Category Archives: Republicans

The Fix lists Top Five nastiest SC races ever

We are truly legendary, to the point that political junkies sit around up in Washington dreaming up Top Five lists about us, a laHigh Fidelity, such as “The five nastiest South Carolina races ever.”

At least, Chris Cillizza at the WashPost‘s The Fix does.

And it’s a pretty good list even though it’s awfully heavy on stuff that happened during my own career. He does, to give him credit, give a mention to the legendary Preston Brooks, but the Top Five are all 1978 or later.

Given that limitation, it’s a good list. He counts them down thusly:

5. 2002 Republican governors runoff: This is the one I wrote about yesterday (at least, I wrote about the GOP effort to come together AFTER this nasty battle), between Mark Sanford and Bob Peeler. Peeler’s campaign, run by party regulars, was inexcusable, as Cillizza correctly recalls: “In one particularly memorable Peeler ad, a Sanford look-alike is shown stripping a soldier down to his underwear to illustrate Sanford’s alleged attitude toward military funding.” Yep. I remember it well.

4. 1978 4th district race: The abominable campaign against Max Heller, featuring anti-Semitic push-polling by Carroll Campbell’s pollster. I was in Tennessee at the time covering Lamar Alexander and Jake Butcher, but I’ve heard plenty about this from my good friend Samuel Tenenbaum over the years.

3. 1980 2nd district race: Also before I came home to SC, but I knew the players later: Lee Atwater, on behalf of Floyd Spence, told the press that Tom Turnipseed had been hooked up to “jumper cables” — a reference to shock treatments he had received for depression as a teenager.

2. 2010 Republican governors primary: That’s the one we just lived through. Or rather, are still living through. If we live.

1. 2000 Republican presidential primary: The filthy tricks that George W. Bush’s campaign used against John McCain to stop his candidacy and give Bush the momentum to go on and win the presidency. Not sure this was necessarily the nastiest by SC standards, but it certainly had the most profound impact on the world. I firmly believe that otherwise John McCain would have been our president on 9/11 and thereafter, which would have been better for us all. That knowledge of how South Carolina let the world down was very much on my mind when we pushed for McCain’s victory in the 2008 primary. (I also felt responsible because the newspaper — over my strong objections — endorsed Bush over McCain in 2000.)

They keep talking about us. And they will continue to do so, until we turn our backs on all this stuff. Which is why I’m rooting for Vincent Sheheen.

The Politico profile of Will Folks

5 Replies

Monday night, as I was resting up before election day, I got an e-mail from Ben Smith at Politico asking for an interview the following day — about Will Folks and the Nikki Haley story.

I said OK, and called him next morning on the Blackberry as I was driving to my polling place to vote. I was a little distracted during the interview because I was hunting for my polling place (sometimes it’s at the John Deere place on 378, sometimes at the church across the road — and I mistakenly went to the Deere place first as we spoke), but he seems to have extracted a couple of tidbits worth using.

Nothing I haven’t said before here, I don’t think. But y’all might find the piece interesting. It’s fairly long — which means that Polito has now published more about Will Folks than my old newspaper did this morning about Alvin Greene. Sigh…

It’s called “The blogger who upended S.C. politics.” Which you know Will’s gotta be digging.

Barrett brings back Sarge, leaves out GOP

5 Replies

Boyohboy — Gresham Barrett has hit the airwaves with the first media shot in the runoff campaign. And I’m sorry to say that he’s brought back the drill sergeant.

Some of you say you liked this bit the first time, that it didn’t make you cringe with embarrassment. Well, you should like this, too. But to me, there’s nothing more likely to make me want to look away than “comedy” that doesn’t quite cut it. Also, as weary as I am of hearing all those hollow cliches that GOP candidates love to spout (I’m a conservative a true conservative my daddy was a conservative daddy my mama was a conservative mama…), it’s even more off-putting when they do it with a smug, self-satisfied smirk.

But if you CAN watch, you might notice something, as John O’Connor did:

Missing from Barrett’s new ad? Any mention of the Republican Party. Calls himself “an honest conservative.” http://youtu.be/aCV6kH6voK4

Interesting. Has Barrett decided to join Nikki in running AGAINST the GOP?

You know, that’s going to make the Republicans’ “Post-Primary Unity Breakfast” scheduled for June 23 in Columbia just a tad… awkward. As I anticipated yesterday.

Oh, and another thing about the drill instructor: He needs a haircut. High and tight, Sar’nt; high and tight…

The Question of the Year

9 Replies

… was posed in this piece, “Republicans’ Tack to the Right: With or Beyond the Mainstream?,” in The Wall Street Journal today:

There now seems little doubt that Republican primary voters have shifted to the right. The question is whether that reflects a move by the country more broadly in that direction—or a shift by GOP candidates outside the mainstream, which could benefit Democrats in November.

I suppose we’ll find out in a few months.

Will GOP be willing to come back together?

6 Replies

The Republican Party theoretically has all the advantages looking toward November, in the gubernatorial election as well as in others: After all, more than twice as many people took a Republican ballot yesterday as voted in the Democratic. Even though she didn’t win her primary outright the way Vincent Sheheen did, Nikki Haley still got a lot more votes than he did. Her 49 percent represented more than 204,000 votes. Sheheen’s 59 percent represented only 110,000.

And the embarrassment over the winner of the Dems’ primary for U.S. Senate shows that’s a party that still has a way to go to get its act together.

But if the GOP continues to be as bitterly divided as it has been lately, if she can’t put all the bickering behind her, that advantage could melt away as Republican get discouraged and stay home, and independents move toward the more upbeat, unifying figure of Vincent Sheheen.

If history is the only guide, she has nothing to worry about: Republicans ALWAYS put their differences behind them after the primary.

But will they this year? I mean, seriously, have you ever seen it get this nasty before? And not even because of anything any of the candidates did. But the things that were done around them — the words of Will Folks, Larry Marchant and Jake Knotts, and the accusations and counter-accusations that came in response to what they said — revealed some bitter fissures that seem unlikely to heal easily.

Will the mainstream Republicans who have been so roundly criticized by Nikki actually line up behind her? I mean, her campaign from the start has been from the beginning more of a crusade against them than against Democrats. One is reminded of Democrat Pug Ravenel, who in 1974 called the Establishment Democrats who ran the Legislature a “den of thieves” — in response to which they took him to court and had him stripped of his nomination and dropped down the memory hole, a series of events that led a fed-up electorate to choose the first Republican governor since Reconstruction.

I find myself remembering something else closer to the present day. In 2002, Mark Sanford won a bitter runoff campaign to become the GOP nominee. I was greatly gratified over that, and pretty disgusted with the mainstream Republicans who had run a campaign that I felt sometimes went outside the bounds. (If you’ll recall, I strongly supported Sanford at the time. I thought he was the kind of good-government advocate that Nikki portrays herself as today.) Well, he showed them, right?

But as unpleasant as the campaign was, immediately after the runoff — I’m remembering it as the next day or so — leading Republicans from throughout the state, representing all his primary opponents, gathered on a dais outside of party headquarters for a big kiss-and-make-up ceremony at which they pledged their undying loyalty, and their unflagging efforts to get him elected in the fall. I was struck by some of the people who showed up — even Glenn McConnell, who doesn’t give governors of either party the time of day normally (McConnell’s party is the Senate more than the GOP).

I was there, and I wanted to talk to Sanford for something I was working on, but didn’t get a chance to talk to him. I did run into Jenny, and asked her to give him the message that I was looking for him. He called me later on his mobile from a car leaving town.

I said something like, “That was some event, huh? They’re really lining up behind you.” And while I don’t have the exact words in front of me, he said something life, “Yeah, well. I suppose one has to do those kinds of things.” He was MIGHTILY bored, and his voiced just dripped contempt for these former rivals who had showed up to promise to fight for him. He obviously saw himself as someone apart from and above the whole GOP solidarity thing.

Now, you know, I can’t stand political parties, and I think party loyalty is one of the most harmful forces in American politics — it fosters intellectual dishonesty, requiring that adherents always agree with the most foolish thing that a member of their party says, and disagree with the wisest utterances of their opponents. And I liked that Sanford wasn’t a typical Republican in that regard.

But even I was put off by his condescension. It was really obnoxious. But at the time, I brushed past it, moving on to the reason I had wanted him to call me. And it was just such an ODD moment — you know how it is sometimes when somebody says something really odd and off-key, and you just move past it — that I didn’t know how to take it or what to say about it.

Now I do. Now I’ve seen, over and over, the kind of contempt in which Mark Sanford holds those poor saps who came out to support him that day. Now, that remark doesn’t stand out as a stray anomaly. It fits.

More than that, they’ve seen it, too. And they are bound to be wary of lining up behind someone else who shows every sign of wanting to be just like Mark Sanford, someone who hasn’t even waited to become governor to alienate them and run against them.

So I wonder: Will the usual thing happen? Will the GOP close ranks and line up behind Nikki Haley? And will they be saps again if they do so?

Count your blessings, SC: Andre won’t be our governor

9 Replies

Amid all the hoo-hah over Nikki Haley and Gresham Barrett and Vincent Sheheen, and Converse Chellis losing his job and all that down-ballot stuff, it’s easy to forget to be thankful for something:

Andre Bauer is not going to be our governor.

You’re going to scoff, now, and say “How absurd; he was never going to be our governor!” And I say, how soon we forget.

Remember that last year, when we were all suffering Sanford fatigue and thinking how great it would be not to have to look at his long, morose face any more, mooning over his soulmate, we’d get to the point of talking about getting rid of him, and somebody would always say, “Hold on! No way! Then we’d be stuck with Andre.”

Now I thought that was wrongheaded. I thought the very best way to make sure that Andre would NOT be elected governor would be to make him our interim governor. I felt certain that the best way to inoculate ourselves against him was with a big dose of scrutiny. And to make him governor at a time when that office was under unprecedented close attention would guarantee he’d have no chance at the ballot box.

As things worked out, he got enough scrutiny for voters to say “No way.” But if he had been serving as governor, there would have been so much more. There would have been another “free-lunch school kids are like stray animals” moment practically every day.

To me, the secret to Andre’s success was that he had to do something extremely outrageous — such as driving over 100 miles per hour in his state car and evading a ticket by reminding the trooper who he was, or alarming a city cop so much by his wild behavior in broad daylight on Assembly Street to cause the cop to draw his weapon, or crashing an airplane — to draw attention. As governor, we’d be watching him more, and seeing more.

The reason knowledgeable folks were having these debates — would letting him be interim governor give him a better chance or worse chance? — was that we all knew something about Andre: No matter how dim you think his chances are, he always wins elections. He seemed like a weak House candidate — but he won. He seemed like he’d never make the senate — but he did. When he sought statewide office, no one worried — but he became lieutenant governor. And from the moment that happened, everybody knew what he would try for next. The “hardest-working man in SC politics,” as both friends and detractors styled him, would never quit before he had won the top job. This is the guy who came in second in the primary in 2002, but won the runoff. Then, the same thing happened in 2006, which we all thought meant the voters had enough of him — but he won the runoff AGAIN. You just could not count him out.

The idea he would become our governor, in keeping with this maddening illogic of inevitability, has been a worry nagging at the back of my mind for the past eight years. But now, none of us has to worry about that any more.

So thanks for that, Nikki Haley. And Jake Knotts. And Larry Marchant. And Chip Saltsman (remember? the “Barack the Magic Negro” guy). And all the unsung heroes who have played a role in making sure that we wouldn’t be saying “Governor Bauer” a year from now.

Now — once Nikki has dispensed with Gresham Barrett — we just have to ask ourselves one question: With Andre out of the way, which candidate — Nikki Haley or Vincent Sheheen — would be more likely to get us on “The Daily Show” the most? And then, we most vote for the other candidate.

Pore ol’ Henry can’t even get his picture in the paper anymore

So, do you think Nikki will take it all tonight?

15 Replies

I sort of do. If you look at all the trends of the last couple of weeks — the ads from ReformSC, the Palin endorsement, the sympathy-generating scandals, the even-more-sympathy-generating ethnic slur, poll after poll with her numbers higher in each (which is something that feeds on itself), the constant free media (hey, all she needs is that they spell her name right) while her opponents fade into the background (or air embarrassing commercials, such as that awful Gresham Barrett one with the drill sergeant), and the fact that, independent of all that, Nikki Haley has just felt like a candidate with the Big Mo for weeks now (she was the most poised and confident I’ve ever seen her at that Palin rally)…

I feel like she’s peaking, and could surpass 50 percent tonight. Do y’all sense that?

Of course, the odds are slightly against it, but there’s a good chance.

It also occurs to me that Vincent Sheheen might do the same, but that’s more doubtful. His rise in the polls has been quieter and far less meteoric. Force me to bet, and I’d bet he’s in a runoff, which he will win. But Nikki? She just might win the whole thing today…

South Carolina continues to entertain — which is why I voted for Vincent

20 Replies

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c

Thank You, South Carolina – The Race to Replace Disgrace

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor

Tea Party

Some alert readers brought my attention to Jon Stewart’s latest (well-deserved) mockery of South Carolina. Punch line, as in previous celebrations of our state (such as this one, and this one): “With all the terrible things going on in the world… Thank you, South Carolina! We really needed this!”

Entertaining, yes. But I’m tired of my state being a national joke, which is why I voted for change today.

Bob Inglis in trouble for thinking for himself

1 Reply

At least, that’s what I assume, based on what little I’ve heard about that race this year.

Today, Mike Fitts brought my attention to this piece on a Congressional Quarterly blog:

Rep. Bob Inglis (R-S.C.) appears to be headed to a runoff against Spartanburg County Solicitor Trey Gowdy (R) and his chances in that contest don’t look good, according to a new survey by Public Policy Polling.

Gowdy leads Inglis 37 percent to 33 percent while a trio of other GOP candidates each took less than 10 percent, according to an automated telephone survey of 300 likely 4th district GOP primary voters….

Gowdy is running as the anti-establishment candidate while attacking Inglis for moving to the center of the ideological spectrum since returning to Congress in 2004 (he served a six-year stint in the House in the 1990s).

Gowdy polled better among voters who identified themselves as part of the Tea Party movement and appears much more likely to pick up those voters who pick one of the second tier candidates on Tuesday. Meanwhile Inglis won’t be helped by the fact that 45 percent of 4th district GOP primary voters said they disapprove of the direction the Republican party is headed while just 26 percent said they approve.

This is extremely ironic. I first heard of Bob Inglis when he came out of nowhere as a sort of Stealth candidate of the right wing of the GOP. The MSM had no idea he was going to beat Democrat Liz Patterson. There was muttering about how he had done all his campaigning through churches rather than the usual channels — this was about the time that the religious right was making its move in the SC GOP, a wave that David Beasley would ride to the governor’s office after making his party switch.

Bob was from the beginning a true believer, an absolute opponent of wasteful spending. He earned my respect by being the only member of the SC delegation to vote against highway spending that would have benefited his own district. Politicians just didn’t do that — but Bob did.

He has continued to go his own way in the years since, and I don’t always agree with him — for instance, I think he was wrong to oppose the Petraeus troop surge in Iraq. But I’ve always respected him for having guts, and for thinking for himself. That’s all too rare in Washington today.

But the Republicans in his district — indeed, throughout our state, judging by the governor’s race — apparently don’t want that anymore. Frankly, watching the Tea Party and such, I’m getting to where I wonder whether they know what they want.

I think I just might reject all the negativity, and accentuate (and reinforce) the positive

10 Replies

I’m not 100 percent there yet, but I’m leaning toward a resolution of my dilemma regarding which primary to vote in.

As I wrote in a comment on a previous thread:

But I’m tired of all these recriminations. I’m tired of all the negativity. I’m sick of all the mud-slinging, and the accusations back and forth. I’m leaning toward voting in the Democratic primary, where I don’t see any of that going on. It means I’m disenfranchised on a long list of public offices. But at least I’d be able to cast a POSITIVE vote (as opposed to trying to determine the least of evils) for governor. Maybe candidates who run positive campaigns DESERVE my vote; maybe that should be reinforced.

There’s just been so much ugliness in this campaign, but it strikes me: As Vincent Sheheen — who has been a strong candidate from the beginning – has quietly marched toward inevitability in the Democratic primary, we’ve seen none of that. Anybody besides me noticing that, or are your eyes still glued to the bloody wreck on the GOP side of the street?

What do Rob Miller and Katrina Shealy have in common?

4 Replies

Scenario: Veteran incumbent Republican shoots off his mouth in a way that embarrasses South Carolina across the nation. This creates the opportunity for better representation to emerge, for people with a lot to offer, people with a good chance of beating that incumbent, to emerge, to step forward and offer South Carolinians a chance to have better representation.

Instead, the disappointing candidate who ran against that incumbent last time around and was rejected by the voters steps up and grabs the limelight while media attention is still focused on the incumbent’s bad behavior. That person gets enough free media to become ensconced as THE alternative to the incumbent, thereby discouraging other, potentially stronger candidates from emerging.

We saw it happen with Rob Miller after Joe Wilson’s “You lie!” fiasco. Miller pulled in millions because he was sitting there alone as “Joe Wilson’s opposition” well before the time that better candidates might have made the decision to run. As a result, since Mr. Miller is not a visibly stronger candidate than he was when he lost to Rep. Wilson in 2008, Joe Wilson will be re-elected.

And it looks like the same thing is happening in the wake of Jake Knotts’ “raghead” outburst. Already, there is a “Katrina Shealy for SC Senate District 23 (2012)” Facebook page. Over on her Website, one finds the following message:

Dear Friends and Supporters,

Welcome to my temporary internet home. In the last few days, we have seen all that is wrong with politics in South Carolina and Lexington County. I want to announce that I will again be running for Senate District 23 in 2012.

We deserve real leadership and it’s time for the politics of old to end. Personal destruction and cronyism have no place in our state.

I’m not surprised that my opponent continues to fail to represent the strong values and beliefs of our district. That’s why I would like to ask for your help.

Would you be kind enough to support my campaign with $10, $20 or even $100? It would go a long way in spreading my POSITIVE message of real leadership and good government.

Thank you in advance for any support you can offer. Together we can, and will, change South Carolina in 2012 and beyond.

Sincerely,

Katrina Shealy

So it is that in the coming weeks and months, as other candidates contemplate offering themselves as an alternative to Jake, they will be faced with the prospect of an opponent who a) has name recognition; b) already has funding (both as a result of Jake’s outrageous comment and the pipeline she already had to pro-Sanford sources) and c) has had a lot of people flock to her in reaction to what Jake said. To most potential candidates, those reasons will be enough to say, “Never mind.”

There will be differences. For one, Ms. Shealy won’t pull in the millions that Mr. Miller did. For another, this would be a primary, and she’d have a better chance of beating Jake than Rob has of beating Joe. No matter what else happens in the 2nd Congressional District, when it comes time to count Lexington County’s votes, the Republican has the advantage. A Democrat has to be really, really strong to beat the Republican in that district (in fact, I’ve never seen it done since Floyd Spence was first elected in 1970), and Rob Miller doesn’t answer that description.

Also, the dynamics would be different. For one thing, with Mark Sanford out of office, Ms. Shealy would no longer have the taint of looking like the candidate the governor sent to take out his political enemy. (Which is why we broke our long history of opposition for all Jake stands for to endorse him against her; I suspect that’s why the voters rejected her, too.) She would have a better chance of standing on her own and defining herself as someone who would represent the people of the 23rd district rather than the governor. (That is, unless Nikki Haley is elected governor, in which case you’d have the same problematic narrative of the Sanford cabal trying to control two branches of government. And after Jake started the hue and cry that let to the exposure of their guy’s Argentina affair, they hate him more than ever. But that concern would evaporate if Vincent Sheheen were governor.)

But as I look forward to the 2012 election, I find myself wishing what I wish this year in the 2nd Congressional District — that other options would emerge. That someone new and untainted by the conflicts of past would step forward to offer a choice that we could all feel good about.

This campaign’s theme song: ‘Dirty Laundry’

What do Folks and Marchant do after Nikki wins?

7 Replies

Here’s an interesting (if unsavory) thing to contemplate…

First, it’s pretty much a given that Nikki Haley will win the GOP nomination — maybe even without a runoff. So what happens after that?

Well, one’s first instinct as a longtime observer of politics is to think, The allegations against her character aren’t going away. And while folks rallied around her at the last minute to give her the nomination, I’ve seen the way scandals wear away support for a political figure over time. Several months of such talk will erode a lot of her support.

But will that happen in this case? I don’t know. And the reason I say that is this: If Will Folks and Larry Marchant keep on maintaining that what they said is true — say, if Will Folks keeps raising the question of why Nikki, the transparency heroine, won’t release her phone records — then she’s in trouble over the course of several month. Scandal-weary independents, and maybe a few Republicans, will go with the squeaky-clean Vincent Sheheen as a way of putting it all behind them.

But would Folks and Marchant do that, or will they fade as quietly into the background as they can, to deal with their own personal demons? There’s reason to believe they would.

Here’s why: After primaries, Republicans close ranks. It’s what they do. Sure, there’s reason to think that some of them won’t do it this time — Nikki has run AGAINST the GOP establishment, talking about the need to elect “conservatives” rather than Republicans. But most likely their instincts will kick in, and they will swallow their pride and line up behind her.

And if they do that, what sort of future to Folks and Marchant have if they continue to try to trash her reputation? These guys may not have all that many friends — especially Folks — but the ones they have are all Republicans. And the school-choice, anti-gummint kind of Republicans at that. As I’ve noted before, the only GOP candidate I could imagine Folks supporting would be Nikki. In fact, one of the only two explanations of this scandal that makes sense is that Will’s doing it to help Nikki by drumming up sympathy for her (that’s if he’s lying; the other scenario that adds up is if everything he’s saying is true, but I recoil from believing that of Nikki).

All of that argues for these guys curling up into a ball and hoping not to get noticed any more. (Of course, the main thing that argues AGAINST that is Will “LOOK AT ME!” Folks’ natural propensity to make as much noise as possible. In which case we see whether there’s anyone who can still sit him down and persuade him to behave, which remains to be seen.)

Anyway, in a month or so the pattern will have emerged…

Don’t vote with your emotions, people. THINK!

60 Replies

Nikki Haley, 2008 file photo/Brad Warthen

My attention this evening was drawn to this piece by someone from elsewhere, which ends thusly:

Now that same old abusive style is erupting in South Carolina’s Republican primary. Brandishing charges of sexual infidelity, the state’s male Republican establishment has launched a vile character assassination of gubernatorial front-runner Nikki Haley, who is married with two children. (All too typically, those attacks have been accompanied by a Southern flourish of racial and religious bigotry.)

Like most Republican candidates this year, Haley embraces every stupid conservative cliche, but a primary victory for her would represent public progress, political decency, and a higher morality. I wish I could vote for her.

What utter and complete politically correct drivel: Because she’s a woman (I suppose), her being elected would be “progress.” Because the people accusing her are contemptible, what they say isn’t true. Because she is called names, electing her would be a “higher morality.”

Is this actually supposed to pass for thought?

Seems to me it’s time for a bit of moral clarity for South Carolina voters: It doesn’t matter what Will Folks or Larry Marchant have said about Nikki Haley. It doesn’t matter what Jake Knotts has called her. None of that, whomever you believe, should play a role in your decision as a voter. What you should consider is what others have said about her with great accuracy: that she would be Sanford in a skirt.

That piece quoted above links to a story about how Jenny Sanford is standing behind Nikki. To people who “think” with their emotions, this is a dynamic duo — two brave, wronged women standing against the bullies. (Hey, I’ve furthered the legend: I, too can be a sap for a sob story.) But here’s what you need to focus on: Jenny Sanford is the political svengali who brought us Mark Sanford. She was the brains behind him; she managed his campaign. That didn’t work out so well. Now, she’s pushing another candidate who would be the vessel of the same kind of bankrupt, destructive ideology that her last horse represented.

Bottom line: Don’t let Jenny Sanford foist another one on us. We deserve better. Leave your emotions at home, and use your brains, people: Do NOT vote for Nikki Haley.

My dilemma next Tuesday

17 Replies

First, I’ll go ahead and complain the way I always do, and as always, no one will sympathize with me, but here goes: I think it’s wrong that I have to choose one or the other to vote in next Tuesday — the Democratic or Republican primary.

Go ahead, laugh. Everyone does. Why, don’t I understand how the world works? Yes, I do, and the way the world works is fouled up. Yep, I know there are all sorts of reasons why people aren’t allowed to vote in both. But they are all bad reasons. All of them involve placing the needs and interests of parties ahead of the legitimate rights and interests of voters. There is NO WAY you can defend a system that requires me to be disenfranchised, if I live in Richland County Council District 1 for instance, by either not getting a voice in who my solicitor is (only Democrats are running) or who my county councilman will be (the choices are both Republican).

OK, got that out of my system…

Now, I have to decide which ballot to ask for Tuesday, and this is the toughest choice I’ve faced in some time.

As I wrote earlier today, I think it’s imperative that we get the right governor going forward, and I’ve reached the conclusion that none of the Republicans is going to be the right governor. Since I consider the selection of our next governor to be far and away the most important decision that South Carolinians will make this year, that argues for asking for a Democratic ballot — which would be kind of an unusual move for me. Living as I do in Lexington County, about the only way I get a choice in elections is to vote in the Republican primary, so I generally do. But this time, the only way I get to vote POSITIVELY for someone I actually want to be my governor (as opposed to voting against the worst of two or more evils), is to take a Democratic ballot.

But look at what I give up if I do that:

The chance to vote against Jim DeMint. He’s going to be re-elected anyway, but I’d like it to be over my protest. Yeah, I’ll get to protest in November, but it would be more satisfying to do so twice.
The chance to vote against Joe Wilson, who embarrassed us all — not with his “You Lie” outburst (anyone can momentarily lose control) but with his decision to capitalize on it. His GOP opponent, Phil Black, is a nice guy. I enjoyed meeting him last time around. But he doesn’t have a prayer.
If I vote Democratic, I get no choice on lieutenant governor; it’s Ashley Cooper (the guy with the ultimate SC name) or nothing. But if you care who your lieutenant governor is (debatable) and you acknowledge that it will probably be a Republican, you certainly ought to state a preference among the five candidates running. And yes, there IS a difference between, say, Ken Ard and Eleanor Kitzman.
You get no say in who your Treasurer is. And again, I think it makes a difference. Converse Chellis seems to have done a decent job, from what I’ve heard. And this Curtis Loftis is running one of those anti-everything Tea Party style campaigns that I find so off-putting.
For attorney general, Democrats get no choice. Republicans have three to choose between, and again, one is likely to win.
In my SC House District, there are five candidates seeking the Republican nomination — and unlike with the GOP gubernatorial field, this is not a contest among extremists. We actually have several guys competing to see who can sound the most reasonable, and I think at least one of them should be rewarded for that. But I have to take a Republican ballot to have a say.
Voicing my preference for county council. There are two Republicans running in my district, and no Democrat.

Whereas, if I do take a Democratic ballot, I get to vote for governor, and between Vic Rawl and someone named Alvin Greene for US Senate, and… that’s it.

Add to that the fact that there is MUCH greater potential for critical runoffs in the Republican primary, with all those candidates — and if you vote Democratic the first time around, you are barred by law from having a say in those runoffs.

Not that I’ve made up my mind yet, but I have a feeling that Democratic turnout isn’t going to be at 2008 presidential levels. Don’t you think?

Any club that would have ME as a member…

11 Replies

Today, I find myself in a bit of an ethical dilemma. And as y’all know, I am Mr. Ethics, although I do have a certain penchant for placing myself in … ambiguous… circumstances.

Y’all also know that I’m a member of The Capital City Club, of quite a few years’ standing. I’m quite proud of the club and its heritage, since it was founded to provide an inclusive alternative for certain other clubs that somehow hadn’t gotten around to admitting any black or Jewish or female members. Not only am I a member, but I serve on the club’s board.

In that capacity I know that, with the economic downturn, we can use all the special events we can get. At the wonderfully low price of the club’s “Breakfast Club,” my eating grits and bacon there every morning isn’t exactly paying the light bill. With that in mind we held my great-aunt’s 100th birthday lunch there recently, and a lovely time was had by all. And if your family has a wedding coming up and you need a reception venue, let me know and I’ll see what I can arrange…

So it is with a mixture of grateful welcome and wry amusement that I look upon this item, which a colleague shared with me with the observation, “Interesting choice of location for our little populist …” Here’s what the press advisory said:

(Columbia, SC) – Today, the Haley for Governor Campaign released information regarding location for the campaign’s primary night celebration.

What: Haley for Governor Primary Night Celebration

Where: Capital City Club, 1201 Main Street, Columbia, S.C.

When: Tuesday, June 8th

Event begins at 7:00 pm. Media will have access beginning at 5:30 pm….

###

Personally, I think it’s absolutely fine that Nikki chose our club for her event. I may swing by to welcome her and her entourage. I’m sure they’ll find it an enjoyable experience, especially if the election returns break as I think they will, with her at least in a runoff.

And I doubt her populist fans will object. I don’t think they’re that kind of populist.

I’ll TRY to be more colorful, if that’s what it takes

8 Replies

Well, I think I know why Wesley and Phil haven’t had me back on “Pub Politics” for several weeks: I’m just not outrageous enough.

In this new environment, a blogger who wants attention is expected to claim to have done the nasty with a front-runner, and a state senator has to dredge through the darker recesses of nativist terminology to trash the ethnicity of a fellow legislator (who, coincidentally, happens to be that same front-runner).

I’m just a little too whitebread boring, I guess. I’ll try to work on that, if I can figure out the criteria for being the cynosure of all eyes in 2010: I mean, is it OK to claim to have done the horizontal mambo with ANY lawmaker, or do the standards require that it actually be Nikki Haley (because, you know, she just hasn’t been made to look like enough of a victim yet)? And are all ethnicities fair game? Can I say “wetback” or “mick;” is the “N” word going too far? Or does it have to be about Indians specifically? If so, it’s not fair, because Jake’s taken the best one. “Dot-head” seems thin stuff by comparison. And I hate to fall on the inaccurate, feeble slurs that Larry Koon supporters used against her in 2004, talking about worshipping cows and the like.

Or should I just go with my strength, and hope y’all will have me back because you think that after Jake Knotts’ performance, the show needs a little class to redeem it? Yeah, that’s the ticket.

What to say about Jake’s venture into what he terms “Saturday Night Live” humor? A number of things, I suppose:

First, thanks for holding yourself back there, Jake — seems I usually hear the full construction as “raghead sumbitches.” So you exercised some restraint. Either that, or you realized halfway through that she’s a chick, and can’t technically be a “sumbitch.”
That was really creative. Usually, the term is applied to A-rabs and the like. To expand its scope to include half-Kenyans and Sikhs displays a linguistic originality that is noteworthy.
Is that Andre Bauer camp a bunch of strategic geniuses or what? I hadn’t thought there was anything else that could make Nikki Haley look more like a martyr than what we had seen thus far, but these fellas just never say die; they can always go another mile.
Cindi Scoppe has got to be feeling really self-righteous today (if you can imagine that), being certain about how right she was to kick and scream and complain every inch of the way when I insisted that we break with precedent and endorse Jake last time around.
I might as well take down my video of Jake telling his life story (“How Jake became Jake…“), because it’s just going to seem way too dull after Wesley and them put up his latest performance on the Web.
Must I lower the standards of “The Brad Show,” if I ever have a second installment of it, in order to get viewers?

There’s plenty more that could be said, yet on another level, I sort of feel like enough has been said already.

Jake Knotts, 2008 file photo/Brad Warthen

OK, now The State paper has gone too far…

19 Replies

All right, I didn’t take it personally when you laid me off. After all, as a vice president of the company, I had been looking at those horrific numbers like all other senior staffers. There was no way the paper could keep paying all of us; no way at all. Some of us had to go; and my salary made me a very attractive target.

And yeah, I was kind of ticked off when you wouldn’t let me take my old blog with me, after all the nights and weekends I poured into it for four years, building it from nothing. That was a classic case of corporate lawyer B.S., insisting upon retaining the rights to content even though something called “Brad Warthen’s Blog” could have pretty close to zero value to you going forward. (I would say “zero,” but it continues to get a surprising number of page views — 15,000 last month — considering that I haven’t posted anything since March 2009. Possibly because I regularly send readers back to it. So that’s of SOME value to your advertisers, I suppose.) But I went out that day and bought the rights to “bradwarthen.com,” and never looked back. It had 132,000 page views in April, and I’m now actually getting income from it. (See the latest ad, from Vincent Sheheen?) So I’m over that.

But now, The State has gone TOO FAR. This I cannot forgive. After we’ve been drip-tortured for months by the GOP candidates with their conservative-this, conservative-that ideological monomania, the same moldy cliches over and over and over and over, to the point that I did something yesterday that I’ve never done before in my career — told my readers that NO GOP candidate is fit to be our governor for the next four years, because I for one just can’t take it any more…

… after all that, The State actually poses this question to the GOP candidates, in print:

There are voters who accuse elected Republicans of abandoning their conservative principles. What makes you the Republican most capable of representing the party in the fall election?

Imagine that! PROVOKING them to give it to us with both barrels! Just setting it right up on a TEE for them!

So of course we were treated to an absolute orgy of… As I’ve said from Day One I’m a conservative a true conservative my daddy was a conservative daddy my mama was a conservative mama I’m a bidnessman meet a payroll don’t take bailouts lazy shiftless welfare takers the key is to starve ’em before they reproduce 100 percent rating from conservative conservatives of America my dog is a conservative dog I don’t have a cat because cats are effete I eat conservative I sleep conservative I excrete conservative I got conservative principles a conservative house and conservative clothes take back our government from the socialists even though we don’t really want it because who needs government anyway they don’t have government in Somalia and they’re doing alright aren’t they National Rifle Association Charlton Heston is my president and Ronald Reagan is my God I will have no gods before him I go Arizona-style all the way that’s the way I roll I will keep their cold dead government hands off your Medicare so help me Ronald Reagan…

And on and on. That’s just to give you the flavor; I’m just reciting from memory. Read the actual stuff if you prefer, but my version has more life to it, while in no way being a disservice to the original.

You know what would have endeared me so much that I would have dropped all my objections and endorsed one of these candidates on the spot? If he or she had had the sense of perspective, the sense of the absurd, the appreciation of irony to say something like:

Actually, I’m a liberal. A liberal all the way. I drive a Prius, I love wine and cheese parties with the faculty, I think America is a big bully in the world and no wonder people hate us (I’d be a terrorist, too, if I didn’t abhor violence so), and I never saw an abortion I didn’t like. My spouse and I have an open marriage, so scandal can’t touch us, because to each his or her own. I’m a white, male heterosexual and the guilt just eats me alive; I wish I belonged to a group that was more GENUINE, you know? The first thing I’d do if elected is raise taxes through the roof, and spend every penny on public education, except for a portion set aside for re-education camps for people who now home-school their kids. Then, if we needed more money for excessive regulation of business and other essential government services, we’d raise taxes again, but only on the rich, which is defined as YOU or anybody who makes more than you. Probably the best word to describe my overall tax plan would be “confiscatory.” And my spending (OH, my spending! You’ve never seen spending until you see my spending!) would best be termed “redistributive.” If elected, my inaugural party will have music by the Dixie Chicks and the Indigo Girls, and then we’ll all bow down to a gigantic image of Barack (did you know it means “blessed”?) Obama, the savior of us all, and chant in some language other than the ultimate oppressor language, English. French, perhaps. Or Kiswahili.

Or something along those lines. And if The State ran a response like that, all would be forgiven…