Category Archives: Republicans

Stepping back from the fiscal cliff?

Well, here’s an encouraging post-election development:

Quickly pivoting the political conversation from President Obama’s reelection to Washington’s looming budget battles, House Speaker John A. Boehner on Wednesday offered a potential path to compromise, saying Republicans are “willing to accept new revenue” to tame the soaring national debt and avert an ugly battle over the approaching “fiscal cliff.”

With Obama’s decisive electoral victory and Republicans’ hold on the House, with a slightly smaller majority, Boehner (R-Ohio) said Tuesday’s election amounted to a plea from voters for the parties to lay down their weapons of the past two years and “do what’s best for our country.”

“That is the will of the people. And we answer to them,” Boehner said at an afternoon news conference at the Capitol. “For purposes of forging a bipartisan agreement that begins to solve the problem, we’re willing to accept new revenue, under the right conditions.”…

Last night, I was hearing that it appeared unlikely that House Republicans, having held onto their power, would be any more willing to talk compromise than they have since 2010.

So this is good news. We may be able to arrive at a reasonable solution — although I’m sure the end product won’t be pleasant or fun for anyone involved, including us, the people.

But here’s the tough question: Can Boehner back this up, or will Eric Cantor be explaining to him right about now that he’s not allowed to do this?

Joan Brady, SC House District 78

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Joan Brady is the kind of Republican (a traditional one) that a certain other kind of Republican (the Johnny-Come-Lately extremist variety) likes to call a RINO. She serves her swing district in much the same pragmatic way Sen. John Courson does his — serving Democratic and Republican constituents equally, and keeping the ideology to a minimum.

The issues she has concentrated on aren’t exactly out of the GOP playbook, as The State noted in endorsing her:

That means pushing through legislation to require state government buildings to be more energy-efficient, to prohibit insurance companies from dropping coverage for victims of criminal domestic violence, to outlaw teen sexting, to make it easier for foster parents to adopt abused or abandoned children. It means championing proposals to increase childhood immunizations and fight childhood obesity. These aren’t the macro issues that we like to talk about — tax and education policy, governmental structure — but they’re important measures that need someone who can promote them effectively…

So it is that she has the backing of organizations ranging from the S.C. Education Association and the Conservation Voters of South Carolina to the S.C. Chamber of Commerce and the National Federation of Independent Businesses. Quite an across-the-spectrum, left-to-right set of endorsements.

To independents and Democrats, Rep. Brady’s re-election pitch is this: She can get things done on some of the issues that they care about as much as she does, whereas a Democrat — especially a freshman Democrat — could not.

She considers the issues she cares about most as neither Democratic or Republican, but she sees her party identity as an asset in getting the Republican majority to pass her initiatives. For instance, she notes that most of her GOP colleagues were less than thrilled with the idea of making state buildings greener, until she explained that in addition to helping the planet, it would save money.

“We’re in a Republican-dominated Legislature, like it or not… Democrats have basically been rendered inconsequential in the General Assembly,” she says, so her district needs a Republican to sell good ideas that may not be in the GOP playbook to other Republicans.

So it is that she resents the fact that Democrats have targeted her, as she sees it, purely because she is a Republican, disregarding the good she does that they should be able to appreciate.

She sees her opponent, Beth Bernstein, as “hand-picked” by the state Democratic Party, as someone who hasn’t shown interest in public affairs before (“In 16 years, I haven’t seen her at a committee meeting.”). Rep. Brady, a full-time legislator, dismisses her opponent in the same terms Nikki Haley used against Vincent Sheheen, calling her a “trial lawyer,” and suggesting she isn’t the small businesswoman she poses as.

She also says she’s unprepared to address issues, pointing to the trouble Ms. Bernstein had answering questions at a Sierra Club forum — video of which Rep. Brady has posted on her Facebook page.

(I’ll give Ms. Bernstein’s responses to all that in a separate post about her.)

Again questioning how effective Ms. Bernstein could be, Rep. Brady says that in the General Assembly in 2012, there’s “nothing lower on the totem pole than a freshman Democratic trial lawyer.”

Meanwhile, she sees herself as being what her district needs and wants. She says that as she goes door-to-door, at every third house voters will say that what they want most is someone who will “work across party lines” to get things done.

She says that is exactly what she does, and she sees no reason for her constituents to change horses at this point. She sees that as unlikely — she notes that the district got a little more Republican in the recent reapportionment — but she’s running as hard as she ever has against this challenge.

Where Howie Rich et al. are spending these days

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Phil Noble’s New Democrats have released a list of those receiving money from Howard Rich and allies (I’m not sure how the allies are defined), in the continuing quest to purchase privatization of education in South Carolina. First, an excerpt from the commentary:

After the Civil War, South Carolina was invaded by Northern carpetbaggers and their local scalawag allies who abused our state and exploited our people.

Howard Rich

They are back – this time Howard Rich is the carpetbagger and there are 25 legislators and candidates, as well as party and legislative organizations, who have joined him to exploit our children with their so-called school voucher social experiment scheme.

We are here today to name these 25 candidates and party organizations that have taken over $333,000 in funds from Rich and his out of state cronies to make our state’s children lab rats in his radical school voucher experiment.

In 2011-12, Rich and his cronies have contributed $325,640 to Republicans and $8,000 to Democrats. They should all be ashamed of what they have done and they should give the money back…

And now the list:

Contributions by Howard Rich and Cronies

Below is a list of the total contributions to South Carolina candidates made by Howard Rich and his cronies in 2011-12. Source: FollowTheMoney.org and the SC Ethics Commission. See itemized list of contributions here.

TOTAL: $333,640
Republicans: $325,640
Democrats: $8000

SC HOUSE
Total: $37,500
Barfield, Liston D (R, 58) $3000
Bowen, Don C (R, 08) $3000
Chumley, Bill (R, 35) $15,000
Crawford, Kris (R, 63) $500
Erickson, Shannon (R, 124) $500
Gambrell, Michael W (R, 07) $500
Hardwick, Nelson (R, 106) $2000
Herbkersman, Bill (R, 118) $1000
Putnam, Joshua (R, 10) $11,000
Smith, Garry R (R, 27) $1000

SC SENATE
Total: $109,000
Bright, Lee (R, 12) $17,000
Bryant, Kevin L (R, 03) $8000
Campsen, Chip (R, 43) $1000
Corbin, Tom (R, 05) $8000
Davis, Tom (R, 46) $1000
Fair, Mike (R, 06) $18,000
Ford, Robert (D, 42) $6000
Grooms, Larry (R, 37) $5000
Massey, Shane (R, 25) $3000
Peeler, Harvey (R, 14) $3000
Rose, Mike (R, 38) $18,000
Thomas, David (R, 08) $18,000
Thurmond, Paul(R, 41) $3000

LEGISLATIVE CAUCUSES
Total: $105,000
House Democratic Caucus Committee $2000
House Republican Caucus Committee $3000
Senate Republican Caucus Committee $100,000

STATEWIDE
Total: $38,500
Loftis, Curtis (R, Treasurer) $31,500
Wilson, Alan (R, AG) $7000

PARTIES
Total: $43,640
South Carolina Republican Party $43,640

The SC Dems site notes that Logan Smith has more over at his blog.

Last week’s election forum at the library

Gov. Chris Christie’s effusive praise of Obama

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Here’s something you don’t see every day:

Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey took an unscheduled break from partisan attacks on the President Obama on Tuesday to praise him, repeatedly and effusively, for leading the federal government’s response to the storm.

“Wonderful,” “excellent” and “outstanding” were among the adjectives Mr. Christie chose, a change-up from his remarks last week that Mr. Obama was “blindly walking around the White House looking for a clue.”

Some of Mr. Christie’s Republican brethren have already begun grumbling about his gusher of praise at such a crucial time in the election.

But the governor seemed unconcerned. When Fox News asked him about the possibility that Mitt Romney might take a disaster tour of New Jersey, Mr. Christie replied:

I have no idea, nor am I the least bit concerned or interested. I have a job to do in New Jersey that is much bigger than presidential politics. If you think right now I give a damn about presidential politics, then you don’t know me.

A governor who cares more about serving his (or her) state more than national partisan politics? Imagine that. If you live in South Carolina, you might find that difficult, but try…

Hey, Clint, where’s the chair?

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Just thought I’d share this new ad Clint Eastwood did for the American Crossroads Super PAC.

He says, among other things:

Obama’s second term would be a rerun of the first, and our country just couldn’t survive that.

Really, Clint? Couldn’t survive it?

I think he has a greater sense of perspective and proportion in his movies. (Particularly “Gran Torino,” which is awesome.)

Anyway, if you want to see the PRO-Obama the Hollywood legend did not so long ago, I include that below…

Why can’t the actual candidates be this grown-up?

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Perhaps it was my intimidating, leonine "Sir William" visage that kept them in line: Nathan Ballentine, your correspondent, Bakari Sellers, Matt Moore, Amanda Loveday

Back in my fire-breathing days when I thought it was possible to completely transform South Carolina right NOW — say, the year that I spent directing the “Power Failure” project, 1991 — I used to rail against the politeness that characterized public life in our state.

Not that politeness per se was a bad thing. My beef was that people were so reluctant to confront each other about anything that nothing ever changed for the better. I was a sort of Rhett Butler railing against a culture that was too busy being gentlemanly to roll up its sleeves and improve our lot.

Now, we have other problems. In fact, too often these days our political problem is less that we don’t get up the drive to move forward, and more a case of being buffeted by all sorts of forces — many of them anything but genteel — that would push us backwards. Some SC politicians seem more intent on copying the behavior of Reality TV contestants than Ashley Wilkes.

In any case, I bring all this up to say that sometimes, I can value what remains of the gentility of South Carolina political discourse.

One of those times was Tuesday night, when I moderated a panel discussion over at Richland County Public Library.

The panelists were Rep. Nathan Ballentine, Rep. Bakari Sellers, state Republican Party Executive Director Matt Moore, and his Democratic counterpart, Amanda Loveday.

These people were there to argue for either Barack Obama or Mitt Romney, from a local perspective. All were eminently qualified to do so, and applied themselves to the task with gusto. No one missed a chance to score a rhetorical point, and no one was shy about strongly presenting his or her party’s position. Occasionally, they did so with humor.

But here’s the thing: They did it like grownups. They did not interrupt each other. They did not jab fingers at each other, or act like they were on the verge of throwing down. They did not make sarcastic remarks intended to tear each other down. When I told them their time was up, they cooperated.

Which should not be remarkable, but is so, in a world in which the men vying for president and vice president of the United States conduct themselves like five-year-olds who have consumed a whole box of Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs.

These people were not shrinking violets. People who know their backgrounds might expect a free-for-all. Matt Moore used to be executive director of the S.C. Club for Growth, the purest expression of Mark Sanford ideology in our state. Amanda Loveday works for Dick Harpootlian, who seems to embrace a sort of lifelong quest to make our politics less civil. Nathan Ballentine is a very conservative Republican who was probably Nikki Haley’s closest ally when she was in the House. Bakari is the son of Cleveland Sellers, the activist famously scapegoated and jailed after the Orangeburg Massacre.

Not a wallflower among them, but all were perfectly courtly as they strongly made their points. (Wait a sec — can a lady, technically, be “courtly”? If so, Amanda was.)

At one point in the middle of it all, I paused to thank the panelists for conducting themselves better than the national candidates they were speaking for, the people who would presume to lead the world. The audience applauded.

Election forum at library tomorrow night

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I got a call from Richland County Public Library this morning. Looks like I’m going to be filling in at the last minute as moderator for this forum, as the far more mellifluously voiced Charles Bierbauer will be participating in a memorial service for longtime SLED spokesman Hugh Munn, who passed away over the weekend:

Get a Local Perspective on the Presidential Election

Library and Central Carolina Community Foundation host Panel Discussion

Hear former CNN correspondent and USC Dean Charles Bierbauer and a bipartisan panel debate the hot issues of this year’s presidential campaign at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, October 23 at the Richland County Public Library.

Panelists include:

Matt Moore, SC Republican Party Executive Director;

Amanda Loveday, SC Democratic Party Executive Director;

Rep. Nathan Ballentine (R), House District 71; and

Rep. Bakari Sellers (D), House District 90.

This free event is cosponsored with Central Carolina Community Foundation. For more information, call 231-6329.

Y’all come on out. It could be your only chance to see a political forum this year moderated by a guy who looks like a refugee from 1810. No, I won’t be in costume, but there’s little I can do about the ‘chops and hair.

Whom does Barwick think he’s running against? Silly me, I thought it was Thomas McElveen

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And here I thought the Democratic ticket (what is this problem that Republicans have discerning the difference between a noun and an adjective?) was Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

I was also thinking that Tony Barwick was running against Thomas McElveen for the Sumter-based seat being vacated by Sen. Phil Leventis. I had no idea his opponent was the POTUS.

But then I got this release:

Thomas McElveen doesn’t publicize that he’s a Democrat. You can barely even find the word “Democrat” on his website. He certainly doesn’t put it on his signs or mailers.
That’s because Thomas McElveen doesn’t want to be labeled as a Barack Obama liberal, but that’s exactly what he is! He’s a tried-and- true, liberal Democrat who supports Barack Obama and his failed policies.
Don’t let an Obama ally in the State Senate. Stand with us today by donating $5. Your money will go directly to our party building efforts in Sumter, Richland, Lee and Kershaw counties.

And then this one:

Barack Obama promised Hope and Change.
What did we get?
Gas prices have doubled.
Unemployment has doubled.
National debt has increased by $5 Trillion.
Thomas McElveen is a tried-and-true Barack Obama liberal. Don’t let another Obama ally in the State Senate. Donate $5 now and help with our party building efforts in Sumter, Lee, Richland and Kershaw counties.
Please consider a $5 donation now and let’s STOP Thomas McElveen, another liberal Barack Obama ally.

I haven’t seen such nonsense since Nikki Haley got elected (barely) by saying “Obama! Obama! Obama!” and avoiding mention of either Vincent Sheheen or anything having to do with South Carolina.

Looks like Barwick has no actual arguments to present as to why he would be a better senator to represent District 35 — which by the way is located in South Carolina, not the District of Columbia — than McElveen.

Perhaps, in fairness to him, he had little to do with these releases — they look to me like the work of Donehue Direct, which is headed by Wesley Donehue, who also works for the Senate Republican Caucus (which is my actual customer on that Courson ad at right, rather than the Courson campaign). But they come to me under the headline, “A new message from Tony Barwick,” so until we hear otherwise…

Court panel OKs SC voter ID law for 2013

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This happened about the time I was going to lunch today:

A federal court in Washington, D.C., has upheld the constitutionality of South Carolina’s new voter ID law.

However, the law — which requires voters to present a state-approved ID with their picture at the polls before casting a ballot — will not take effect until 2013, meaning it will not affect S.C. voters during the November presidential election.

The U.S. Justice Department had blocked implementation of the new law, passed in 2011. Civil rights groups also had challenged the law, saying it unfairly discriminated against minority voters, who were less likely to have access to the records or state facilities necessary to get a photo ID.

However, a three-member federal panel ruled Wednesday that the law’s “expansive ‘reasonable impediment’ provision” made it unlikely that any voters lacking a photo ID would be turned away at the polls. Those voters still can vote “so long as they state the reason for not having obtained” a photo ID, the ruling noted.

That was followed in the report by some silly comments from Nikki Haley about the mean ol’ federal gummint trying to do awful things to South Carolina. (“Every time the federal government has thrown us a punch, we have fought back.”) Because you know that’s what this is about, right? The feds just picking on us for no reason.

The same mean ol’ federal government that wouldn’t let us keep our slaves anymore…

Excuse my disgust. Mind you, as I’ve said many times before, I think this is generally an issue blown out of proportion by both sides. But when I see the way the governor couches it, it’s pretty off-putting.

He sees you when you’re sleeping…

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Ooh, scary stuff today in my INbox from Michele Bachmann:

Barney Frank’s coming to town

Friend,

Be afraid!

Tonight my opponent is bringing Barney Frank, one of the most extreme liberal members of Congress, to Minnesota. Barney is the guest of honor at a fundraiser where the only goal is to raise millions of dollars- all to be spent to defeat our campaign and our conservative values.

Will you help me fight back?

Friend, Barney Frank is just one of the examples of the unbelievable stops the Democrats are pulling out in order to defeat our campaign. They have poured millions already into Minnesota and have millions more just waiting to be pumped into the Minnesota airwaves to slander my name, defeat our campaign and re-install Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House.

To send a strong message to Barney Frank, our campaign has set a goal of raising $100,000 today…

She should get Count Floyd to read that, to make it extra scary: “Barney Frank iss comink to town — und he’s in 3D! AaaOOOOOO!”

Because, you know, boys and girls, that Barney Frank is a scary guy! He’s one of the most, you know, how shall I put this… liberal members of Congress! And you all know what I mean when I say “liberal,” right? Oooohhh…

Guess what? Todd Akin could get elected (and SC’s Donehue Direct is playing a role in that)

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Slatest devoted plenty of virtual ink this morning to indications that the-late-and-unlamented Todd Akin campaign is alive again (cue the “Young Frankenstein” clip”):

FOR REAL THIS TIME: After COB today, Todd Akin’s name is more or less set in stone on the Missouri ballot and will remain there even in the event of his death. But what only a month ago appeared to turn into an unwinnable Senate race for Republicans, now looks likely to go down to the wire.

THE NUMBERS: The latest polling from the Show Me State is about two weeks old, so there is no clear picture of the state of the race. But the last two major surveys (taken the last week of August and the second week of September, respectively) show Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill with less-than-comfortable leads of 1 percent and 6 percent respectively.

AND THAT WAS BEFORE: A handful of GOP heavyweights jumped back aboard the Akin train. Mike Huckabee is sticking with Akin. Phyllis Schlafly is doing a bus tour for him. The Senate Conservatives Fund, headed by Sen. Jim DeMint, is seeking support from its donors to help Akin. And yesterday, Newt Gingrich went to Missouri to headline a fund-raiser for him. “What’s the moral case for not backing the Republican nominee picked by the people of Missouri?” Gingrich said at the $500-a-plate event…

Now, I’ll add something to that. As you read here earlier, Wesley Donehue was brought on After the Fall to raise money for Akin, a fact that Wesley’s been touting in promotional materials for Donehue Direct (see the image below from an eblast).

I checked this morning, and he says the effort has raised $700,000 and counting.

What does ‘frivolous lawsuit’ mean to you?

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Today at the Columbia Rotary Club, our speaker was Darrell Scott, lobbyist for the S.C. Chamber of Commerce.

He talked about what he does for the Chamber over at the State House, and told some sea stories about his experiences (some people say “war stories;” I’m from a Navy family). The least convincing part of his presentation? A couple of times in explaining a close vote, he referred to the experience giving him “gray hairs.” Sorry, kid — I don’t see ’em.

Two things interested me in particular. One was the report card on the 2012 legislative session, which included grades for all of the lawmakers. You can see the full report here. I’ve reproduced the scorecard on the senators above. It’s interesting to see who stands well with the Chamber, and who does not. Some observations on that chart:

You see the expected split, with most Democrats scoring low and most Republicans doing better.
But Democrat Nikki Setlzer, who represents a big chunk of that most Republican of counties, Lexington, scored a perfect 100.
John Courson, recently named the Chamber’s 2012 “Public Servant of the Year,” fell a bit short of that, at 94. The disagreement was over the “Business freedom to Choose act (h.4721),” which the Chamber described as “legislation to prohibit local governments from enacting flow control ordinances on solid waste disposal.”
Vincent Sheheen, whom the Chamber endorsed for governor two years ago, only scored a 69 — fairly typical of Democrats.
That was still better than Tom Davis, who lately has been styling himself the Ron Paul of the state Senate. He got a 68. This reminds us of something — the Chamber is about as enamored of Tea Party Republicans as it is of Democrats, if not less so.

The other highlight of the meeting, I thought, was the exchange that came when attorney Reece Williams got up to ask young Mr. Scott a question. After explaining that he was a veteran of more than 200 jury trials, he asked the speaker how he would define that bete noir of the Chamber, a “frivolous lawsuit.” I enjoyed the way he asked the question — aside from the fact that he presented it in a civil, gentlemanly, even courtly manner (Reece is as nice a lawyer as you’d ever want to meet), as he spoke, he turned way and that to address the “jury” of fellow Rotarians, thereby gently suggesting that he was challenging each of us with the question as well.

The speaker answered him, but his answer wasn’t as memorable to me as what Realtor Jimmy Derrick got up to say in response. After explaining he and Reece are old friends, Jimmy said that he reckoned he had been sued about 200 times himself, and he pretty much considered those actions to be frivolous.

Afterward, I asked Reece what he thought of the answers he’d gotten. He said they pretty much confirmed what he’d thought before: “A ‘frivolous lawsuit’ is one that’s brought against me…”

Politically diverse crowd at Alan Wilson event

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Catching up here…

Friday night, on my way home, I stopped by a fund-raiser for Attorney General Alan Wilson. The promotion for the event said that George Rogers would be there (with his Heisman Trophy, as it turned out), and Todd Ellis as well. I was curious to see what sort of crowd that would turn out.

The crowd wasn’t as big as I’d anticipated, but it was politically diverse, which would seem to indicate that the AG is in a pretty strong position halfway through his term.

I saw plenty of usual suspects, but then a few less-likely attendees as well. A partial list of folks I saw and/or spoke with:

Notice how I sort of kept Cameron and James — particularly James — until the end there, to keep you hanging…

At one point when I was talking to someone else, Todd Ellis came up and introduced himself, and I introduced myself, and he remarked that it had been a long time. Indeed it had. I don’t think I’d met him before, although I could be wrong…

Ann Romney to critics: ‘Stop it. This is hard.’

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And she’s saying that to the Republicans who are getting on her husband’s case, according to Slatest:

During an interview with Radio Iowa last night, Ann Romney had a message for the growing ranks of Republicans who have criticized her husband in recent days.

“Stop it. This is hard. You want to try it? Get in the ring,” she said. “This is hard and, you know, it’s an important thing that we’re doing right now and it’s an important election and it is time for all Americans to realize how significant this election is and how lucky we are to have someone with Mitt’s qualifications and experience and know-how to be able to have the opportunity to run this country.”

I find myself wondering whether that was spontaneous on her part — which it could well be — or whether someone in the campaign decided, Let’s have Ann say this. Being a woman and being the spouse and not the candidate, she can get away with it — whereas Mitt would be labeled a whiner.

I could see someone in the campaign thinking that, but I prefer to think it was spontaneous.

Beyond that, I have two reactions:

Yes, indeed. One reason we don’t have more (and better) candidates for public office is that the audience is so cruel and unforgiving, and obsesses over the tiniest slip-up. It isn’t fair, and if you’re in the middle of it all, you do sort of wish the facile critics would have the guts to see what it’s like sometime to be in there trying your heart out.
On the other hand, I’m cognizant of exactly why these GOP critics are getting on her husband’s case, and that makes me think, Yeah, you’re right: It IS hard. Especially for certain people, apparently…

Mitt Romney, peering deep into the abyss

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How bad has the past week been for Romney, between the Libya remarks and the “47 percent” video? Bad enough that this bit from The Onion is just barely funny:

DALLAS—With his campaign still reeling from a series of miscues, Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney asked a group of top advisers Wednesday whether it would be worth going after Obama by questioning the nation of his birth. “What about that whole deal with his birth certificate, or him being born in Kenya or wherever—you think that might stick?” said Romney, adding he was “just spitballing here.” “Also, wasn’t he connected to that terrorist guy, what’s-his-name? Ayers? Bill Ayers? That might have legs, right? Let’s look into that.” After agreeing that the situations should be investigated, Romney and his aides then reportedly sat in silence for 10 whole minutes.

And somewhere out there, some second-guessing Republicans are thinking, “The Donald is tanned, rested and ready…”

Meanwhile, over in a quarter where none of this is funny, one WSJ columnist is lecturing the nominee that his loyalty should be to the country, not his hapless campaign staff, and Karl Rove is saying yes, the situation is bad, but it’s not over — after all, Jimmy Carter was leading Ronald Reagan at this point in 1980.

Speaking of Reagan, Peggy Noonan is writing that it’s “Time for an Intervention:”

What should Mitt Romney do now? He should peer deep into the abyss. He should look straight into the heart of darkness where lies a Republican defeat in a year the Republican presidential candidate almost couldn’t lose. He should imagine what it will mean for the country, for a great political philosophy, conservatism, for his party and, last, for himself. He must look down unblinkingly.

And then he needs to snap out of it, and move…

The central problem revealed by the tape is Romney’s theory of the 2012 election. It is that a high percentage of the electorate receives government checks and therefore won’t vote for him, another high percentage is supplying the tax revenues and will vote for him, and almost half the people don’t pay taxes and presumably won’t vote for him.

My goodness, that’s a lot of people who won’t vote for you. You wonder how he gets up in the morning.

This is not how big leaders talk, it’s how shallow campaign operatives talk: They slice and dice the electorate like that, they see everything as determined by this interest or that. They’re usually young enough and dumb enough that nobody holds it against them, but they don’t know anything. They don’t know much about America.

We are a big, complicated nation. And we are human beings. We are people. We have souls. We are complex. We are not data points. Many things go into our decisions and our political affiliations.

You have to be sophisticated to know that. And if you’re operating at the top of national politics, you’re supposed to be sophisticated…

And this is what Mitt Romney is hearing from what should be his cheering section.

A dangerously simplistic view of foreign affairs

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Just got a very strange release, considering that it comes from a state senator (albeit one with national ambitions):

BEAUFORT, S.C. – South Carolina State Senator Tom Davis today released the following statement regarding the vote tomorrow in the United States Senate on Sen. Rand Paul’s amendment to end U.S. aid to Pakistan, Egypt and Libya, pending the satisfaction of certain conditions.

“Today I call on South Carolina’s senators, Jim DeMint and Lindsey Graham, to cast their vote in support of Sen. Paul’s amendment,” Davis said. “If these countries want to be our allies and receive our money, then they should act like it.”

“The conditions to receiving foreign aid set forth in Sen. Paul’s amendment are reasonable: the Libyan police must hand over to U.S. officials the suspects in the recent attack that killed four Americans in Benghazi; the Egyptian government must vow to protect our embassy; and the Pakistani government must release from custody Dr. Shakil Afridi, a man who risked his life to provide us with information that confirmed the location of Osama bin Laden.

“Simply put, bad behavior should not be rewarded. America currently gives approximately $4 billion a year to Pakistan, Libya and Egypt, and all we get in return is disrespect and violence. Sen. Paul put it exactly right: ‘American taxpayer dollars should not go to Libya until the murderers are delivered to justice. Nor should they go to Egypt until the Egyptians prove that they are willing and able to protect our embassy. Finally, not one more penny of American taxpayer dollars should go to Pakistan until the doctor who helped us get bin Laden is freed.’”

Really? That’s your view of it? That “all we get in return is disrespect and violence”? Do you really suppose that we have close ties to Pakistan just because Pakistan wants it? We have that relationship because, despite all the godawful aggravation we get out of the relationship, we need it. As maddening as the many factions of that nation, many of them openly hostile, can be, that’s a door we need propped open, at least a little. Just whom are punishing if we cut off that relationship entirely? Is that what it’s actually about to you — the lousy $4 billion?

And you’re going to blame the new, Libyan government, a thing largely of our creation, for what some bad actors — people they have arrested — did? Do we so little value the fact that we have a friendly regime there after more than a generation of Gaddafi (a cause to which ambassador Stevens devoted the end of his life) that we’ll just throw it away because Sen. Paul is peeved and wants to save the money?

And Egypt — is it your plan to say, now that Mubarak is gone, we don’t want to be close to you anymore, Egypt? Is that our response to the Arab Spring? Sure, it’s problematic the role the Muslim Brotherhood is playing, but isn’t that a reason to hold the new regime closer, rather than pushing it away? Do you want to return to the days of Nasser? You sure about that?

Of all of these, the one I’d like to get tough with is Pakistan, because I’ve had it with their playing footsie with terrorists. But I know that’s an emotional, rather than a coldly rational, response. And that adolescent emotional urge on my part was quite satisfied for the time being by the raid on Abbottabad, and the many strikes in the lawless northwest before that.

This isn’t a foreign policy proposal; it’s domestic posturing. And I’m sorry to see my friend Tom Davis reaching outside the purview of his office to engage in it.

Is Mitt Romney a bad CEO? No, says this writer

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Over at Bloomberg Businessweek, Joshua Green insists that the chaos in Mitt Romney’s campaign does NOT mean that he’s a bad CEO:

Romney’s problem is not that he’s brought too little executive rigor to the job of running for president. It’s that he’s brought too much. He’s behaved too much like a businessman (or a consultant) and not enough like a politician. His campaign has all the hallmarks of being run by someone looking only at the numbers, someone who lacks a true politician’s appreciation for the other dimensions of a race—a feel for the electorate, a convincing long-term plan for the country. Were he forced to defend himself before a board of directors, Romney would actually have a pretty solid case for doing what he has done….

… Romney has scrupulously avoided committing to anything that is remotely unpopular, such as naming which tax loopholes he’d close to pay for his agenda. That is to say, he is doing just about everything a close reading of the polls says you should do, and he’s trying hard not to do anything the polls say you shouldn’t do. If a team of Bain consultants were hustled in to pore over the data and devise a strategy, I doubt they would have devised a meaningfully different campaign.

The problem is that politics is about much more than a tactical, short-term reading of the numbers. Candidate skills matter, and the audience in a presidential election is much more variegated than a board of directors. There isn’t much, frankly, that a stiff guy can do to make himself warm and approachable. (Earth tones, anyone?) The glaring weaknesses in Romney’s campaign—the fuzzy details, the inability to convincingly articulate plan for growth, and above all the weird tics and gaffes—are not ones that a businessman’s skills can rectify.

In other words, he’s more a bad politician than a bad CEO. We are left to conclude what we like about what sort of president he would be.

Something to consider, for all those who still think the silly phrase “run government like a business” makes sense.

Harvey Peeler on road funding priorities

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I received this oped by Harvey Peeler, the best Tweeter in the SC Senate, from the Senate Republicans. It contains some thoughts worth considering:

Force-feeding asphalt to Charleston while the rest of S.C. starves
by Senate Majority Leader Harvey Peeler

When a conservative think tank and the environmentalists team up to criticize the same state agency, you can bet they’re probably on to something.

Our entire system of funding road and transportation needs in our state is just about as broken as it gets, with a recent decision by State Transportation Infrastructure Bank (SIB) being the prime example.

Last month, the SIB took a vote to build an eight mile extension of the Mark Clark Expressway in Charleston, despite the fact that their bonding capacity is used up and the project is wildly unpopular locally.

Or to put in language folks outside the Statehouse might use, they spent money we don’t have on a project we don’t need and the people don’t want.

But the bigger problem is that the SIB is force feeding asphalt to Charleston, while the rest of our state is on a starvation diet.

Seeing this, the conservative South Carolina Policy Council and the environmentalist Coastal Conservation League – two groups who are rarely singing off of the same sheet of music – teamed up to point out just how corrupt our system for funding infrastructure has become.

I think they’re on to something.

Anybody who drives has seen the sorry shape of our roads first hand. In my neck of the woods, we have “see-through” bridges just miles from our homes with more holes than Swiss cheese. In Cowpens on Exit 83, the exit is in such bad disrepair that you have to drive through the parking lot of Mountain View Baptist Church to get back onto the Interstate. Or how I-26 becomes a parking lot on many weekends between Charleston and Columbia.

Meanwhile, since the SIB was created in 1997, they’ve doled out about $4 billion for road projects, with about half of it, a little over $2 billion, going to just two counties – Charleston and Horry. In fact, only 11 of our 46 counties have ever even gotten a penny of SIB funding.

The state Department of Transportation estimates that to bring all the roads and bridges in this state just up what is considered “adequate” level, it would take $20 billion.

Let’s think about that for a second – we need $20 billion to make our existing roads safe, and the SIB is busy spending another $4 billion on NEW roads in the backyards of politically connected legislators and the tourism lobby.

That latest Charleston boondoggle – which, it’s worth remembering, was built with promised money above and beyond what we’re already authorized to borrow – has never even been ranked by the state DOT as a funding priority. It even ranked 15th on a list in Charleston for priorities.

The question I have is, why do we even have a board separate and apart from the DOT, buying bells and whistles for our road system? It’s like a farmer borrowing money to buy a new Corvette when the wheels of his tractor are falling off.

Of course, it’s not like the DOT is any better. What is the DOT’s top priority right now? An interstate that hasn’t even been built yet, and may never wind up being built. I-73, which is supposed to go from Detroit to Myrtle Beach, will cost our state more than $1 billion just to reach the North Carolina line.

Now I’m no expert, but the times I’ve been to Myrtle Beach and looked around at the license plates, it didn’t seem to me like folks from Michigan and Ohio are having any trouble getting here.

The seven-member DOT and the seven-member SIB are driving our state into a ditch. Fourteen people making road-funding decisions. As the old saying goes, “When everybody is in charge, no one is in charge.”

It’s true in business, it’s true in government. We have a rogue Infrastructure Bank committing money that doesn’t exist to a project we don’t need, on top of a state Department of Transportation, where an unaccountable commission controls everything from traffic lights to curb cuts.

If we’re going to move our state forward, we’ve got to stop funding infrastructure based on favor swapping and horse trading. We’ve got to put first things first, fix the roads we have, and stop building new ones based on which legislator has the most pull or which special interest screams the loudest.

I pledge to work with the Policy Council, the Coastal Conservation League and any other group that wants to make this the reality for South Carolina.

bradwarthen.com

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