Dick Harpootlian put out this video today with regard to the dispute between Gov. Nikki Haley and Sen. Glenn McConnell chronicled back here…
Here’s what the Democratic Party chair had to say about his video:
“It’s time to send adults to the Statehouse and get rid of the whiny children. Instead of the Governor worrying about her four pet projects, maybe she would be concerned with bringing news jobs to South Carolina and funding the education that will mold the true children of this state.”
A word about that, in the gov’s defense… what she was seeking was not the passage of “pet projects,” but substantive reforms. However, passing them was not an emergency worth overstepping constitutional bounds, or even exercising legitimate-but-extraordinary power…
One of the women in my household took it back to the library, so I didn’t get far enough in Tina Fey’s Bossypants to find out what happened after she hit puberty, but that’s cool. The part I did read was pretty funny.
What is not funny is the Gov. Bossypants we have over at the State House, who did this today:
Gov. Nikki Haley ordered lawmakers back to Columbia next week after they failed to pass a key piece of her legislative agenda on the legislative session’s last day, sparking dissention among legislative Republicans and howls from Democrats.
Haley wants lawmakers to return at 10 a.m. Tuesday to consider bills creating a Department of Administration, allowing the governor and lieutenant governor to run as a ticket, allow the governor to appoint the secretary of education and a bill merging the Department of Probation, Pardon and Parole into the Department of Corrections.
“Pick any two,” Haley said, asking lawmakers to voluntarily forfeit the $250 daily pay they are due, a total of $42,500 a day….
In other words, Do my will, and don’t get paid for doing it.
What a supreme mix of autocratic egoism and faux populism. The perfect Tea Party mix, steeped so as to make the maximum Palin-style impression.
Of course, she did allow them to pick two out of four, which I suppose Her Bossiness would consider to be magnanimity.
Here’s the problem with that: I would gladly vote for three out of the four (if her Bossiness could deign to condescend to do so, I would, were I a lawmaker, have to ask her to explain the virtues of combining the D of PP&P with Corrections). You know why? Because I am one of South Carolina’s most monotonously persistent advocates of giving the executive branch the ability to effectively administer the executive branch and be accountable for it.
But this kind of presumption of dictating to the legislative branch plays straight into the hands of those lawmakers who want to mischaracterize such proposals as a case of executive overreaching: See? She’s trying to FORCE lawmakers to pass the laws she wants. She should advocate strenuously for her positions, but there is a world of difference between advocating that a coequal branch of government do something, and using the power of one’s own branch to FORCE an issue that is the prerogative of that other branch.
The latter is not cool. Which, to turn full circle, brings us back to Tina Fey — a standing prop of her comedy is that she is not cool, not by a long shot.
But when Gov. Haley does the Bossypants routine, it’s just not as funny.
To elaborate on my theme that smart Republicans know that unseating Barack Obama will be a tall order (something that the fringe people, such as those who think the Tea Party is the “voice of the people,” completely miss), I point you to this piece by Daniel Henninger.
He blames, interesting enough, new media. He says GOP candidates who start this early will be cut down to nothing by the time the campaign is over by the constant drip of criticism on Twitter. It’s related to what we spoke of four years ago as Romney’s YouTube problem.
Strangely, he doesn’t see this as a problem for Obama, and his explanation of that is odd:
Meanwhile, it’s good to be president. With his opponents determined to spend a year and a half telling each other why “no one” is worth supporting, turning off contributors and independent voters, Barack Obama floats below the radar vacuuming up campaign cash at fund raisers.
He does make a legitimate point in the next sentence, however:
Every GOP candidate’s utterance is wholly political, but the Obama fundraisers and “policy speeches” are submerged in the presidency.
But he got the metaphor wrong. A president doesn’t fly BELOW the radar, but in a way above it. He’s fully visible, but can cloak his political statements in doing the job. Yep, that’s an advantage of incumbency. And always has been.
What Henninger ignores is that Obama has been thoroughly tested by new media, and not found wanting. There is nothing that can be thrown at a candidate via Tweets that hasn’t been hurled at him millions of times. And he sort of dropped the Big One on those flak sites a couple of weeks ago with the long form of his birth certificate, and his well-tempered scorn at his most imaginative critics. And, you know, by killing bin Laden. And, more substantially, by not being the extremist that his most extreme critics would paint him as.
If the GOP wants to prevail, it needs to come up with a candidate who can likewise endure the thousand slings and arrows. But the ones with that kind of substance are increasingly reluctant to get in.
In the end, Henninger rightly assesses the situation thusly, given the field as it stands:
A Republican candidate committed to running this gauntlet has to believe that come November 2012, the party will have nowhere else to go but to the polls to pull the lever for the last one standing. This assumes that the messaging power of electronic networks will magnify them. I believe the opposite: Given this much time, the medium eventually will melt them. The president, head ever up, will hold his ground.
The message in this for Republicans is that they need to come up with a candidate who, after being whittled at for 18 months, still has some substance left.
Oh, and by the way. I don’t know how Henninger votes. But if he isn’t a Republican, he missed a good chance.
The Old Man in Mexico with some American comrades.
Something about our finding and killing bin Laden in his home after all these years got me to thinking about Leon Trotsky.
Yeah, I know — not the same thing at all. We’re not the USSR, and President Obama isn’t Stalin. And people knew Trotsky was in Mexico, and he wasn’t killed by Spetznaz commandos (and I think it would kind of anachronistic if he had been).
But still, it made me think of him. The mind sometimes makes strange leaps.
But after the first few chapters, and reading all about the soap opera with Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo and ALL the propaganda from Moscow and from Trotsky himself over the show trials and so forth, I got bogged down.
And the thing that wore me down the most, that frankly bored me to tears, was all the long-distance ideological arm-wrestling. You know how I have little patience with ideologues. There were all these titanic arguments going back and forth between the Trotskyites and the Stalinists about who was the REAL commie, each side working so hard to delegitimize the other (with the stakes being life or death for Trotsky), essentially accusing each other of being RINOs — Reds In Name Only.
And I just couldn’t care about any of them. I mean, talk about pointless. Trotsky was as ruthless as they come, while Stalin was one of the great monsters of the century. And it was pathetic that leftists in this country would actually take up the cudgels to defend or make excuses for either of them. The arguments over doctrine — stupid, irrelevant points of doctrine argued heatedly among people who, ironically given what they believed in, were on the wrong side of history — were particularly tedious.
At some point, I need to get back to the book and see how the guy with the ice ax got in and did the deed. But I haven’t been able to make myself do so yet…
There was little surprise in Mike Huckabee’s decision to stay out of the 2012 presidential contest. He was one of the first to come out and speak of how hard it would be to beat Barack Obama, back in the fall. He said it again during the winter. And probably plenty of other times when I didn’t notice it.
And as hard as it might be for some Republicans to believe, he was not immediately struck dead by a lightning bolt on any of these occasions.
Yes, anything can happen between now and next year, but serious candidates have to get rolling NOW, and right now, things don’t look good for anyone seeking to go up against the incumbent.
The other day I exchanged email with a prominent South Carolina Republican who — when I brought up the subject of Jon Huntsman — said he doubted he had the traction to win the nomination. I responded,
Traction is the issue. Because unfortunately, these things tend to boil down to whom the party faithful want — which isn’t what wins elections.
Personally, I’m convinced that, given most scenarios, Obama wins this one. The GOP’s best chance is to come up with someone who appeals to people who might otherwise go for the incumbent. Who better to win over independents than someone who actually served in the Obama administration, then decided to oppose the president? THAT’S a story that works with independents, whereas the “Obama is and always has been the devil” people don’t get anywhere with swing voters.
The amazing thing was that in 2008, both parties went with the candidate most likely to appeal to swing voters. It doesn’t seem likely that the GOP will do that this time, on account of the Tea Party and such. Which means I wouldn’t give much for Republican chances this time (at this point, of course, which must always be our caveat).
To which my unnamed (for his own good) Republican said, “Unfortunately, I tend to agree with your analysis…”
I think a lot of smart Republicans are thinking along the same lines, if not saying it. Which is why these days we hear mostly from the yahoos who don’t get what’s going on… (Or the sad cases like poor Mitt Romney, a guy with an actual accomplishment under his belt who has to run AWAY from said accomplishment.) The smart ones are quieter, understanding the situation better.
So, how does Donald Trump’s announcement today fit with my “smart guy” theory… well, um, not so well… I know! He is the exception who proves the rule! I mean, if Huckabee is Tessio under my theory, then… well, there was nobody in “The Godfather” like Trump, unless it was Moe Green. Trump is like… Crazy Joey Gallo.
Seriously, I don’t care why he dropped out, since I never thought he was worth speaking of seriously. I guess he found another shiny toy to play with.
“With the Iowa straw poll a mere 90 days away, the absence of an obvious leader in the GOP race for the presidency, or even an obvious lineup, has left Republicans in a state of unease — but the uncertainty has also heightened anticipation,” the Des Moines Register reports.
First, I don’t care all that much about the Iowa caucuses themselves. That is to say, I don’t believe they should have the impact they have had for the last few decades. I wrote about that in a column several years ago.
Second, I can’t think of when I was ever impressed by a “straw poll” — anytime, anywhere. If I did, it was a moment of weakness in which my sense of perspective was badly diminished, perhaps by a nutritional deficiency of some sort.
But the idea of anybody being so a-quiver about such things as to write the phrase, “With the Iowa straw poll a mere 90 days away…” causes me to think that somebody needs to get a life…
How weird has it gotten in the GOP presidential field this year? This weird:
Mitt Romney is making it official. No, not that he’s officially running for the White House. (That will come soon enough.) That he really, really doesn’t like the health care reforms President Obama signed into law last year.
“If I am elected president, I will issue on my first day in office an executive order paving the way for waivers from ObamaCare for all 50 states,” Romney writes in an op-ed in Thursday’s USA Today. “Subsequently, I will call on Congress to fully repeal ObamaCare.”
The former Massachusetts governor will take his show on the road later Thursday, when he lays out his five-part health care alternative in person at an afternoon speech at the University of Michigan’s Cardiovascular Center.
The event is Romney’s most direct attempt yet to address what is widely seen as his biggest political liability: his work as governor to establish universal health-care coverage in Massachusetts…
Poor Romney. His chief virtue is that he tried, way out ahead of most of the country, to address our chief domestic challenge. And he showed that he understood one of the fundamentals of ANY reform with a chance of doing any good, that a mandate would have to be part of it. And now, to remain viable in a party that has charged over a cliff into an irrational vacuum on the issue, he has to run from that achievement.
Yes, I know that was a split infinitive, but I like it that way.
I was glancing over this story on the front page this morning:
WASHINGTON — Business leaders and Republican politicians Tuesday accused President Barack Obama of punishing GOP states by trying to block Boeing from opening an aircraft plant in South Carolina.
… and it struck me what a gift the NLRB had given the Republican Party in South Carolina.
By doing something SO outrageous, so without justification, and so profoundly harmful to South Carolina (if successful), the NLRB has given our state’s Republicans an issue to rally around and present themselves clearly as champions of the state’s best interests.
This doesn’t happen often. Usually, the GOP has to manufacture nonsense to fulminate about, such as “the looming specter of Obamacare” or something equally ridiculous. But this is real, it has substance, and it is clearly an attack upon the economic well-being of South Carolinians.
No wonder Republicans are rallying together, forgetting their pettier differences, to make as much noise about it as possible.
Of course, there is some overreaching, with Jim DeMint accusing the president of the United States of “thuggery.” Because, you know, wishing for his “Waterloo” isn’t malicious enough. But that’s Jim DeMint. On the whole, this makes Republicans look good, and far less silly and ideological than usual. (YES, there are some big ideological issues at stake in this matter, but you don’t actually have to care about them to care about the outcome.)
As for Mr. Obama — it’s pertinent that Nikki Haley has asked him, personally, to weigh in on this. (Which I don’t believe he’s done yet, Mr. DeMint. If he has, someone please send me a link.) Not that he’ll want to. As much as I like Mr. Obama, we all have our faults, and one of his biggest is his unwillingness to oppose Big Labor, which crowds him into some really ridiculous positions, such as his longtime, indefensible opposition to the Colombia Free Trade agreement.
This issue puts the president right where the SC GOP wants him. Since, you know, they mean him ill and want him to look bad. More to the point, it puts them in the position to look very good.
Me, I don’t care who looks good, as long as the bid to derail this project fails.
Just got this a few minutes ago. Evidently, Chad Connelly is feeling the need to answer those videos his counterpart keeps pumping out, and was eager enough to do so that he didn’t wait for fancy production values (maybe he thought he had to send off to Texas for that), but went ahead and got out a quick-and-dirty clip.
My first impression is similar to the impression I formed when Mr. Connelly introduced himself to me today at the Capital City Club: Personable, upbeat. I thought for a moment that he was going to be, intentionally and strategically, more positive than attack dog Harpootlian.
But then he got into standard GOP talking points, such as the current silliest one of all, “the looming specter of Obamacare.”
Anyway, this is going to be lively…
Wait — didn’t I say earlier I was going to cut back on the party stuff? Oh, well…
First, sorry about all the posts the last few days about political parties. Such as this one and this one and this one and this one and this one. It’s a disagreeable subject, and one that I usually avoid rather scrupulously. But ever since I made the mistake of delving a bit into the Democrats’ intraparty politics, and then their convention, and then the Republicans’ convention, my attention has been drawn more than usual to this unseemly, depressing topic.
I’m sure I’ll climb out of this ditch soon. But in the meantime… my attention was drawn to the above “sweet video” — his words — by Wesley Donehue.
It generates in me several unpleasant thoughts:
My biggest question of all is, who are the “they” that the video repeatedly refers to? First, I don’t know ANYONE who said some of these things. And even if someone did say them, surely the same person/people didn’t say ALL of them? And who would pay any attention to anyone who DID say these things? Which pundits said the GOP was “heading backwards” two years ago? (Personally, I said — and still believe — that after the 2008 defeat that the NATIONAL party, not the SC one, was demoralized to the point that it left a vacuum that was being filled by extremists — and that has certainly had its effects here. But that’s not “heading backwards;” it’s heading somewhere I’d never seen the party go before.) Who on earth ever thought for a moment that Republicans “could never retain the governorship?” Whoever said, ungrammatically, that a “woman governor” was impossible? (For those who didn’t get my point about “ungrammatical” — and fewer and fewer people do these days — “woman” is a noun, not an adjective.) And who even CARED about when the GOP would pay off its mortgage? Talk about your esoteric insider concerns. And on and on.
The video illustrates, better than the recent ones Harpootlian has been pumping out, one of the main things that is wrong with political parties: It’s this assumption that because something wears Brand X, it is GOOD. It reminds me of those cars I see with multiple bumper stickers on them, and they are almost always (I could, if all such cars I’ve ever seen were to parade before me, count the exceptions on one hand, with fingers left over) all of one party. As though a thinking person could possibly get so worked up in favor of Candidate A as to deface his or her car with a bumper sticker, and then get so enraptured with another, and another, and another, and they would ALL be of the same party, when that’s the only “virtue” they share. The odds against that, if the voter THINKS about each candidate and makes a discerning choice, are astronomical. And yet that’s what one almost always sees. In this case, we are to embrace the election of Nikki Haley as a GOOD THING (which, deep down, a lot of Republicans do not), and the defeat of John Spratt as an equally good thing, and … this is the part that strains credulity… for the same reasons! When the only characteristics we are given for judging those phenomena are that Ms. Haley is a Ms., and Mr. Spratt has been in office 28 years. Well, those and the fact that the victor in each case happens to wear the Republican label, which is a most dubious unifying characteristic.
Finally, according to Wesley, this video about how wonderful it is that the Republican Party treads unopposed across the face of South Carolina was produced by Texans. Specifically, this one and this one. So… apparently the paradise that the GOP rules over here is incapable of producing anyone with the talent to produce a “sweet video.” Or so we are left to gather. Sorry, but ever since I went into the advertising/marketing/communications game I’ve learned to have a low opinion of those who insist on procuring such services from out of state. Like nobody here needs the business, or is good enough.
Well, I could go on, but I won’t. OK, one more point: “Sweet” is an odd thing to call such strident triumphalism. One practically hears the stamp of boots marching in the background, it is SO triumphalist.
OK, I get it; this is a love letter to Karen Floyd. But who saw it as worthwhile to spend money — OUT OF STATE — to produce such a thing? What is its worth to anyone, other than Karen, who is departing the stage?
I’ve just got to start ignoring all this party stuff and find something more pleasant to write about.
That's 2nd Lt. Prince Harry (Henry Charles Albert David) of Wales on the right, Lt. Col. Bill Connor on the left, in 2008 (or late 2007; I'm not sure): "He called me Bill and I called him Harry."
Remember all the back-and-forth between the candidates for Democratic Party chair back before the convention, some of which I kept track of here (to the point that I was sort of sorry I started)?
I just didn’t get those kinds of releases from the candidates for GOP chair beforehand. Oh, I saw some back-and-forth on Twitter about how Nikki Haley was backing one candidate, and her critics at SCTruth were backing another, and so forth and so on. But they didn’t give a lot of context, and if there was a battle of emailed press releases, I missed it. Even though I had specifically asked to be kept in the loop (and folks, I seldom ASK for press releases), and at least two of the three campaigns said they’d send me whatever they sent out.
But about all I received via that medium in the last days was this one Facebook alert from Bill Connor, on the day of the royal wedding:
As it happened, I had already known that about Connor. In fact, he had written us an op-ed piece about it, right after his highness had spent a brief time serving alongside SC Guard troops in Afghanistan (before the word got out and they had to yank him out of the country). The above photo ran with that piece.
Anyway, so much for any of the fairy-tale effect of the royal wedding rubbing off. Bill Connor came in third in the competition state GOP chair.
Which reminds me — I need to get winner Chad Connelly in here for a “Brad Show.”
Dick Harpootlian is really into video as an attack medium. This is like, what — one a week? I guess that’s what he’s spending that money he was so eager to raise on.
Can’t say I really agree with what he’s saying, though. I don’t think it an awful thing that the governor pays her staff decently. I DO have a question or two about her decision to essentially copy and paste her campaign staff into the governor’s office. It’s one thing to hire a guy like Trey Walker, who knows a thing or two about elective service in SC. But her chief of staff isn’t even from here, with his main SC experience being running her campaign. Her campaign that was, if you recall, NOT about SC, but about Barack Obama.
I realize that some of y’all — such as Doug — think lack of experience is a GOOD thing. I do not. If your elected official is not much more than a “fresh face,” you definitely need some experienced people running the staff. If you’re serious about doing the job, that is.
The salaries, though, don’t bother me. But I realize they make for an easy target for the Dems under the circumstances…
Y’all don’t seem terribly interested in this, since I didn’t get a single comment when I urged y’all to follow my Tweets from the GOP convention at the Columbia convention center Saturday. But I’m going to to ahead and give you all the Tweets here anyway. Because that WAS my report on the event. So there.
Somehow I’d like to figure out how to integrate Twitter more fully into the blog. I used to have a Twitter feeder on the right-hand side of my blog page, but it was always several hours behind, which sort of defeated the purpose. Ideally, I’d like to post things on Twitter, and have them appear here in a format in which y’all could easily react and start a discussion without having to wait for me to get to my laptop and create a blog post — which is tedious, and pretty boring. For me, anyway, posting the same thing twice.
The Twitter strategy was successful Saturday in that people WERE reacting in real time — but via Twitter, or Facebook, not on the blog. You see, I have Twitter set up so that everything I put there automatically posts to Facebook. And I put the headlines and links to all my blog posts on Twitter. So… I have this weird phenomenon whereby people will see a link to a blog post on Facebook, follow it to my blog, read it, then go BACK to Facebook to leave a comment. Which is frustrating, because I’d rather they do it here, where the rest of our discussions take place. Oh, well.
Anyway, here are all my Tweets from just before I went to the convention (when Nikki Haley addressed the gathering) through the second ballot for a chairman, after which I left. This process took longer than the chairman election the Dems had had the previous week, because that one had been such a foregone conclusion.
Note that photography was a bit of a challenge at this one, because they had non-delegates at the back of the room. Hope Butch Bowers isn’t too insulted I thought he was someone else, but look at that picture above. You can hardly see the table, much less who’s sitting at it.
Anyway, here’s my feed, including things I reTweeted from others, and replies from others:
RETWEET: wesleydonehue Wesley Donehue: For the record, I did not kill the lights on @nikkihaley because she was bashing consultants.
RETWEET: SCTRUTH: Haley just said that she is her worst critic. Last Saturday she said that she didn’t make any mistakes in her first 100 days
BradWarthen: @SCTRUTH Well… Obviously, she’s not her BEST critic. Certainly not the most discerning…
michaelrentiers: Looks like the loons are going to try and run the asylum at #SCGOPconvention. Rules will be our friend today.
BradWarthen: I haven’t even gotten there yet, & it looks like there’s a good bit of dissension, & even (gasp!) IRONY @ the GOP convention…
BradWarthen: Is that Bob Inglis up there seated on the podium? Can’t tell… Too far away to see. How’m I gonna take pics with my iPhone?
BradWarthen: Alan Wilson ranting about Obamacare, etc. “Attacking our Constitution…” Always thought he was more mildly reasonable than this…
LeeCoLibrary: @BradWarthen Is there any live coverage of the GOP convention or just the twitter feed. Which, by the way, is pretty funny!!
BradWarthen: @LeeCoLibrary Dunno. Hey, TV doesn’t even cover the NATIONAL conventions any more…
BradWarthen: Eckstrom says you have to go after our enemy “where he lives & plans.” But he’s praising Bush, not mentioning Obama. When did he write this?
BradWarthen: Speaker after speaker going on repetitively about taking on that awful Obama fellow. Little mention of SC…
BradWarthen: Mark Hammond actually DID mention some SC issues. Good for him…
BradWarthen: Bobby Harrell, introducing Mick Zais, says we’re closer than ever to education “reform.” Can’t wait to hear what that looks like…
BradWarthen: Oh, I see… No. 1, Zais says, is “choice”…
BradWarthen: Zais wants to run schools “like a business”… I need to go check his bio again… He IS a retired military officer, right?”
BradWarthen: When this convention is over, don’t anyone say “conservative” to me for a year. My brain cells that process that word are bruised & frayed.
BradWarthen: Kevin’s getting tough; he just used the gavel…
BradWarthen: There’ll be a 2nd ballot w/ all three candidates staying in (which I don’t get). Crowd booed, which doesn’t bode well for 3rd place Connor.
BradWarthen: Kevin repeatedly says 2nd ballot will be on “the white ballots.” I will not make a joke. I will not make a joke. I will not make a joke…
RETWEET: johnroconnor John O’Connor: First ballot results: Connelly 399.5, Brown 247, 194.5. All three stay in for second ballot. Crowd boos.
BradWarthen: I need to get close enough to get a picture of that Connelly fellow. Don’t think the one I got of Connor is going to do me much good…
BradWarthen: On 2nd ballot, only one county spokesman has tried to give a cute speech about his county. Kevin called him up VERY short…
BradWarthen: Sounds like Connelly might make it this time, bringing the process mercifully to a close…
TylerMJones: @BradWarthen Can we get a diversity update from inside the convention? Just for kicks.
BradWarthen: @TylerMJones From where I stand, I see 2 black guys, but really can’t make out most of the delegates from here…
BradWarthen: @TylerMJones Earlier, a speaker bragged on Tim Scott, got a nice hand. They’re right proud of him, and by extension themselves…
johnroconnor: Unofficial Connelly count: Connelly 55%, Brown 33%, Connor 12%. Waiting on official result.
BradWarthen: Just chatted with Katon Dawson, who calls me “Rolling Stone” (old joke). He’s going to be helping Gingrich, expects race to get lively…
BradWarthen: Chad Connelly promises to be Dick Harpootlian’s “worst nightmare”…
OK, this is getting ridiculous. I knew that Michele Bachmann throwing around Web ad money in SC, but multiple ads per page on thestate.com? (On one page, I saw THE SAME AD twice, with one copy of it stacked on top of the other, the way those two slightly different ones are below. But when I tried to call it up like that again to grab a screen shot, I couldn’t get it to refresh quite that way.)
And not a single ad on bradwarthen.com. Which would probably give her a better deal.
At least, not yet.
Is this right? Is this fair? Is this the way the world should be? To quote the guy in the movie that came out today, “I say thee nay!”
If this pattern keeps up, I’m going to start seriously questioning this lady’s judgment…
As I mentioned before, I didn’t go. To the GOP debate in Greenville, that is. And I didn’t even think to watch it on TV last night (was it even on live? I wouldn’t know). When I got home from the Five Points event, the fam was watching a 1944 musical comedy called “Bathing Beauty,” starring Red Skelton, Esther Williams, Basil Rathbone, Xavier Cugat and Harry James and his orchestra. Which caused me to realize something: When he was young, Red Skelton looked a lot like Conan O’Brien.
Anyway, I read the stories about the debate in The State today — this one and this one — and didn’t get the sense that I missed anything at all.
But perhaps some of my readers DID see it, and were impressed by something or other. If so, this would be a good time to share.
In the original, a mom leaves her kids with a babysitter for three months, but after the babysitter dies of a heart attack, the children fend for themselves for the summer.
The GOP nominating contest so far follows a very similar plot. With the grown-ups (played by Jeb Bush and Mitch Daniels) out of town, the field has been left in the custody of caretakers (played by Mitt Romney, Donald Trump and Newt Gingrich). When even the babysitters fail to show up at the first debate of the season, the juveniles run the thing themselves.
At Thursday night’s debate in South Carolina, Libertarian Rep. Ron Paul explained why heroin and prostitution should be legal and why the Department of Homeland Security should be eliminated…
As I said, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t that bad. But… I don’t seem to have missed anything. There IS quite a bit of excitement among Ron Paul fans, partly because they’re always excited (which is why I put him in the headline — that’s always good for about 1,000 page views), and partly because apparently no one at the debate offered him any competition in attention-grabbing.
Bottom line, what’s going on here is… nothing. You might see some activity at some point in the future among some Republicans who, if they gain the nomination, just might have a chance of giving Barack “Hey, I Just Killed bin Laden” Obama a run for his money, but none of them were going to poke their heads out this week.
And I’m not going to bet that this ever gets competitive, with serious candidates really running hard. At least, not soon. (Which is a shame because, you know, I’d like to get some of those ad bucks here on the blog.)
The contrast to four years ago is palpable. In May 2007, there was a GOP presidential debate here in Columbia, and while I didn’t actually go to that one, either, I did watch it on TV. I watched it in a bar with Bob McAlister. The reason we were in the bar was that John McCain was supposed to show up there after. He did, and that’s when I shot my most popular candidate video ever — the one that has been viewed 62,671 times on YouTube — the one in which McCain refers to Lindsey Graham as “that little jerk.”
There were enough actual contenders for the nomination there that Ron Paul, while he attracted attention, was regarded as a curiosity, as the outlier he is. Not this time. Did you see that Rep. Paul had again raised a boatload of money? Don’t know exactly what he plans to do with it. Surely not even he believes he is ever likely to be president of the United States. I suppose it will be like last time — lots of posters and such, not all that many voters beyond the passionate core, who are sort of doing their own thing. Perhaps Doug can explain it to us…
The Associated Press announced Wednesday night that it’s not going to cover tomorrow night’s Republican presidential debate, citing “restrictions placed on media access.”
“The debate sponsors, Fox News Channel and the South Carolina Republican Party, will only allow photos to be taken in the moments ahead of the debate and not during the event itself,” the AP said in an advisory to editors.
“These are restrictions that violate basic demands of news-gathering and differ from other debates where more access was granted. Accordingly, the AP will not staff the event in any format nor will the AP disseminate any pool photos taken by another outlet.”
The AP said the decision was “consistent with longstanding policy” in coverage of events like these, and would be reassessed “should access conditions change.”
Reuters confirmed that it would not be covering the event photographically, because it shared concerns about access. However, Reuters did not confirm whether it would be going as far as AP and not filing text either.
While I suppose he won’t be there covering it, The AP’s Jim Davenport DID do an advance story, which you can find here.
Last night House Republicans voted in favor of an appalling piece of anti-choice legislation that could force victims of rape and incest to relive their trauma during an IRS audit and deny millions of American women access to life-saving reproductive health care.
Their assault on women has nothing to do with saving money and everything to do with forcing extremist beliefs into the tax code of the United States of America.
And they didn’t stop there. They used the occasion to sneak in a provision restricting the definition of rape to deny victims access to reproductive health care — even after they claimed to have removed the language in the face of overwhelming public opposition.
We must take immediate, decisive action against this attack on women’s health and reproductive freedom.
Hey, sign me up! I’m all about some “anti-choice” legislation — that is, when it’s about limiting the “right to choose” abortion, or the “right to choose” to force me to underwrite someone’s private education. Or anything else that’s such an appalling idea that the only way you think you can sell it is in terms of “choice.” As though we lack freedom if we’re not totally free to do anything and everything.
Notice how advocates of “choice” have trouble saying what it is that they’re actually for? They have a jargon that is unself-consciously comical in its aversion to plain speaking.
I mean hey, I wish you the best of “health.” As for “reproductive freedom” — go ahead, reproduce all you want; no one’s stopping you.
I think we need a constitutional amendment limiting the 1st Amendment so that it doesn’t protect political speech that mangles the language.
OK, not really. But one does grow tired of such abuses.
I told you over the weekend that Dick Harpootlian said he was going to run right out and start raising money.
It seems he’s already spending it. The above video was just released. Not sure why NOW exactly, except that Dick couldn’t wait. Maybe it’s timed for the GOP debate tonight, or the convention this weekend. Regarding that debate, Harpootlian said,
The only candidates Republicans can get to show up for their debate tonight are a bunch of no-names and crazies.
Not so sure about THAT. But it’s definitely a B-team lineup. Maybe C-team. But hey, there will be a big crowd. After all, Ron Paul will be there, and you know how his fans are…
And no, I’m not going. I intend to go to the convention this weekend, though.
I went to my very first ever state Democratic convention today. (You have to understand I spent most of my career as an editor, and going to conventions was reporters’ work.) It started at 10 a.m., but I didn’t arrive at the Carolina Coliseum until about 12:20, having had errands to run this morning. I wasn’t too worried about missing anything, though. After all, this was an event run by Democrats, rather than by Republicans. Or Germans. I refer you to Will Rogers.
Near as I can tell, I was right. I did apparently arrive too late to get press credentials — the table that I think was for that purpose was no longer manned — but it didn’t matter. I went down and wandered about on the floor without being challenged.
The headline: Dick Harpootlian won the party chairmanship on the first ballot, with 624 votes to Phil Noble‘s 331 and 68 for the third candidate whom, throughout this competition, was always referred to as that nice guy from Marion County. It still took a while for that first ballot to happen. After having rejected a proposal to vote merely by standing up (a most UN-Nikki Haley voting method that would have been), which would have dealt with the matter quickly since it was so lopsided, paper ballots were decided up. Then they were distributed, and… there was no place on the ballot to indicate which candidate one preferred for chairman. (Disclaimer — I’m describing this as it was described to me by delegates; that minor fiasco was one thing I DID miss by being late. Which still tells me I didn’t miss much.)
They were in the midst of voting again when I arrived, as speeches continued. So I settled in and listened, and mingled and gabbed, and waited for a result.
Here are some of the things I saw and heard over the next couple of hours before I left:
Upon my entrance, Steve Benjamin was giving the key to the city to former Rep. John Spratt. Spratt looked pretty good, and had no trouble speaking to the crowd. It was the first time I’d seen him since his defeat, or since his illness was announced, for that matter.
As I sat at an empty chair at the small press table, Jay Parmley was telling the crowd what an awesome job the party had done
Twitter wag @brookbristow termed this "The best political sticker OF ALL TIME."
of organizing in 2010. “So,” thought I, “how come y’all got so totally creamed?” Well, he explained, the party did well on the county level.
Of 289 county offices that were up last year, Democrats contested 190 and won 167. Yeah, OK. But when you lose every office that anyone is paying attention to, that doesn’t exactly add up to Big Mo, does it? He went on to say that 47 percent of the first-time voters of 2008 (remember the Obama Effect?) turned out in 2010, which was much higher than turnout in the general population. This made me think about baseball statistics. I sort of felt like I was listening to a manager brag on his losing pitcher for having thrown so many great pitches during the game.
One speaker, later in the program, said “I want to thank our next governor, Vincent Sheheen,” and got a big cheer. I’m not sure what the cheer meant: Were the assembled Dems giving him an attaboy for having almost won as their standard-bearer last year, or were they endorsing him to be the nominee next time as well? That’s the trouble with crowds cheering. You’d have to interview everybody to know what they were thinking.
I learned that the chairman’s race was over from Phil Noble. I ran into him on the floor and, not having any other questions on my mind, asked him how he thought it was going. He said not so well: He had already lost, on the first ballot, and it would be announced from the podium momentarily. Oh. OK. And yes, I felt like an idiot. I excused myself, and Tweeted it out.
After that announcement was made, Mr. Noble got up to make a concession speech. I whipped out my camera to try to shoot video, and less than three seconds after I hit the button to start recording, he was leaving the podium. He had pledged his support to the winner and to the party, and that was it. He was off that stage.
As it happened, Mr. Harpootlian didn’t speak all that long, either. I won’t trouble you with quoting from his acceptance speech, because I have the whole thing on video above. I recognize that the sound quality isn’t good (and the video itself is shaky, because I was busy looking around the room), so if you have trouble hearing it say so, and I’ll give you some quotes. But beyond quoting Harry Truman and promising to give Nikki Haley and her party a hard time, there wasn’t much to it.
Afterwards, Dick told me that he was anxious to get out of there and start raising money. He said he could raise more money in the next two hours than he ever could at any other time — flush of victory, I suppose he meant. I looked around for him not long afterward, and I guess he had left to do just that.
John Spratt got up again to address the crowd, and announced that he wanted to be the very first to contribute to the party under its new regime — giving a check for $5,000.
After staying maybe an hour after Harpootlian’s acceptance, talking with various sources about other stuff while 17th vice chairmen and such were being elected, I decided to split. A lot of people already had. As I left the hall, I heard behind me a speaker saying, “Whereas, according to rule 6.2….” Yeah, I think I found the right time to leave.
There had never been a lot of doubt among observers that Dick Harpootlian would win this, once he got in. And media types are positively looking forward to having The Mouth generate good copy over the next couple of years. So I could hardly blame Phil Noble for seeming a bit put-upon when I interviewed him earlier in the week, seeming resentful that after all those months of work, this would be taken from him so easily. Today, after his concession speech, he said to me something along the lines of “That’s life.” It’s certainly politics. But I wouldn’t blame him a bit for feeling kind of alone at that moment.
Not entirely alone, though — he did get 331 votes. And I had the opportunity to speak to as couple of those 331 during the convention. The ones I heard from were more anti-Harpootlian than pro-Noble, and their reasons ranged from their sincere belief in political correctness — which the new chairman definitely does not share — to their conviction that Harpootlian is all talk, and the party needs more than that.
But you know, if I were a Democrat, I’d have been concerned about something else. Dick is way more than talk; he had a lot to do with the party’s success in 1998. I think he’ll pull out all the stops to reverse momentum and win victories over the Republicans. And if I were a Democrat, I’d wonder, “At what cost?” In 1998, he brought video poker money to the table, and helped Jim Hodges (who had been a staunch opponent of both video poker and a state lottery) win on a lottery-based campaign. If you’re a Democrat and you’re OK with such things, you’re bound to be happy with your new chairman. If you worry about such tactics, you might be concerned at what lengths he’ll go to to win.
But there’s no question that for media types, it’s going to be more fun to write about the Democrats over the next couple of years.
Twitter wag @brookbristow termed this “The best political sticker OF ALL TIME.”
