Category Archives: Republicans

Quickly, now: What do veep hopeful Paul Ryan and ‘Paulie Walnuts’ have in common?

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Well, nothing, strictly speaking. There’s no direct connection, anyway. But bear with me…

Some time ago, as you’ll recall, I expressed my pleasure when Rep. Ryan used the word “subsidiarity,” a favorite concept of mine arising from Catholic social teaching, coupled with my dismay at the odd way he used it. The word (to me) refers to the principle that in any system — governmental, economic, what have you — functions should be left to the smallest, most local unit that can competently perform them, with larger entities only performing the functions that can’t be carried out by the smaller units. Applied to government, that means the federal government should only perform those functions that can’t be effectively carried out at the state or local level, and so forth. It’s sort of related to what was for a time popularly called “devolution,” but with differences.

But fellow Catholic Ryan startled me by interpreting the principle as meaning functions should be performed by private entities other than public ones — which is convenient for him politically, but not the way I’ve understood it.

I’m not the only one who sees Ryan’s use of the term as misleading, if not outright wrong. I ran across this a couple of days back. Carrying it further, here’s a piece further explaining the problems with “small-government” libertarians trying to claim subsidiarity as their own. For one thing, it points out, “Subsidiarity is a communitarian philosophy.” Well, yeah.

Furthermore, Ryan has been taken to task for his misapplication of Catholic teaching to the federal budget by 90 faculty members from Georgetown University (a Jesuit institution), and more to the point, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops criticized his 2012 budget plan for failing to protect the poor and vulnerable.

But there there are those, including some Catholic clergy, who would defend the Ryan interpretation of subsidiarity. I was led to this knowledge by Paulie Walnuts.

I’m a big fan of the Internet Movie Database. I have the app on my iPhone, and can’t watch a movie on television without constantly turning to it to answer such questions as “Who’s that actress?” or “What else has she been in?” or “Was this directed by…?” Sometimes I go from there to Wikipedia for elaboration.

Anyway… and I forget what led me to this… I found myself recently reading the Wikipedia entry about Tony Sirico, the actor who played Paulie “Walnuts” Gualtieri on “The Sopranos.” Mr. Sirico, I learned, has also played gangsters in “Goodfellas, Mob Queen,Gangsters, Love and Money, Fingers, The One Man Jury, Defiance, The Last Fight, Innocent Blood, Bullets Over Broadway, The Pick-up Artist, Gotti, Cop Land, Turn of Faith, and Mickey Blue Eyes.”

I read on, and was told that there’s a very interesting reason why he is so convincing as this sort of character:

Before turning to acting, Sirico was reportedly a fast-rising mob associate of the Colombo crime family, serving under Carmine “Junior” Persico, and had been arrested 28 times. There is a Sopranos reference to this fact when Paulie says, “I lived through the seventies by the skin of my nuts when the Colombos were goin’ at it.”[3] In 1967, he was sent to prison for robbing a Brooklyn after-hours club, but was released after serving thirteen months. In 1971, he pled guilty to felony weapons possession and was sentenced to an “indeterminate” prison term of up to four years, of which Sirico ended up serving 20 months. In an interview in Cigar Aficionado magazine, Sirico said that during his imprisonment, he was visited by an acting troupe composed of ex-cons, which inspired him to give acting a try.[4] According to a court transcript, at the time of his sentencing, he also had pending charges for drug possession.[5] Sirico appeared in a 1989 documentary about life, The Big Bang by James Toback, in which he discussed his earlier life.

Father Sirico

Interesting, but what does it have to do with the definition of “subsidiarity?” Well, continuing to read the “Background and Career” section, we see that “His brother, Robert Sirico, is a Catholic priest and co-founder of the free-market Acton Institute.”

Really? This was, to me, at least as interesting is Mr. Sirico’s alleged past as a wiseguy. So I checked out the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, where I found commentary with such headlines as “The Rich Don’t Make Us Poor,” “Challenging Liberals on Economic Immobility,” “Moral Formation and the School Choice Movement,” “It Takes a Village to Raise a Business” (that’s my personal favorite) and “Black Scholars Give Obama an ‘F’.”

This is from The Acton Institute Core Principles:

Rule of Law and the Subsidiary Role of Government – The government’s primary responsibility is to promote the common good, that is, to maintain the rule of law, and to preserve basic duties and rights. The government’s role is not to usurp free actions, but to minimize those conflicts that may arise when the free actions of persons and social institutions result in competing interests. The state should exercise this responsibility according to the principle of subsidiarity. This principle has two components. First, jurisdictionally broader institutions must refrain from usurping the proper functions that should be performed by the person and institutions more immediate to him. Second, jurisdictionally broader institutions should assist individual persons and institutions more immediate to the person only when the latter cannot fulfill their proper functions.

On their face, I wouldn’t argue with those assertions, although it’s odd that subsidiarity is being described in terms of an individual’s relationship to the state, rather than between larger and smaller governmental entities. Quite Ryanesque. Here’s how subsidiarity is further interpreted by a writer on that site:

One of the key principles of Catholic social thought is known as the principle of subsidiarity. This tenet holds that nothing should be done by a larger and more complex organization which can be done as well by a smaller and simpler organization. In other words, any activity which can be performed by a more decentralized entity should be. This principle is a bulwark of limited government and personal freedom. It conflicts with the passion for centralization and bureaucracy characteristic of the Welfare State.

This is why Pope John Paul II took the “social assistance state” to task in his 1991 encyclical Centesimus Annus. The Pontiff wrote that the Welfare State was contradicting the principle of subsidiarity by intervening directly and depriving society of its responsibility. This “leads to a loss of human energies and an inordinate increase of public agencies which are dominated more by bureaucratic ways of thinking than by concern for serving their clients and which are accompanied by an enormous increase in spending.”

In spite of this clear warning, the United States Catholic Bishops remain staunch defenders of a statist approach to social problems. They have publicly criticized recent congressional efforts to reform the welfare system by decentralizing it and removing its perverse incentives. Their opposition to the Clinton Administration’s health care plan was based solely upon its inclusion of abortion funding. They had no fundamental objection to a takeover of the health care industry by the federal government…

So I read that, and I thought, “Where have I seen subsidiarity used that way?” Which brought me to the man of the hour. Paul Ryan would no doubt feel very comfortable with the ideas espoused by “Paulie’s” brother, or at least by the organization he heads. But that’s the only thing they have in common, that I know of. If you were hoping for something more, I’m sorry.

I like Ryan’s foreign policy ideas for themselves, NOT as a justification for his domestic proposals

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We think of Paul Ryan as an über-libertarian on fiscal issues and as a social conservative. What I didn’t know anything about until this morning was how he stood on the most urgent questions a commander in chief faces — which is pretty critical in the event that Romney is elected, and something happens to him.

One expected the opinion writers of The Wall Street Journal to be hugging themselves with pleasure over Ryan’s fiscal notions. But today, Bret Stephens writes in the Journal about a speech Ryan gave to the Alexander Hamilton Society last year in which he expressed himself on foreign policy. Here’s the speech, and here’s the column. An excerpt from the latter:

Here, in CliffsNotes form, is what the speech tells us about Mr. Ryan. First, that he’s an internationalist of the old school; in another day, he would have sat comfortably in the cabinets of Harry Truman, Jack Kennedy or Ronald Reagan. Also, that he believes in free trade, a strong defense, engagement with our allies—and expectations of them. Also, that he wants America to stay and win in Afghanistan. Furthermore, that he supports the “arduous task of building free societies,” even as he harbored early doubts the Arab Spring was the vehicle for building free societies.

It tells us also that Mr. Ryan has an astute understanding of the fundamental challenge of China. “The key question for American policy makers,” he said, “is whether we are competing with China for leadership of the international system or against them over the fundamental nature of that system.”

Within the speech itself, perhaps the most cogent observation is that the United States doesn’t have the realistic option of fading as a world power the way Britain did, and the way so many on the left and right would like it to do:

Unlike Britain, which handed leadership to a power that shared its fundamental values, today’s most dynamic and growing powers do not embrace the basic principles that should be at the core of the international system.

Now, that’s the sort of thing I agree with. What I don’t agree with is that we have to do all the things Ryan wants to do domestically in order to afford the kind of global position that we can’t afford to surrender. Which takes us into all sorts of other debates that I’m sure we’ll get into before the election…

Anyway, that’s where he loses me. What I didn’t get from the column, and did get from the speech itself, is that for Ryan, the need to maintain U.S. responsibilities in the world is yet another excuse for doing what he wants us to do on the homefront. Of this, I am unconvinced. I agree we have to get our fiscal house in order. I don’t necessarily believe his ideas are the way to do it. Bottom line, we get back to where we started — in his case, his view of America’s role in the world is that of an über-libertarian on fiscal issues…

Stephens is less divided in his admiration. In part, he admires Ryan for setting out clear ideas without any of the softened edges with which presidents must speak, giving little consideration to the fact that House members with no diplomatic responsibility are far freer to speak frankly on such matters.

The truth is, I have generally agreed with the actual actions Mr. Obama has taken as commander in chief (although my views on Afghanistan more closely track Ryan’s). And those speak louder than words, however stirring.

For instance, Stephens likes the way Ryan talks tougher about the Chinese. But it is Barack Obama who has shifted future defense planning toward the Pacific Rim with China in mind, and recently decided to send Marines to Australia in keeping with that strategy.

In any case, this is the beginning of a learning process about Ryan. Although I’m already inclined to agree with Stephens that, in terms of ideas at least, the GOP ticket seems upside-down.

Ryan may be best of all possible picks for Romney

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This Tweet said it as well as anything else over the weekend:

Yes, for a presidential candidate who leaves everyone somewhere between cold and lukewarm, Paul Ryan is the perfect running mate: Someone beloved by both the Tea Party and the Club for Growth.

For those of you color-blind in that range, Nikki Haley is a Tea Party Republican, while Mark Sanford is a Club for Growth Republican. Nikki makes hearts go pitter-pat at snake flag rallies; Sanford sent shivers of pleasure down the spines of the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal. The shorthand distinction: One is populist, the other not.

By contrast, the least helpful, indeed most idiotic, thing I’ve seen on the Ryan selection was in the HuffPost: “David Axelrod: Paul Ryan Pick Evokes Memories Of Sarah Palin.”

That headline was a bit misleading. To his credit, all Axelrod was saying was that then, too, one saw excitement among the base. But what Axelrod is missing, or intentionally underplaying, is the breadth of Ryan’s appeal. Not just Tea Party — Club for Growth, too.

Of course, no one in his right mind would suggest Palin and Ryan live anywhere near each other on any measurement of intelligence or gravitas. The one famous for “I can see Russia from my house!” basically doesn’t live on the same intellectual planet as the one current officeholder in American who has ever, to my knowledge, used the word “subsidiarity” in a sentence — for which I honor him, even though his emphasis in using the word would not have been mine.

With Ryan, there’s a bonus, from Romney’s perspective: He gets the cultural conservatives, too, which is a whole other part of the base that casual observers sometimes erroneously lump in with the others. Since Romney isn’t beloved of any of these groups, Ryan brings much that he needs.

This morning, the Palmetto Family Council got so overexcited that it Tweeted this:

We now have a solid pro-life ticket for President… Mitt Romney Picks Pro-Life Rep. Paul Ryan as VP Running Mate…http://fb.me/DVLjuPF0

Um… are you sure about that folks? I mean let’s see… this is Monday… Is Romney pro-life on Mondays?

The Democrats seem a bit shaken up as well. I suspect that, however much they may trash the Ryan selection publicly, they know he’s about as good a pick as Romney could have made. The reasons they give to think otherwise are weak. Politico reported this morning that “On his three-day bus tour, Obama will hit Paul Ryan as a leader of GOP opposition to the farm bill…” To which my reaction was, um, isn’t that kind of a good thing?

The only gamble is, how well does Ryan play among us swing voters? That remains to be seen. But I suspect he’ll do as well on that score as anyone else Romney could have chosen that his party would have accepted.

Any questions for Pub Politics tonight?

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Screenshot from my 7th Pub Politics appearance, in October 2011, with Phil (left) and Joel (right).

Just got this Tweet from Pub Politics:

@BradWarthen any questions for @joeldavidsawyer or Phil Bailey for tonights #E122QA? Let them shower you with knowledge and wisdom.

Nothing comes to mind immediately, but I thought I’d check with y’all.

As you probably know, @joeldavidsawyer is the former Mark Sanford press secretary (post-Will Folks) who helped run the SC campaign of Jon Huntsman before going to work as a consultant with Wesley Donehue, for whom he sometimes subs on Pub Politics.

Phil Bailey, of course, is the other regular co-host, who also works for the SC Senate Democrats. He is no longer known by his Twitter handle because of, you know, the “Sikh Jesus” thing.

So… any questions?

Let’s certainly HOPE that’s what it means…

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Could lightning strike twice in a nearly identical place? Let's hope not.

I found this bit from the Tampa Bay Times a bit jarring:

The first look at featured speakers [for the Republican National Convention in Tampa] also includes South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez.

The keynote speaker and others will be named closer to the Aug. 27-30 event, Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus said in announcing the headliners, whom he called “some of our party’s brightest stars, who have governed and led effectively and admirably in their respective roles.”

If those are the criteria, why is South Carolina’s governor on the list? Has this Priebus person paid any attention at all to our state in the last year and a half? Probably not. Stupid question, I suppose…

But, take heart. The piece goes on to suggest, sensibly enough, that being on this list means one is not on the list of vice presidential possibilities:

Romney has not named his vice presidential running mate, though that person will get a prime-time speaking slot. Noticeably absent from the headliner list are several VP contenders: former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte, Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal.

The VP decision is expected any time now, perhaps as soon as this week when Romney kicks off a multistate bus tour….

Or at least, this is the inference drawn from the story by BuzzFeed’s Veepstakes.

Let’s certainly hope that’s the case (although think about it — just how hard would it be to change the speaking schedule after the veep selection is made? the depressing answer is, not hard at all). But with political parties, one never knows. The last thing we should expect from them is reasonable behavior.

‘If you support Chick-fil-A and free enterprise, give money to Joe.’ Say WHAT?

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If you want to know why both sides keep the Culture fires stoked, Joe Wilson makes it clear in this release:

Liberals want to control private industry. Let’s take only the most recent events that have occurred as examples.

First, yesterday was Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day.  Why?  Because liberals are attacking a private company for using its funds to support the traditional family.

Millions of Americans believe in the traditional family, but Americans also believe in free speech. Chick-fil-A can and should be able to support Christian organizations if it chooses, but liberals won’t be happy until all American businesses toe their liberal line.

Then, we have President Obama telling American business owners that they didn’t build their businesses.  Why? Because he wants to tax businesses even more than current tax rates to supply his overspending.

Businesses and all Americans benefit from infrastructure and education.  But education and infrastructure do not exist without the taxes from our businesses and our citizens either. Instead of tearing down the ideals of the free market, we should be encouraging entrepreneurs and other business owners to hire, grow, expand, and innovate. Because when businesses grow, our roads, our bridges, our students, and all Americans benefit.

So what are liberals telling us?  Don’t stand up for what you believe in.  Don’t try to take credit for your hard work.  That’s apparently the American value system that liberals want, but I reject.

If you reject it too, click here to stand with me against liberals’ disappointing agenda and donate $10, $25 or $50 now.

Sincerely,

Joe Wilson

P.S. We must fight for our businesses and our values.Donate $25 now to the campaign because I will continue to stand for jobs and freedom.

It’s all about separating you from your money. It’s difficult for me to believe that anyone in this universe is foolish enough to think that the way to show support for Chick-fil-A is to send money to Joe Wilson, but apparently this sort of thing works, because both sides keep doing it.

Turns out that’s a Kulturkampf cow…

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At first, I thought this was the influence of longtime dairyman and Senate Majority Leader Harvey Peeler, since it came from his Senate Republican Caucus. I remember when Harvey used to pass out cow-shaped erasers over at the State House. (Or was that his brother Bob? No, I believe it was Harvey.)

Now, I see it’s something else. Sigh. The Kultukampf does go on, doesn’t it?

Dang. I heard something about this flap on the radio the other day, and it reminded me of something else entirely that I wanted to share here on the blog, and now I can’t remember what it was.

Oh, well. It will come to me again at some point…

A blast from SC’s past (and present, alas)

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There was a meme bouncing around on Twitter this morning having to do with the expression “dog whistle politics.” It’s a phrase you’ve probably heard before, which is easy to understand intuitively, but I was curious about its provenance, so I looked it up. And I found a little gem that, if I had read it before, I had forgotten.

This is from the Wikipedia entry on the term. WARNING: OFFENSIVE LANGUAGE:

One group of alleged code words in the United States is claimed to appeal to racism of the intended audience. The phrase “states’ rights“, although literally referring to powers of individual state governments in the United States, was described by David Greenberg in Slate as “code words” for institutionalized segregation and racism.[8] In 1981, former Republican Party strategist Lee Atwater when giving an anonymous interview discussing the GOP’s Southern Strategy, said:

You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968, you can’t say “nigger” — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I’m not saying that. But I’m saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”[9][10]

Assuming that actually was South Carolina’s own Lee Atwater speaking (and it sounds like him), that’s the most direct line I’ve ever seen drawn — by an insider, that is — from the old segregationist politics, through the Southern Strategy and the redefinition of the Solid South, to today’s anti-government, anti-tax ideology.

The implication has been, ever since we entered this phase, that government is all about taking money from people like us and giving it to those people. Which of course is an idiotic understanding of what government is and whom it benefits, but it’s a line of thinking we often hear, with varying degrees of explicitness.

The thing is, most of the anti-government crowd would be furious at being called racist, and would indignantly point to Tim Scott and the sometimes nonwhite Nikki Haley as “proof” that they haven’t a racist bone in their bodies. And indeed, some of them (such as Mark Sanford, and his longtime friend and ally Tom Davis) are just natural-born libertarians. But far, far from all.

The thing about Atwater was that unlike the true believers, he was aware of what he was doing. That’s what made him so good at it.

Of course, as he points out, this is a process of distillation that takes us from the physical-world idea of race and transforms it to a pure abstraction that doesn’t literally bear on skin color. So it actually does become something other than racism, a set of attitudes more intellectualized than merely a visceral response to melanin. So those who become indignant at cries of “racism” do have a leg to stand on, and get angrier and angrier at having such an epithet flung at them. And so the back-and-forth accusations about what such attitudes really imply leads to even greater alienation, and the polarization of our politics gets worse and worse.

But you knew that, right?

Bob Inglis and market-driven environmentalism

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Inglis blowing bubbles during his speech. Yes, he was making a point, but it would take too many words to explain it here. You had to be there.

Don’t know whether you read Bob Inglis’ op-ed piece in The State the other day or not. An excerpt:

There is important work to be done in order to realize the full potential of South Carolina’s advanced-energy sector. We need less government and more free enterprise. Some clean-energy technologies are more cost-effective than fossil fuels, and others are not there yet. But even the most cost-effective clean fuels still routinely lose out to more expensive fossil fuels. Why? Because the energy market is not a free market.

Speaking at the Clean Energy Summit is timely for me because, a few days ago, I launched the Energy and Enterprise Initiative, a national public-engagement campaign to promote conservative solutions to America’s energy challenges. One of our first efforts will be to convene forums around the country, much like the summit, that bring together economists, national-security experts, climate scientists and interested citizens to explore the power of free enterprise to solve our nation’s energy challenges. We’re going to be saying that, given a “true cost” comparison, free enterprise can deliver muscular solutions to our energy and climate challenges — solutions far better than clumsy government mandates and fickle tax incentives…

The day that appeared, he was speaking to the South Carolina Clean Energy Summit at the convention center. I attended the event, which was sponsored, understandably enough, by the South Carolina Clean Energy Business Alliance.

In case you wonder how Inglis gets to being an environmentalist from the perch of a dyed-in-the-wool conservative (which shouldn’t be puzzling — conservatives should by their nature want to conserve the environment, if words have meaning), here’s an example of how it works for him: The problem now, he explained, is that different sources of energy don’t compete on an even, market-driven playing field. For instance, the true cost of gasoline is hidden. If the full costs of our military operations in the Mideast were attached directly to the price of gasoline (as we in the Energy Party think it should be), “we’d beat a path to the Prius dealership.”

Does Nikki maintain her Facebook page herself? I suspect so…

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Someone speculated earlier that Nikki Haley doesn’t maintain her Facebook page herself. I suspect that she does. Or at least that some of the posts, or status updates, or whatever you want to call them (I’m a Twitter man, and get impatient with Facebook) are written by her personally.

They are so emotional. And they are so carelessly written that I hate to think anyone was paid to produce them — unless the rough edges are part of the service being provided, to add authenticity.

For instance, there’s this:

SC Law Enforcement Dir. Chief Keel responding to The State Newspaper: “I have expressed my concerns, as of yesterday, that publication of info regarding minor children of elected officials creates problems for State Law Enforcement and its efforts to provide security for the children of this governor or any governor. In my 30 yrs plus of experience at SLED, the security or activities of minor children of elected officials is something that the media in general has taken a “hands off” approach to in reporting except as released by the elected official’s office.”

First, one wonders what she’s on about. I didn’t see anything in the paper about her daughter before this appears. That sort of airing of a background battle as though everyone knows what’s going on is so off, so unprofessional, that it really feels like it’s coming from her.

Also, it follows her pattern of embarrassing her appointees by enlisting them in her personal political battles. I feel for Mark Keel.

It’s probably a reference to this thing Will Folks wrote about. I suppose The State was working on the story (the MSM have this quaint habit of confirming things with on-the-record sources, which makes them lag the blogosphere), and that freaked Nikki out in a way that Will’s post did not.

There was an earlier post on the same subject that was more emotional, and blasted The State as a worthless, “biased” entity that was persecuting Nikki’s family, and that one really felt like her. Here it is:

Scrutiny of me comes with the territory of being governor. I expect it. But it’s a sad day for journalism in South Carolina when The State newspaper goes after my 14 year old daughter. Public officials have a right to expect that their minor children are off limits from political opponents and even from biased media outlets like The State. Its disgusting. Shame on them.

If a paid staffer wrote that for her, then I’m embarrassed for that person, too.

Nikki, you just keep right on Facebookin’…

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At one point in the midst of his reporting on the Senate’s override of most of the governor’s vetoes, Adam Beam Tweeted this:

Sen. Joel Lourie tells ‪#scgov‬ @NikkiHaley to “stay off Facebook.” He was referring to this post: http://on.fb.me/Q4QnOg

So I followed the link, to where the gov posted,

veto of SC Coalition of Domestic Violence $453,680. Special interests made their way into the DHEC budget. This is not about the merit of their fights but the back door way of getting the money. It’s wrong and another loophole for legislators and special interests to use. Defeated 111-0

Hey, if this is the kind of response she’s going to get, the governor should spend more time on Facebook, not less:

  • Nick Danger Dunn Loopholes for special interests are only okay when they’re being used by people who have donated enough to your campaign, or who share your similar “interests” of furthering your political power and mutual backscratching. Right? Right? Otherwise they are unacceptable and wrong.

    Tuesday at 11:30pm ·  ·  16
  • Kim Ponce Obviously you are clueless as to how sexual violence impacts adults and children in South Carolina. DHEC has a long history of providing much needed funding for these services, many of which insurance companies will not pay for. What if it was your child, your sister, your mother needing a change of clothes at the ER, a child sensitive medical exam or interview, counseling?

    Tuesday at 11:32pm via mobile ·  ·  16
  • Xiomara A. Sosa again, with all due respect, this is not a “special interest” issues. This is a health and human services issue. please doo not muddy the water with such political jargon that is only divisive and pointless. Respectfully, Xiomara A. Sosa

    Tuesday at 11:32pm ·  ·  15
  • Marnie Schwartz-Hanley Does that mean the agencies will get the money to help us so that we are not 8th in the nation for criminal domestic violence?

    Tuesday at 11:35pm ·  ·  8
  • Alyssa Daniel As a 20 year victim of domestic violence, you should be ashamed

    Tuesday at 11:36pm via mobile ·  ·  16
  • Angie Wilson Rogers Maybe now YOU can stop being a distraction to SC voters, One-Term Haley?

    Tuesday at 11:37pm ·  ·  13
  • Grace Ammons The people have won. But I still cannot concieve of how this woman became our Governor!

    Tuesday at 11:40pm ·  ·  13
  • Dawn Ridge We’re 7th in the Nation and climbing, but GOD forbid we have money to support Victim’s Rights!!!!! Just make sure those inmates are watching cable tv and having 3 hot meals a day!!!!! This is complete and utter BS!!!!!!

    Tuesday at 11:43pm ·  ·  9

… and many more…

Of course, the comment thread is liberally sprinkled with the kind of “You go, girl!” responses Nikki expects. But it’s far from the unadulterated stream of fawning adulation that caused her to retreat to Facebook as her favored means of communicating with the world to begin with.

Are some of those responses a little on the emotional side, and lacking in calm discernment? Yep. But so are the kind of responses that Nikki goes to Facebook seeking. You can get calm and detached on an editorial page, but our governor scorns that. This is her medium.

I just hope she reads them all.

SC politician uses ‘communitarian’ in a sentence!

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A friend brought to my attention this interview with Bob Inglis, who will be in Columbia next week to speak at the SC Clean Energy Summit. An excerpt:

Q. So you think the main thing driving the current conservative attitude toward climate science is economic anger?

A. I think that’s where the explanation starts. Yesterday, in my class [Inglis is a Visiting Energy Fellow at the Nicolas School of the Environment at Duke University], I assigned J.M. Bernstein’s great piece “The Very Angry Tea Party.” It starts with economic dislocation, but his point is, at a very deep emotional level, it shows that our self-concept as autonomous beings is inconsistent with our reality of interdependence, and to some extent dependence, on a social network of support from Medicare, Social Security, and other ways that we have formed community.

The thing where I’m obviously out of step is, I think it’s possible to be a conservative who wants to build community. That it is consistent with the ethical teachings of Jesus — to be a communitarian, to care for the sick. But right now what we have is anger and rejectionism. On energy and climate, there’s an element that just rejects action, rejects the science, rejects anything and anybody with a PhD.

I think you should respect people who have given their lives to learning about climate systems and listen to them carefully. They know a lot more than I do. But this is not where we are right now.

If you look at the history of this country, there was something called the Boston Commons. Savannah, Ga., was a planned city and has beautiful parks; Charleston has some beautiful public spaces. The idea being, we can build a community here. We’re going to care for one another. Now, there’s a big difference of opinion about how far that goes in terms of the role of the state. But you start with the notion that we’re going to build community.

Another reason for rejectionism has to do with an assumption of technological progress, that they, whoever they is, will come up with something. It’s not a strategy as far as I’m concerned. The unnamed they will come up with something faster if we set the economics right.

And some of the rejectionism is based on a sort of recoiling from the apocalyptic vision of some advocates of action on climate change. That apocalyptic vision actually hurts us because it drives the sense that, well, we’re all toast anyway. We may as well eat, drink, and be merry. If I believe that I’ve got some control over my destiny, I might rise up and exercise responsibility. But if I think it’s all predetermined and I’ve got no hope, denial is a pretty good coping mechanism.

If I accept the science, and that leads to the conclusion that something’s up, and I’m a responsible moral actor, I should change my behavior. But if I’m not willing to change my behavior, it’s better for me, not to admit that I’m selfish, but to attack the science. Attacking the science is an easier way to dispense with the question.

And here you can see, of course, why the Tea Party essentially rode the congressman out of office on a rail in 2010: He thinks too much.

Related to that is the main reason this was brought to my attention: This may mark the first time in the history of our state that a present or former South Carolina officeholder actually used the word “communitarian.” And even used it in a way that indicated he identified the concept with himself!

An example of an op-ed rebuttal: Answering Glenn McConnell in 2007

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During the discussion on a previous post, I noted that “I have been known, on one or two occasions, to allow a source space for a full op-ed piece, even when the piece is almost 100 percent nonsense… and run a piece of my own, right across from it, demolishing it. That way the reader/voter has a chance to see that party’s full case, as well as the arguments against it.”

Bud, quite reasonably, asked, “An example would be good. Sometimes people think they demolish something but it turns out not to be the case. Let the bloggers be the judge.”

Fine. Except I could only think of a couple of cases (as I said, there were “one or two”), but I couldn’t immediately lay my hands on either one of them.

I’ve now located one of my examples. It’s not a perfect one. In this case, for instance, I didn’t rebut the op-ed piece until days later — either because I didn’t have column space until then, or because something that happened later in the week got my dander up, and caused me to recall the previous piece. I don’t know; it’s been almost five years now.

Anyway, the piece that (eventually) set me off was by Glenn McConnell, and I ran it in The State on Friday, Oct. 19, 2007. Here it is:

By Glenn F. McConnell Guest Columnist

South Carolina can only have an orderly, predictable and consistent growth rate in state spending by constitutionally mandating it. It cannot be accomplished on a reliable basis by hanging onto slim majorities in the Legislature and having the right governor. The political pressures are too great unless there is a constitutional bridle on the process.

That is the reason I created a task force to consider a constitutional amendment that would cap the growth in spending by the state. The first meeting of the Senate study committee on constitutionally capping state government spending is scheduled for 1 p.m. Wednesday in Room 105 of the Gressette Senate office building in Columbia.

There will always be more needs than revenue no matter what the economic times and the amount of available new funds. Government must, therefore, temper its conduct to spend so that over the highs and lows in revenue forecasts, the necessary revenue will be there to fund essential needs without the pressure for new taxes.

When government is flush with money, the spending goes up to fund many new initiatives — some good, some questionable and some not good. In other words, projects get funded not so much out of merit but merely because the money was available. Some one-time expenditures also occur the same way. In the face of a bountiful taxpayer buffet, government cannot control its appetite, so its stomach must be stapled.

At stake is the need to at least control the rate of growth in the recurring base. So I have introduced a constitutional amendment to cap the rate of spending of our state government. Government would be limited to growth at an amount that would not exceed the rate of population growth plus the growth in personal income. Basically, government should not grow any bigger than it needs to be or any faster than people’s ability to pay for it.

I have been an ardent supporter of both Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, and I believe that government is best which governs least. I also believe that as much money as possible is best left in the hands of people if we are to economically advance. If people keep more, they have greater opportunities to invest and spend so our economy will expand. It is a matter of fairness.

If there are surpluses in Columbia, these should not expand the obligation to fund a growing government but instead should be used to reduce long-term debt and obligations, fund capital projects to avoid issuing costly bonds, cover one-time costs, save and carry forward for a rainy day, and/or fund tax refunds and tax cuts.

The constitutional amendment would foster growth in the private sector, challenge legislators to prioritize spending better, seek better efficiencies in the operation of government and privatize operations where it is in the state’s best interest. This will present new opportunities to create rainy-day funds, to create a more debt-free South Carolina and to replenish trust funds that too often have been tapped in lean times to fuel the insatiable appetite of government created by overspending in good times.

Finally, we all must realize that our state government, just as much as any business, has to be competitive in order to attract and retain jobs. We need to provide essential services, but we need to do it in a way that ensures excellence, efficiency and long-term cost control. Throwing dollars at an agency does not ensure that it will be better. Limiting the growth in spending ensures that the challenge for each budgeting year is to do more with what we have available rather than to spend more to get the job done.

Working together, we can give the people of South Carolina an opportunity to vote on whether they want this limitation on the growth of spending. As I said, the limitation, if adopted, would ensure our future is not one of ups and downs based on political fortunes but instead one of predictability and orderliness in the growth of South Carolina.

Mr. McConnell, a Charleston attorney and businessman, is president pro tempore of the Senate and chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee.

As I said, that ran on Friday, so I’m beginning to see what probably happened. I generally wrote my Sunday columns on Fridays. I would have read the senator’s piece — most likely for the first time — on the page proof Thursday afternoon, so it would have been quite fresh in my mind. I might have even ripped out a few grafs of my response right then, and polished them somewhat the next morning.

You’ll note, though, that my column wasn’t just a response to McConnell. I didn’t even get to him until about halfway through. This column was of a certain type, the type that puts me in mind of a line Mark Twain wrote: “And now that my temper is up, I may as well go on and abuse every body I can think of.” I always liked that line because it describes a mood that is very familiar to me.

Here’s my column that ran on Sunday, Oct. 21, 2007:
IN SOUTH CAROLINA, WE KEEP TALKING ABOUT THE WRONG THINGS

By Brad Warthen Editorial Page Editor

We always seem to be having the wrong conversations in South Carolina. Sometimes, we don’t even talk at all about the things that cry out for focused, urgent debate.

Look at this joke of a commission that was assigned to examine whether the city of Columbia should ditch its ineffective, unaccountable, “don’t ask me” form of government. It was supposed to report something two years ago. And here we are, still waiting, with a city that can’t even close its books at the end of the year. Whether its that fiscal fiasco, or the failure to justify what it did with millions in special tax revenues, or the rehiring of a cop who was said to be found drunk, naked and armed in public, there is no one who works directly for the voters who has control over those things.

But as bad as it is to have no one to blame, there is no one to look to for a vision of positive action. A city that says it wants to leap forward into the knowledge economy with Innovista really, really needs somebody accountable driving the process.

Columbia needed a strong-mayor form of government yesterday, and what have we done? Sat around two years waiting for a panel that didn’t want to reach that conclusion to start with to come back and tell us so.

It’s worse on the state level.

What does South Carolina need? It needs to get up and off its duff and start catching up with the rest of the country. There are many elements involved in doing that, but one that everybody knows must be included is bringing up the level of educational achievement throughout our population.

There are all sorts of obvious reforms that should be enacted immediately to improve our public schools. Just to name one that no one can mount a credible argument against, and which the Legislature could enact at any time it chooses, we need to eliminate waste and channel expertise by drastically reducing the number of school districts in the state.

So each time the Legislature meets, it debates how to get that done, right? No way. For the last several years, every time any suggestion of any kind for improving our public schools has come up, the General Assembly has been paralyzed by a minority of lawmakers who say no, instead of fixing the public schools, let’s take funding away from them and give it to private schools — you know, the only kind of schools that we can’t possibly hold accountable.

As long as we’re talking about money, take a look at what the most powerful man in the Legislature, Sen. Glenn McConnell, had to say on our op-ed page Friday (to read the full piece, follow the link at the end of this column):

South Carolina can only have an orderly, predictable and consistent growth rate in state spending by constitutionally mandating it. It cannot be accomplished on a reliable basis by hanging onto slim majorities in the Legislature and having the right governor. The political pressures are too great unless there is a constitutional bridle on the process.

The people of South Carolina elect 170 people to the Legislature. In this most legislative of states, those 170 people have complete power to do whatever they want with regard to taxing and spending, with one caveat — they are already prevented by the constitution from spending more than they take in.

But they could raise taxes, right? Only in theory. The State House is filled with people who’d rather be poked in the eye with a sharp stick than ever raise our taxes, whether it would be a good idea to do so or not.

All of this is true, and of all those 170 people, there is no one with more power to affect the general course of legislation than Glenn McConnell.

And yet he tells us that it’s impossible for him and his colleagues to prevent spending from getting out of hand.

What’s he saying here? He’s saying that he’s afraid that the people of South Carolina may someday elect a majority of legislators who think they need to spend more than Glenn McConnell thinks we ought to spend. Therefore, we should take away the Legislature’s power to make that most fundamental of legislative decisions. We should rig the rules so that spending never exceeds an amount that he and those who agree with him prefer, even if most South Carolinians (and that, by the way, is what “political pressures” means — the will of the voters) disagree.

Is there a problem with how the Legislature spends our money? You betcha. We don’t spend nearly enough on state troopers, prisons, roads or mental health services. And we spend too much on festivals and museums and various other sorts of folderol that help lawmakers get re-elected, but do little for the state overall.

So let’s talk about that. Let’s have a conversation about the fact that South Carolinians aren’t as safe or healthy or well-educated as folks in other parts of the country because lawmakers choose to spend on the wrong things.

But that’s not the kind of conversation we have at our State House. Instead, the people with the bulliest pulpits, from the governor to the most powerful man in the Senate, want most of all to make sure lawmakers spend less than they otherwise might, whether they spend wisely or not.

The McConnell proposal would make sure that approach always wins all future arguments.

For Sen. McConnell, this thing we call representative democracy is just a little too risky. Elections might produce people who disagree with him. And he’s just not willing to put up with that.

As you can see, that was a very South Carolina column. Everything addressed in it, everything that was getting my temper up, was something that one could just as well be said today. Because in South Carolina, very little that ought to change ever changes.

More evidence in defense of John Rainey

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As long as I’m mentioning Cindi and Warren today, I’ll go ahead and call your attention to something else I saw in The State this morning. It was a column by Kathleen Parker, in which she stuck up for John Rainey in light of our governor’s emotional attack on him.

Remember her oh-so-classy way of defending herself against the ethical questions Rainey had raised? She called him “a racist, sexist bigot who has tried everything in his power to hurt me and my family.”

I briefly touched on a couple of things that just leapt to mind about John Rainey that seemed at odds with that assessment. Since Kathleen is still paid to write columns, she dug a good bit deeper and came up with some other examples of things that make Rainey sound like anything but what Nikki Haley says he is:

Inarguably, the governor’s charges, made publicly and aimed at a citizen, albeit a powerful one, are far more damaging than whatever Rainey said during a private meeting. Judge as you may but consider the following facts before accepting Haley’s indictment of Rainey.

Rainey

For no personal gain, Rainey frequently has raised money and organized groups in common cause across party lines. He and his wife, Anne, marched in 2000 with 46,000 others to protest the Confederate flag, which then flew atop the state Capitol dome. He personally hosted several private meetings with NAACP and legislative leaders to find a compromise for the flag’s removal.

He served as executive producer and raised funds to finance Bud Ferillo’s documentary “Corridor of Shame,” about the dismal condition of public schools along the Interstate 95 corridor through South Carolina. Candidate Barack Obama visited one of those schools and cited the corridor in campaign speeches.

In 1999, Rainey chaired the fundraising committee for the African-American History Monument on Statehouse grounds. In 2002, while chairman of Brookgreen Gardens, he raised funds to erect a World War I doughboy statue in Columbia’s Memorial Park and sponsored a bust of a 54th Massachusetts Infantry African American soldier. He received the sixth annual I. DeQuincey Newman Humanitarian Award in 2004, named for the United Methodist minister and first African American elected to the state Senate following Reconstruction.

Latest to the roster is a sculpture that Rainey has commissioned, honoring two Camden natives, financier Bernard Baruch and baseball great Larry Doby. Baruch was a philanthropist, statesman and consultant to presidents (Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt). Doby was the first African American to play in the American League and was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1998.

The sculpture, which will be unveiled in April, is a monument not only to two local heroes but also to the sort of reconciliation Rainey represents. His record speaks louder than words.

Romney: No, wait — TODAY it’s a tax…

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photo by Adam Glanzman, Flickr

Wait a minute… I see he said this yesterday, which means, I suppose, we might hear something else today. But in the meantime, here’s what he said yesterday:

UPDATE: And now we’ve come full circle in all the “penalty” vs “tax” talk. Mitt Romney has spoken and clearly affirmed that the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate is a tax, directly contradicting his senior adviser, Eric Fehrnstrom, who had said earlier this week that it was a penalty. Romney tried to explain the contradiction by noting in an interview with CBS News that it was all about the Supreme Court’s majority opinion. “While I agreed with the dissent, that’s taken over by the fact that the majority of the court said it’s a tax, and therefore it is a tax. They have spoken. There’s no way around that,” Romney said.

When Romney was asked whether the fact that he was unequivocally calling the mandate a tax meant he had changed positions on the issue, the Republican focused on President Obama, saying he “has broken the pledge he made” because “it’s now clear that his mandate, as described by the Supreme Court, is a tax.”

Obama’s campaign, however, quickly seized the opportunity to say that Romney “contradicted his own campaign, and himself,” reports the Washington Post…

You ever see such a case of somebody trying to have it every which way?

Roughly, here’s the timeline:

  1. Romney pushes through health care reform as governor, and it includes a mandate that everyone have insurance. He goes around bragging about it for years, as well he might…
  2. But then, President Obama pays him the complement of pushing health care reform that does the very same thing, and suddenly Mitt’s not so proud of what he’d done, because he wants the votes of people who spit on the ground every time Obama’s name gets mentioned. If Obama did it, the thinking goes, it’s evil. So Romney quits bragging.
  3. Then, the court says it’s not a mandate; it’s a tax. And the GOP seizes on that, because if there’s anything nearly as evil as Barack Obama in their book, it’s a tax.
  4. But then Romney’s aide says the court’s wrong, because Romney, having created just such a mandate, ought to know a mandate when he sees one. Which stands to reason.
  5. But then Romney adopts a position of Hey, what do I know? It may look like a mandate to me and this other fella, but the court says it’s a tax, so it’s a tax. And taxes are bad, harrumph, harrumph.

At this point, is there anyone left in the country, of any philosophical bent, who’s enthusiastic about voting for Mitt Romney in the fall? Oh, some are eager to vote against Obama; that hasn’t changed. But are they pumped about voting for Romney? I doubt it…

Not that Vincent didn’t have a point…

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Vincent Sheheen’s history may be a little shaky, but he has a point when it comes to crying out against his less favorite faction.

Not long before his release today about Independence Day, I received this from the SC Senate GOP:

Fighting Back!

The only way we are going to get rid of Obamacare is to defeat Barack Obama
Likewise, it’s looking increasingly like the only way we’re going to get Voter ID is to get a new U.S. Attorney General and a new President.

The Justice Department has once again blocked the implementation of the our Voter ID Law – the number one way we have to fight back against voter fraud.
You can read more about it here.

It’s implementation was blocked – once again – by Eric Holder, the man ironically just held in contempt of Congress

We need YOUR help to fight back. We have to make sure solid conservatives are elected to ALL levels of government so we can push back against this unwarranted federal intrusion.

LIKE this post if you want to send a message to Obama and Holder that we are not going to stand for them ignoring the rule of law any more!

Gentlemen, if that’s how you justify yourselves, then you’re not good for much. In fact, you are less than useful — you’re harmful.

Voter ID — whether Republicans or Democrats are trying to stir us up about it — is a big waste of time, something that is deeply important to the parties themselves, less so to our state and country.

And Obamacare, imperfect as it is, is the ONLY vehicle anywhere for addressing the dire need to reform our dysfunctional system for paying for healthcare in this country. Anyone who strives to repeal it without a credible alternative ready to instantly take its place (one that not only addresses the real problems, but is politically viable) is acting in direct opposition to the interests of this nation and its people.

And that is unforgivable.

Or, as I said, worse than useless.

I mean, really, that’s it? Voter ID, and repealing the only health care reform going? That’s the case you make as to why people should vote for you? That’s pathetic.

Tom Davis on Lindsey Graham on mandates

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File photo of Tom, taken at the governor's mansion back when he worked for Mark Sanford.

Most of the time, people say that Tom Davis is gearing up to run against Lindsey Graham in the 2014 Republican primary. Sometimes, they shift and say he’s one of those preparing to run against Nikki Haley that year. But usually, it’s Lindsey Graham.

Tom encourages that way of looking at things by posting stuff like this on Facebook:

Lindsey Graham is now in front of every TV camera he can find, condemning health insurance mandates, but making no mention of the bill he cosponsored in 2009 (S. 391; the Wyden-Bennett Act) to impose mandates and corresponding noncompliance penalties.

I had forgotten about the Wyden-Bennett Act, if I ever knew about it. Well, good for Lindsey.

Tom forgets that conservatives used to be for mandates, before Barack Obama started agreeing with them. But Tom is not alone in that. Republicans in general have wiped that from their memories, because it would be inconvenient to their goal of demonizing the president over it.

Remember how in 1984, Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia? Until things changed, and all those records and memories were expunged, because now Oceania had always been allied with Eastasia, and at war with Eurasia?

It works like that.

Panel clears Haley, again, of corruption charges

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This just in:

Gov. Nikki Haley did not use her office for personal gain while serving as a representative from Lexington County, the S.C. House Ethics Committee ruled Friday.

The committee weighed seven allegations against Haley that included illegally lobbying for her employers and using her office to pressure lobbyists and their clients for donations to a foundation where she worked.

All the charges were dismissed….

It’s good to know that Lexington Medical Center paid her $110,000 per annum, and Wilbur Smith paid her $48,000, because of sterling qualities of hers that had nothing, repeat nothing, to do with her influence as a legislator. Perhaps it was because she’s such an awesome accountant, or something like that.

Whew.

Of course, now we’re left with her as governor. We’re left with the woman who defended herself from these charges by getting all emotional and painting her accuser, John Rainey, as “a racist, sexist bigot.” From The State’s report:

Her voice shaking slightly, Gov. Nikki Haley told House members Thursday who are looking into whether she illegally used her office for personal gain that the GOP activist who filed the complaint against her is “a racist, sexist bigot who has tried everything in his power to hurt me and my family.”

Haley’s allegations of bias came after an executive testified that a Columbia engineering firm paid then-state Rep. Haley, a Lexington County Republican, $48,000 over almost two years as a “passive” consultant to scout out new business, but Haley turned up no new work…

Nothing like character assassination and innuendo for persuading people of the quality of your own character, eh?

I’m trying to think of the last time I spent any time with John Rainey. I think it years ago, the time he invited me to sit at his table at the annual NAACP banquet.

And the last time before that, years earlier, I had a lunch with him at the Capital City Club, in which he went on and on about his plans for the African-American Monument on the State House grounds. He left shortly before I did, and when I was heading back to the office, I saw him meandering about on the grounds, scouting out the place where the monument would eventually be placed. He was really passionate about getting that thing built…

But I digress.

New GOP meme: attacking Obamacare as a tax

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Recovering from the blow to their position on Obamacare, Republicans (except Mitt Romney, whose signature achievement as governor was just vindicated, although you won’t hear him say so in this bizarre political climate) have already shifted tactics.

They are genetically compelled to attack, attack, attack the president. So their new means of doing so is to seize upon the court’s assertion that Obamacare constitutes taxation, and attack it accordingly (all taxes being, according to their ideology, bad). Lindsey Graham, being the smartest Republican in Washington, was among the first to make this shift:

To our Democrat colleagues, stand by your tax increase or stand with us to Repeal and Replace Obamacare.

(Note the way he says “Democrat colleagues.” This is a subtle ruse on his part to hide from his base the fact that he is as smart as he is: Look at me! I don’t know the difference between a noun and an adjective any more than you do! But then, he hurts himself with that same base by calling the enemy “colleagues.”)

Democrats, being partisans, will probably not respond any more intelligently.

But here’s how I wish they would respond: By saying, OK, it’s a tax. So let’s stop fooling around. Let’s replace this with single-payer, which of course we would all support through our taxes.

I’d like to see that, but I’m not holding my breath. I’d done enough of that, waiting on the Supremes to make up their minds.

Selling the ‘party’ view of reality keeps on getting a little tougher every day

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I took Dick Harpootlian to task a bit earlier today for his implied assumption that any Democrat is better than any Republican. Now it’s the GOP’s turn.

Just got this release from SC Senate Republicans:

Reform doesn’t come easy, even when we have a majority in the Senate.

Senate rules, arcane procedures, and the like let single senators or blocks of Democrats wield extraordinary power to block good reforms from becoming law.

We have a chance to change that. We have to go from a majority to a filibuster-proof majority…

To do that, not only do we have to pick up two seats, we have to maintain Republican control of two other critically important seats that will be heavily contested by Democrats – the seat held by Senator John Courson and the seat that was vacated by former Senator Glenn McConnell.

The bottom line? We need your help.

Yeah, OK. But here’s the thing: How does electing more Republicans automatically give you a stronger majority for “reform?” Let’s consider what one Senate Republican said himself within the last 24 hours (in a missive from the Senate Republican Caucus, by the way):

June 26, 2012 (COLUMBIA, S.C.) – Senator Jake Knotts (R-Lexington) today released the following statement:

“Michael Haley should be ashamed of himself for invoking the memory of dead soldiers just to make a partisan political point. As a commissioned officer in the South Carolina National Guard, Mr. Haley should know that he is not permitted to engage in partisan rhetoric. Yet he continues to participate in contentious partisan issues. Mr. Haley should immediately apologize to the families of those brave heroes for using them as political cover. As my friend and fellow veteran Senator Phil Leventis said from the state Senate floor this week, if Mr. Haley insists on being involved in politics, he should consider resigning his commission. The two cannot be mutually exclusive.”

“Everybody makes mistakes, including myself, but the important thing is to admit to being wrong, apologize for those mistakes and refrain from making them again. I call on Mr. Haley to do the honorable thing in this situation.”

First set aside Jake’s assertion that “The two cannot be mutually exclusive,” when I think he means “The two are mutually exclusive.” Or something, other than what he said. I’ve been scratching my head over that, but never mind; it’s irrelevant to the point at hand.

And the point at hand is this. Republican Jake is categorizing a push for “reform” by the Republican governor as “partisan rhetoric” and “contentious partisan issues.” In taking this position, he finds more common ground with Democrat Phil Leventis than he does with the GOP governor.

So… considering that Jake is a Republican (and he is a Republican, despite the fantasies of many Republicans to the contrary), how does it follow that electing more Republicans moves you closer to “reform,” even the GOP definition of reform, as limited as it may be?

Again, the whole logic upon which the routine assumptions of political parties rests falls apart. Despite his shaky ways of expressing it, the way Jake Knotts sees the Senate is a lot closer to reality than the way his party officially views it. Senators often do tend to form alliances based more upon whether an individual member agrees with them on a given issue than upon whether he has a D or an R after his name. Still. After roughly a decade of being organized along partisan lines (which happened as soon as Republicans had a majority).

And I’ll go farther: Not only is that the way it is, it’s the way it should be. Parties maintain that their members should always agree with anything said by a member of Party A, no matter how stupid, and always disagree with anything said by a member of Party B, no matter how wise. And that way of looking at things is indefensible.