Category Archives: Republicans

Headline of the Week: ‘The Cain Scrutiny’

OK, so may it’s a rather obvious play, but I enjoy nautical allusions. It’s the hed on an opinion piece at wsj.com. An excerpt:

Sexual harassment claims are notoriously easy to make, and it is impossible to judge the merits of these two cases on the public evidence so far. However, the Cain campaign’s initial response was a mistake because it merely charged political bias without a firm denial. “Fearing the message of Herman Cain who is shaking up the political landscape in Washington, inside the Beltway media have begun to launch unsubstantiated personal attacks on Cain,” the campaign said in a statement. “Dredging up thinly sourced allegations stemming from Mr. Cain’s tenure as the Chief Executive Officer at the National Restaurant Association in the 1990s, political trade press are now casting aspersions on his character and spreading rumors that never stood up to the facts.”

That won’t do for a presidential candidate. Voters want to know whether such a charge is true or false. By late this morning Mr. Cain had acknowledged as much by telling Fox News that he had been falsely accused and that the sexual harassment charges were “totally baseless, totally false.” He said the National Restaurant Association may have settled the cases but that he hadn’t been aware of the settlements.

Mr. Cain’s candidacy can survive these charges if he is telling the truth. He may even get an initial sympathy backlash from Republicans who have learned to be skeptical of such accusations against conservatives. (See Clarence Thomas, Supreme Court nomination of.) What he won’t survive is a revelation that contradicts his denial.

One last treat: Robert’s Hallowe’en cartoon

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Ralph Hightower mentioned this Robert Ariail cartoon this morning on a previous post, so I thought I’d share it. Reminds me of something David Letterman did — Friday night I think — altering a clip from “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” to show Herman Cain’s head slowly rising out of the pumpkin patch, and ending with him flashing that unsettling grin from the end of the smoker ad. (See below.)

The Herman Cain harassment charges

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Uh, oh — Rush Limbaugh and I agree about something. Quick, Robin — the antidote! It’s on your utility belt, you young fool!

Actually, not quite — but I do see he said something that may sound superficially like something I said. Earlier this morning, I wrote,

Yeah, I heard that. NPR interviewed the Politico guy who broke the story. As he mentioned having learned about this the last few weeks, I got to wondering: Who brought his attention to it, and why?

Well, the obvious guess would be his recently-threatened opponents. But I got to think about how if that’s the case, it seems like a case of overkill. Instead, his opponents should pony up money to air his videos everywhere, and as America gets totally wierded out, their Herman Cain problem would go away on its own.

I thought that, and I also thought, here we go again, with white men perpetuating the story about how black men just can’t leave women alone…

… as though white men can or something…

Then, later in the day, I saw that Limbaugh had said,

The Politico and the mainstream media has launched an unconscionable, racially stereotypical attack on an independent, self-reliant conservative black because for him that behavior is not allowed.

So you see, not quite the same thing. I wasn’t criticizing Politico for doing the story. It’s just that, as a longtime editor, one wonders where the story originated. And one puts the fact that all of a sudden Cain’s a threat with the fact that all of a sudden, this is out there. It doesn’t matter; the story is still a story, whatever the motives of the sources. And my evocation of the Clarence Thomas, high-tech lynching charge was just an added throwaway to set up the next line.

I think Rush actually means it. And for that matter, on a certain level, I mean it, too — in that I hate to see this happen to another prominent black man. Weird how it does seem to be the conservatives among that demographic group…. I also hate that I sort of believe it, because it would mean those women were subjected the boorish behavior. But hey, I don’t know what happened.

Anyway, consider this my backhanded way of giving y’all a place to write about the allegations reported by Politico.

Now I need to run. I’ve just got time to put together a Mark Block costume. I figure all I need is a pack of smokes…

Have y’all seen THIS Herman Cain video?

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The “smoking” one wasn’t the only one to make you wonder about the nature of that grin on the candidate’s face at the end.

Have you seen this one? What do you think?

Yo, GOP: Huntsman may be your man, if you’d calm down and listen for more than 30 seconds

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I was struck by Daniel Henninger’s column in the WSJ this morning. He was decrying the freak show that is this series of GOP presidential debates, and the way they are making our republic stupider by the day.

And then he got to talking about the way Jon Huntsman impressed in an editorial board meeting:

These dark thoughts came forth earlier this week when a group at The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page spent some 75 minutes talking to candidate Jon Huntsman. He’s the one they stick on the end of the podium.

Say this: Jon Huntsman may or may not deserve to be the nominee, but he’s better than the back of the line.

After starting with a horrifyingly robotic recitation of his resume (exactly as he’s said in every debate), the former Utah governor took us on an intriguing tour of his thinking on a range of issues.

Mr. Huntsman said the U.S. likely would have to intervene militarily against Iran’s nuclear program in the next four or five years, a remarkable assertion. He said this in an Oct. 10 speech in New Hampshire, but even in our super-saturated media age, trees fall silently in an empty forest.

He supports “regime change in Syria” through diplomatic and covert means. We should try to make Iraq a “buffer” between Iran and Syria.

He supports the details of the Ryan Plan on entitlement reform. Like Rep. Ryan, he says this contest is “not a normal election”; if the Republicans lose, he said, the U.S. could be on course to repeat Japan’s 10 years of moribund economic growth.

There was more, some of it impressive, some not (for ideas on economic policy, he talks to his brother, an entrepreneur). The point is that one left the meeting with a basis to think about Mr. Huntsman as president, rather than the thumbs-down vote he’s gotten from the Roman Colosseum of the TV debates…

You may or may not have noticed that, when Huntsman sat down with The State‘s board recently, he also impressed them as being the guy with the most substance in the field. Or he impressed Cindi, anyway, which takes some doing.

Part of this is that an editorial board meeting is a vastly superior vehicle for assessing what sort of POTUS a candidate might be than the Reality TV formats of the “debates,” especially given what Mr. Henninger called “(t)he assumption that every cat and dog must be in the debate.” If only there were a way to duplicate that experience — sitting down with a candidate for an hour or two or three and really digging into issues, with discussion rather than robotic questions and timed answers.

But maybe there’s also something about Huntsman — something that even the traumatized, extremism-ridden, post 2008 GOP would see if they’d stop sticking him at the far end of the podium, uninvite some of the less-suitable candidates, and give him an extended listen for once.

They could have just waited two weeks

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

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

Donald Trump and I want to call you tonight

Dear Fellow Conservative,

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

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

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

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

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

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

OK, DCCC, I agree with you on this one

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

Brad —

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

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

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

Brad —

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

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

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

Vote UnParty, y’all.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

U.S. Congressman Mick Mulvaney

State Commissioner Hugh Weathers

Ambassador David Wilkins

State Senate Majority Leader Harvey Peeler, Cherokee

State Senator Paul Campbell, Berkeley

State Senator Ronnie Cromer, Newberry

State Senator Larry Grooms, Berkeley

State Senator Mike Rose, Dorchester

State Rep. Todd Atwater, Lexington

State Rep. Liston Barfield, Horry

State Rep. Eric Bedingfield, Greenville

State Rep. Alan Clemmons, Horry

State Rep. Marion Frye, Saluda

State Rep. Dan Hamilton, Greenville

State Rep. Bill Hixon, Aiken

State Rep. Chip Limehouse, Charleston

State Rep. Philip Lowe, Florence

State Rep. Chris Murphy, Charleston

State Rep. Bill Sandifer, Oconee

State Rep. Gary Simrill, Rock Hill

State Rep. Tommy Stringer, Greenville

State Rep. Bill Taylor, Aiken

State Rep. Mark Willis, Greenville

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

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

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

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

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

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

GOP’s Sen. Graham works to protect foreign aid

By JAMES ROSEN – McClatchy Newspapers

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

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

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

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

This is good to see.

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

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

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

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

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

SC Dem spoof of bizarre Herman Cain advert

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

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

The WashPost suspected the same thing:

A few questions come to mind….

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

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

3. Why is Mark Block on camera?

4. Who is holding the camera?

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

6. Why is Herman Cain smiling?

7. Are we being punked?

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

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

Do Lieberman and McCain have a new best bud?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He added:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But this got my attention:

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

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

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

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

Say what? Repeat that last?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My seventh Pub Politics appearance

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

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

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

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

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

Endorsements that don’t help Huntsman, but should

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I don’t think that thrilled Joel, either.

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

That’s more like it, Boyd. Good lad!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And so forth.

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

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

The Perry media staff is very energetic

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

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

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

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

A weird political season.

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

Anyway, if you saw it, any thoughts?

Gov. Perdue did have a point, you know

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

What is Governor Perdue thinking?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So he’s a great guy to know. Really.