a front-page editor back in the 80s, I’m kind of old-school myself. There is a huge difference between the most interesting story of the day and  the most important. Sometimes, the same story is both. This was not one of those times. I expected it to be a big story above the fold in The Times — maybe with a picture. But no, it was a simple, sober, one-column lede story. Which startled me.

Remember, I was helping out The New York Post on that one. (By the way, my first interaction with the Post had been when they asked to reprint the Edwards column. Dig the headline they put on it.) A story under my byline led that paper. But that was to be expected. That was the Post. I thought the NYT would have a greater sense of perspective — yes, interesting scandal, but not that earth-shattering, I thought they’d harrumph.

Here’s why I was wrong: Again, the national media were overestimating a South Carolina political figure. Since I knew Mark Sanford well, I didn’t take any of that “presidential contender” garbage seriously. The NYT did. Hence this wasn’t just a juicy scandal to them. It was a contender’s White House chances being dashed.

It’s interesting when you suddenly see things from another editor’s perspective…

Party membership isn’t all it’s cracked up to be — and that’s a good thing

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Cleaning out my IN box today, I ran across this from four days ago:

Senators Say They Will return to Columbia on Tuesday

COLUMBIA – South Carolina Senate Majority Leader Harvey Peeler today released a list of Senators who have requested it be made public that they will return to Columbia on Tuesday June 7th ready to conduct business per Governor Haley’s Executive Order.?

“We have enjoyed many successes with the Governor Haley this year. Now that the Governor has called the General Assembly back, it’s important we finish the job on these critical government restructuring reforms.”

Senator Harvey Peeler

Senator Lee Bright

Senator Kevin Bryant

Senator Ronnie Cromer

Senator John Courson

Senator Tom Davis

Senator Mike Rose

Senator Greg Gregory

Senator Greg Ryberg

Senator David Thomas

**Senator Shane Martin supports the effort to return to Columbia on Tuesday, but will be unable to attend due to scheduling conflicts.

*Some Senators were unable to be reached this afternoon.

###

Interesting, huh? Especially in light of what happened. Here’s something that’s even more interesting, given my jaded view of political parties…

That release was sent out by Wesley Donehue, in his capacity working for the Senate Republicans. He also, under the same auspices, sent out the releases from Glenn McConnell challenging the governor for violating the separation of powers. Now that’s cool. Wesley’s doing his job. But the point I want everyone to note is this:

Being a Republican, or a Democrat, means next to nothing. They are false associations, mere granfalloons. When a theoretically coherent organization such as the Senate Republicans are putting out statements taking such different positions on an issue, it makes this fact clear. (You will occasionally see reportage that notes that the Republican governor is at odds with the Republican legislative leadership, in a tone that suggests there is something ironic about it. There is not. Nor is it strange or ironic for GOP senators to take different paths.)

This is not a bad thing; it’s a good thing. Senators SHOULD be thinking for themselves, and taking their own positions individually, rather than marching in lockstep. I just wanted everyone to notice it.

Oh, one last point — someone with the caucus may argue that being willing to come back as the governor requested is not entirely inconsistent with being opposed to the way the governor went about trying to make it happen. That’s true. The world is NOT black/white, either/or, liberal/conservative, the way parties would have you believe. Reality, and responsible governance, are far more complex than that.