Category Archives: South Carolina

Let’s double the downloads on this one, OK?

Resonating, rather than governing

Here’s an example of the kind of thing we see in a country in which democratic habits have overtaken republican ones. (And remember, I’m using those words according to the generic, original definitions, not referring to the execrable parties that go by those names.)

Just got this email from Joe Wilson:

Dear Subscriber:

This Congress, my main goal has been to bring jobs to South Carolina. Since January, I have actively encouraged job growth in South Carolina while removing barriers for job creation. I am proud to say we are close to having 2,000 more full time jobs come to South Carolina. This week, the South Carolina House brought these jobs one step closer by voting in favor of the new Amazon amendment. This legislation would allow for Amazon to invest $125 million in a distribution facility in the Midlands. I supported this creation of jobs back in December. I stood firm on the steps of the State House supporting it on Tuesday. And even today, I am urging the State Senate to follow the lead of the State House of Representatives and pass this legislation! The Second District wants these jobs!

With Amazon coming to the Midlands, more local companies will be able to expand as a result of working with Amazon. This means more hiring across the state for small businesses. It also means new and higher-paying jobs for residents of our state. Finally, it means more dollars will be spent locally in our neighborhoods, our shopping malls, and our communities.

I am thankful for your support! As many of you know, progress is made from the bottom-up. By being vocal, we were able to get our state government to change its position 180 degrees in a matter of a few weeks. You and I both know government rarely moves that quickly. It’s a testament to your hard work and effort that we now have thousands of jobs and investment on the verge of coming to our community.

However, the bill still needs to be approved by the S.C. Senate. Please go to myFacebook page and vote in the poll to let me know how you feel.

Sincerely,

Joe Wilson
U.S. Congressman

P.S. To visit my Facebook page, please click here now.

You see, Joe has determined that in the core of his constituency, being FOR the Amazon break is a winner. Never mind that it has NOTHING to do with his job as a congressman. Unless, of course, he’d like to tell us how he’s working on a national solution to the internet shopping/sales tax issue, as both I and Amazon would like to see someone in Congress do. Which he doesn’t mention.

Instead, he asks us to come to his Facebook page and tell him how we FEEL about this S.C. legislative issue.

This is sort of the kind of thing I was on about earlier.

The math doesn’t quite work either way…

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Friend of mine shared this link with me today…

First, there’s plenty to be embarrassed about, as a South Carolinian, in this video — the main thing being that Sen. Mike Fair is struggling, and failing, to justify his concern about the “danger” of Sharia law being established in South Carolina. It sort of reminds me one of the first corny jokes I remember hearing as a little kid: Man stands on a street corner, snapping his fingers. Cop comes up and threatens to run him in for loitering. Man says, “I’m not loitering. I’m snapping my fingers to keep the elephants away.” Cop says, “There are no elephants around here!” Man says, “I’m doing a good job, aren’t I?”

Against the background of that, his hyperbolic statement that “99 percent probably” of all terrorist acts since the Lebanon Marine Barracks bombing have been carried out by Muslims seems unremarkable. It’s one of those things that “everyone knows,” and he’s just being sloppy. But since the folks doing this report saw fit to dispute it very explicitly, using figures that also seemed a bit dubious, I decided to take a closer look. The report says:

Fair’s calculation, that nearly every single act of terrorism for the past couple of decades was committed by Muslim men, is off base. In reality, in the last ten years alone, nearly twice as many terrorist plots were hatched by non-Muslims in America than by Muslims.

Hmmm. And that period doesn’t even include Oklahoma City. Follow that link and you go to a previous report, which says:

Since the attacks on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, Muslims have been involved in 45 domestic terrorist plots. Meanwhile, non-Muslims have been involved in 80 terrorist plots.

… and then in turn provides a link to this report, by the Muslim Public Affairs Council, that seems in a quick review to fairly assess the number of terror plots hatched by each group. It even gives nonMuslims a break by not counting eco-terrorism.

But then I got to thinking… Muslims make up six-tenths of one percent of the U.S. population. So that means that there are more than 99 times as many non-Muslims as Muslims in the country. But only twice (actually, a little less than twice) as many “terror plots” are hatched by nonMuslims. So… less than 1 percent of the population, but hatch 36 percent of the terror plots. So that means … and my math may be wobbly here, because of assumptions I’m making to come up with a number … Muslims are involved in terror plots about 60 times as often as you would expect, all other things being equal.

It gets extra muddy after that. Fair is talking about worldwide, and the study is about U.S. threats. And it is counting Muslim incidents regardless of whether the plotters are U.S. residents or not.

But there does tend to be, apparently, a higher proportion of plots hatched by Muslims than non, as percentages of the population, in this country. Just way less than 99 percent.

I digress, though. Bottom line, even if Fair were right, taking preemptive action to prevent the establishment of Sharia law in South Carolina, or fretting about prayer shawls in public places, is ridiculous.

I just can’t prove that mathematically. But the burden should be on him to prove that what he’s talking about is an actual problem.

Harvest Hope reaches milestone, has a million to go

The Second Battle of Amazon, with a different outcome

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Had to type that headline three times. Fingers kept wanting to hit X instead of Z. Oh well; at least it’s easier to spell than “Manassas.”

Ever since this started heating back up last week, I’ve been meaning to do a post on it so we can discuss it. But so much has been happening that by the time I get set to react to one development, there are several more. There’s crazy buzz about it.

An hour or so ago someone Tweeted:

Reporter at Statehouse just saw Commerce Secretary Bobby Hitt come out of secret meeting with House GOPers and Gov. Haley over Amazon.

… to which I responded, “Secret?” Which drew the response, “They’re met behind closed doors. They kicked our dude out. Not illegal, just out of sight.”

Anyway, here’s the latest, from that same source:

S.C. House has reversed course and has APPROVED tax-collection exemption for Amazon.

Boy, that happened fast, didn’t it? Just goes to illustrate something I say all the time in the face of Conventional Wisdom that this or that is going to happen, or this or that will never happen in politics: Anything can happen. It’s never over. The Fat Lady can screech all she wants.

John O’Connor reports that “35 Republicans and 17 Democrats switched their Amazon vote from April 27.” And Will Folks says “@nikkihaley also told the Caucus that she would not ‘hold it against them’ if they voted for Amazon.” Nothing like leadership, huh? But all I have for you about today’s developments are these bits and pieces.

I don’t know what happens next, either, beyond it needing to go to the Senate. But I thought I’d give y’all this chance to talk about it. For fuel, here’s a recent news story about the resurrection of the debate, and here’s another and here’s another. And here’s the latest attempt by Amazon to sweeten the deal. And here’s a radio ad from opponents.

So, what do y’all think?

That’s the way it should ALWAYS be, guys

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In talking about working with Jim Clyburn and Lindsey Graham on getting the money for the port deepening study, Tim Scott said,

“When it comes to addressing the needs of South Carolina, there are no Republicans and no Democrats. There is only Team South Carolina.”

Yeah, well — that’s the way it should be on EVERYTHING you do as an elected official. There should be nothing remarkable about it.

Just thought I’d point that out… Maybe even Jim DeMint will read it.

‘Hypocrite’ isn’t the right word for Sanford

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There’s a discussion about character going on right now on “Talk of the Nation:”

We’re often taken aback when a respected governor or political candidate, or our own husband or wife, cheats. But psychologist David DeSteno argues that a growing body of evidence shows that everyone — even the most respected among us — has the capacity to act out of character.

… and I was struck by the fact that the segment started off with Mark Sanford as exhibit A.

Inevitably, talk turned to his “hypocrisy.”

I don’t see him as a “hypocrite.” But then, I didn’t see him as a guy who would so brazenly and spectacularly cheat on his wife (or do so on Father’s Day weekend), so what do I know?

But I still don’t see him as a “hypocrite.”

That’s a word that gets bandied about a good deal in our politics, particularly by social liberals talking about social conservatives who turn out to be human (and, as I said, sometimes spectacularly). It tends to reflect a couple of mutually-reinforcing elements of a world view: People who espouse traditional moral values are not only wrong, but they don’t even mean it! I mean, how could they, really? So it’s relevant to discuss.

Andy Griffith’s character on “A Face In the Crowd” was a hypocrite — a super-folksy alleged populist with a deep contempt for the masses. But Sanford — I think he always believed what he espoused, including “family values.” And still does, in his own weird way.

However, there were OTHER things they were saying on the show that were dead on, with regard to Sanford and the rest of us. Yep, he is a towering monument to rationalization. And yep, human character does tend to be “dynamic.” In spite of the root of the word, character is not stamped on us as indelibly as the image on a coin. It’s something you have to work at every day. And just because you act inconsistently with what you say on Wednesday doesn’t mean you didn’t believe it on Tuesday. Or on Thursday.

What Sanford revealed in my own far-from-omniscient opinion was a startling lack of depth, mixed with narcissism.

The narcissism shouldn’t have been a surprise, given his profoundly Randian (as in Ayn Rand, author of “The Virtue of Selfishness”) political views. Actually, it WAS a surprise, but it shouldn’t have been.

As for the lack of depth — the guy’s analysis of himself and what he openly acknowledged as his sin didn’t even go skin deep. He went around apologizing to everybody, but with an unrepentant blandness that seemed to take it as a matter of course that we were obligated to forgive him, while he blithely went about continuing to consort with this mistress. Because, you know, that’s what he wanted to do.

But “hypocrisy”? That both oversimplifies, and misses the mark…

Whew! I feel SO much better…

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No doubt you, too, will sleep more soundly once you read this:

Haley dismisses risk of debt
ceiling disaster

… Haley was asked Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” whether the debt ceiling should be raised.

“Absolutely not,” she said. “We are seeing total chaos in D.C. right now. The very first thing they need to do is make sure that they stop raising the debt.”

However, the federal government finances itself partly by selling debt to investors and other countries through Treasury bills that must be paid back, Obama said in a town hall style meeting shown on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

“If they thought that we might renege on our IOUs, it could unravel the entire financial system,” he said, and the result would be a recession worse than the last one.

“So we can’t even get close to not raising the debt ceiling,” Obama said.

Asked about the possibility of damaging America’s credibility, Haley said, “Government is notorious for saying the sky is falling.”…

And remember, our gov knows about money stuff like this. She is a way skillful accountant. Just ask her; she’ll tell you.

Also, she never makes mistakes. Ever. We are in such good hands…

And if you read further in that same story, you encounter this:

“I find it silly,” Haley said about talk of her joining a Republican presidential ticket in 2012.

Right again, governor! Nothing sillier… Told you she was awesome.

Of course, there is a downside to this good news:

Haley said she is committed to serving out her term as governor.

“The people of South Carolina took a chance on electing me,” she said. “It is my job and my family’s job to prove to them that they made a good decision.”

That’ll show them Yankees!

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Missed this Robert Ariail cartoon a couple of days ago; thought I’d share it now.

Don’t forget, you can see new work from Robert most days at robertariail.com.

It appears she’s not Mark Sanford after all (at least, not on this). Good for Gov. Haley!

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At least, not on this point.

Assuming that Nikki Haley actually does sign the ATV safety bill today, she deserves a huge “Huzzah” from rational South Carolinians everywhere.

His repeated vetoes of this bill stand as the most malicious, harmful instances of his bloodless application of ideological abstractions to governance. His stance shocked the sensibilities of even some libertarians.

It’s ridiculous that something so common-sense as this bill should be “progress” in this state, but it is. And we must celebrate what little we get in that regard, because sometimes we go backwards.

Case in point: Myrtle Beach expects to be flooded with bikers this year because it has rescinded its “controversial” ordinance requiring that helmets be worn.

Where else would such a no-brainer (pun intended) be regarded as “controversial”? OK, maybe some places out West. Or wherever large numbers of bikers gather. But it’s still very us.

NLRB gives GOP chance to clearly be the good guys

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Yes, I know that was a split infinitive, but I like it that way.

I was glancing over this story on the front page this morning:

WASHINGTON — Business leaders and Republican politicians Tuesday accused President Barack Obama of punishing GOP states by trying to block Boeing from opening an aircraft plant in South Carolina.

… and it struck me what a gift the NLRB had given the Republican Party in South Carolina.

By doing something SO outrageous, so without justification, and so profoundly harmful to South Carolina (if successful), the NLRB has given our state’s Republicans an issue to rally around and present themselves clearly as champions of the state’s best interests.

This doesn’t happen often. Usually, the GOP has to manufacture nonsense to fulminate about, such as “the looming specter of Obamacare” or something equally ridiculous. But this is real, it has substance, and it is clearly an attack upon the economic well-being of South Carolinians.

No wonder Republicans are rallying together, forgetting their pettier differences, to make as much noise about it as possible.

Of course, there is some overreaching, with Jim DeMint accusing the president of the United States of “thuggery.” Because, you know, wishing for his “Waterloo” isn’t malicious enough. But that’s Jim DeMint. On the whole, this makes Republicans look good, and far less silly and ideological than usual. (YES, there are some big ideological issues at stake in this matter, but you don’t actually have to care about them to care about the outcome.)

As for Mr. Obama — it’s pertinent that Nikki Haley has asked him, personally, to weigh in on this. (Which I don’t believe he’s done yet, Mr. DeMint. If he has, someone please send me a link.) Not that he’ll want to. As much as I like Mr. Obama, we all have our faults, and one of his biggest is his unwillingness to oppose Big Labor, which crowds him into some really ridiculous positions, such as his longtime, indefensible opposition to the Colombia Free Trade agreement.

This issue puts the president right where the SC GOP wants him. Since, you know, they mean him ill and want him to look bad. More to the point, it puts them in the position to look very good.

Me, I don’t care who looks good, as long as the bid to derail this project fails.

New GOP chair with a video of his own

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Just got this a few minutes ago. Evidently, Chad Connelly is feeling the need to answer those videos his counterpart keeps pumping out, and was eager enough to do so that he didn’t wait for fancy production values (maybe he thought he had to send off to Texas for that), but went ahead and got out a quick-and-dirty clip.

My first impression is similar to the impression I formed when Mr. Connelly introduced himself to me today at the Capital City Club: Personable, upbeat. I thought for a moment that he was going to be, intentionally and strategically, more positive than attack dog Harpootlian.

But then he got into standard GOP talking points, such as the current silliest one of all, “the looming specter of Obamacare.”

Anyway, this is going to be lively…

Wait — didn’t I say earlier I was going to cut back on the party stuff? Oh, well…

Brookgreen Gardens 1958

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Yes, that headline is mean to evoke “Louisiana 1927,” an awesome song.

I got the photo from our good friend Bud, who wrote:

Here’s a picture of me and my cousins and brother @ Brookgreen Gardens taken in 1958. I’m the one on the right with the sandals.

… and the dark socks. I suspect that Bud was always a fashion iconoclast. Good for him.

Bud sent that after we discovered that he and I both have a long history of connection to Surfside Beach. (I’m having trouble remembering which post that came up on, or I’d link to it.)

Sweetness is in the eye of the beholder

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The Elephant In The Room from SCGOP on Vimeo.

First, sorry about all the posts the last few days about political parties. Such as this one and this one and this one and this one and this one. It’s a disagreeable subject, and one that I usually avoid rather scrupulously. But ever since I made the mistake of delving a bit into the Democrats’ intraparty politics, and then their convention, and then the Republicans’ convention, my attention has been drawn more than usual to this unseemly, depressing topic.

I’m sure I’ll climb out of this ditch soon. But in the meantime… my attention was drawn to the above “sweet video” — his words — by Wesley Donehue.

It generates in me several unpleasant thoughts:

My biggest question of all is, who are the “they” that the video repeatedly refers to? First, I don’t know ANYONE who said some of these things. And even if someone did say them, surely the same person/people didn’t say ALL of them? And who would pay any attention to anyone who DID say these things? Which pundits said the GOP was “heading backwards” two years ago? (Personally, I said — and still believe — that after the 2008 defeat that the NATIONAL party, not the SC one, was demoralized to the point that it left a vacuum that was being filled by extremists — and that has certainly had its effects here. But that’s not “heading backwards;” it’s heading somewhere I’d never seen the party go before.) Who on earth ever thought for a moment that Republicans “could never retain the governorship?” Whoever said, ungrammatically, that a “woman governor” was impossible? (For those who didn’t get my point about “ungrammatical” — and fewer and fewer people do these days — “woman” is a noun, not an adjective.) And who even CARED about when the GOP would pay off its mortgage? Talk about your esoteric insider concerns. And on and on.
The video illustrates, better than the recent ones Harpootlian has been pumping out, one of the main things that is wrong with political parties: It’s this assumption that because something wears Brand X, it is GOOD. It reminds me of those cars I see with multiple bumper stickers on them, and they are almost always (I could, if all such cars I’ve ever seen were to parade before me, count the exceptions on one hand, with fingers left over) all of one party. As though a thinking person could possibly get so worked up in favor of Candidate A as to deface his or her car with a bumper sticker, and then get so enraptured with another, and another, and another, and they would ALL be of the same party, when that’s the only “virtue” they share. The odds against that, if the voter THINKS about each candidate and makes a discerning choice, are astronomical. And yet that’s what one almost always sees. In this case, we are to embrace the election of Nikki Haley as a GOOD THING (which, deep down, a lot of Republicans do not), and the defeat of John Spratt as an equally good thing, and … this is the part that strains credulity… for the same reasons! When the only characteristics we are given for judging those phenomena are that Ms. Haley is a Ms., and Mr. Spratt has been in office 28 years. Well, those and the fact that the victor in each case happens to wear the Republican label, which is a most dubious unifying characteristic.
Finally, according to Wesley, this video about how wonderful it is that the Republican Party treads unopposed across the face of South Carolina was produced by Texans. Specifically, this one and this one. So… apparently the paradise that the GOP rules over here is incapable of producing anyone with the talent to produce a “sweet video.” Or so we are left to gather. Sorry, but ever since I went into the advertising/marketing/communications game I’ve learned to have a low opinion of those who insist on procuring such services from out of state. Like nobody here needs the business, or is good enough.

Well, I could go on, but I won’t. OK, one more point: “Sweet” is an odd thing to call such strident triumphalism. One practically hears the stamp of boots marching in the background, it is SO triumphalist.

OK, I get it; this is a love letter to Karen Floyd. But who saw it as worthwhile to spend money — OUT OF STATE — to produce such a thing? What is its worth to anyone, other than Karen, who is departing the stage?

I’ve just got to start ignoring all this party stuff and find something more pleasant to write about.

The connection to the royals didn’t do the trick

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That's 2nd Lt. Prince Harry (Henry Charles Albert David) of Wales on the right, Lt. Col. Bill Connor on the left, in 2008 (or late 2007; I'm not sure): "He called me Bill and I called him Harry."

Remember all the back-and-forth between the candidates for Democratic Party chair back before the convention, some of which I kept track of here (to the point that I was sort of sorry I started)?

I just didn’t get those kinds of releases from the candidates for GOP chair beforehand. Oh, I saw some back-and-forth on Twitter about how Nikki Haley was backing one candidate, and her critics at SCTruth were backing another, and so forth and so on. But they didn’t give a lot of context, and if there was a battle of emailed press releases, I missed it. Even though I had specifically asked to be kept in the loop (and folks, I seldom ASK for press releases), and at least two of the three campaigns said they’d send me whatever they sent out.

But about all I received via that medium in the last days was this one Facebook alert from Bill Connor, on the day of the royal wedding:

“Brad,
Thought you might like this bit of history in honor of the Royal Wedding (the picture is on my fb profile). Hope you are well!: http://www.facebook.com/l/ae801_1klnj9MQbQucenXRWIjsA/seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2004253009_harrypal01.html“

As it happened, I had already known that about Connor. In fact, he had written us an op-ed piece about it, right after his highness had spent a brief time serving alongside SC Guard troops in Afghanistan (before the word got out and they had to yank him out of the country). The above photo ran with that piece.

Anyway, so much for any of the fairy-tale effect of the royal wedding rubbing off. Bill Connor came in third in the competition state GOP chair.

Which reminds me — I need to get winner Chad Connelly in here for a “Brad Show.”

Yet ANOTHER video from Harpootlian

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Dick Harpootlian is really into video as an attack medium. This is like, what — one a week? I guess that’s what he’s spending that money he was so eager to raise on.

Can’t say I really agree with what he’s saying, though. I don’t think it an awful thing that the governor pays her staff decently. I DO have a question or two about her decision to essentially copy and paste her campaign staff into the governor’s office. It’s one thing to hire a guy like Trey Walker, who knows a thing or two about elective service in SC. But her chief of staff isn’t even from here, with his main SC experience being running her campaign. Her campaign that was, if you recall, NOT about SC, but about Barack Obama.

I realize that some of y’all — such as Doug — think lack of experience is a GOOD thing. I do not. If your elected official is not much more than a “fresh face,” you definitely need some experienced people running the staff. If you’re serious about doing the job, that is.

The salaries, though, don’t bother me. But I realize they make for an easy target for the Dems under the circumstances…

Tweets from GOP convention Saturday

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Y’all don’t seem terribly interested in this, since I didn’t get a single comment when I urged y’all to follow my Tweets from the GOP convention at the Columbia convention center Saturday. But I’m going to to ahead and give you all the Tweets here anyway. Because that WAS my report on the event. So there.

Somehow I’d like to figure out how to integrate Twitter more fully into the blog. I used to have a Twitter feeder on the right-hand side of my blog page, but it was always several hours behind, which sort of defeated the purpose. Ideally, I’d like to post things on Twitter, and have them appear here in a format in which y’all could easily react and start a discussion without having to wait for me to get to my laptop and create a blog post — which is tedious, and pretty boring. For me, anyway, posting the same thing twice.

The Twitter strategy was successful Saturday in that people WERE reacting in real time — but via Twitter, or Facebook, not on the blog. You see, I have Twitter set up so that everything I put there automatically posts to Facebook. And I put the headlines and links to all my blog posts on Twitter. So… I have this weird phenomenon whereby people will see a link to a blog post on Facebook, follow it to my blog, read it, then go BACK to Facebook to leave a comment. Which is frustrating, because I’d rather they do it here, where the rest of our discussions take place. Oh, well.

Anyway, here are all my Tweets from just before I went to the convention (when Nikki Haley addressed the gathering) through the second ballot for a chairman, after which I left. This process took longer than the chairman election the Dems had had the previous week, because that one had been such a foregone conclusion.

Note that photography was a bit of a challenge at this one, because they had non-delegates at the back of the room. Hope Butch Bowers isn’t too insulted I thought he was someone else, but look at that picture above. You can hardly see the table, much less who’s sitting at it.

Anyway, here’s my feed, including things I reTweeted from others, and replies from others:

RETWEET: wesleydonehue Wesley Donehue: For the record, I did not kill the lights on @nikkihaley because she was bashing consultants.
BradWarthen:@wesleydonehue @nikkihaley Bashing consultants? Who’s she talking about, her senior staff?
RETWEET: SCTRUTH: Haley just said that she is her worst critic. Last Saturday she said that she didn’t make any mistakes in her first 100 days
BradWarthen: @SCTRUTH Well… Obviously, she’s not her BEST critic. Certainly not the most discerning…
michaelrentiers: Looks like the loons are going to try and run the asylum at #SCGOPconvention. Rules will be our friend today.
BradWarthen: I haven’t even gotten there yet, & it looks like there’s a good bit of dissension, & even (gasp!) IRONY @ the GOP convention…
BradWarthen: Is that Bob Inglis up there seated on the podium? Can’t tell… Too far away to see. How’m I gonna take pics with my iPhone?
BradWarthen: Alan Wilson ranting about Obamacare, etc. “Attacking our Constitution…” Always thought he was more mildly reasonable than this…
LeeCoLibrary: @BradWarthen Is there any live coverage of the GOP convention or just the twitter feed. Which, by the way, is pretty funny!!
BradWarthen: @LeeCoLibrary Dunno. Hey, TV doesn’t even cover the NATIONAL conventions any more…
BradWarthen: Eckstrom says you have to go after our enemy “where he lives & plans.” But he’s praising Bush, not mentioning Obama. When did he write this?
BradWarthen: Speaker after speaker going on repetitively about taking on that awful Obama fellow. Little mention of SC…
BradWarthen: Mark Hammond actually DID mention some SC issues. Good for him…
BradWarthen: Bobby Harrell, introducing Mick Zais, says we’re closer than ever to education “reform.” Can’t wait to hear what that looks like…
BradWarthen: Oh, I see… No. 1, Zais says, is “choice”…
BradWarthen: Zais wants to run schools “like a business”… I need to go check his bio again… He IS a retired military officer, right?”
ragley Jay W. Ragley: @BradWarthen Newberry College is a business.
RETWEET: PoliticalTicker CNN Political Ticker: Huntsman makes debut as possible White House candidatehttp://bit.ly/k7DdQr
BradWarthen: Got to get closer if I’m going to get decent pictures of GOP convention… yfrog.com/gzn8xxdj
johnroconnor John O’Connor: @BradWarthen not Inglis, Butch Bowers I think
dphamilton Dan Hamilton: @johnroconnor @bradwarthen that’s Butch Bowers, separated at birth from his twin Bob Inglis.
BradWarthen: Boy, do I feel like a dummy. That’s Butch Bowers way up there. I did think it rather unlikely it was Bob Inglis…
BradWarthen: Chatter at the back has mostly ceased. Candidates for chairman about to speak…
BradWarthen: @dphamilton @johnroconnor Yeah, I figured that out. It would nice to be closer. Butch is a friend. Embarrassing …
BradWarthen: When this convention is over, don’t anyone say “conservative” to me for a year. My brain cells that process that word are bruised & frayed.
nettie_b Nettie Britts: @BradWarthen Obama or Osama?
BradWarthen: @nettie_b Don’t tell me I mixed up “Obama” & “Osama” again…
BradWarthen: Connor leading with his strong suit. Last speaker said he’d been a county chair. Whoopee. Connor was out fighting the Taliban.
BradWarthen: Connor promises to take on Harpootlian aggressively, as a “warrior.”
BradWarthen: Ashley Byrd of SCRN just asked whether I was “having fun.” Let’s not get carried away. This is, after all, a political party event…
BradWarthen: SC Republicans now voting on “red ballots,” Kevin Hall keeps saying. I suppose blue ballots would give them cooties…
scott_english: @BradWarthen Overly snarky doesn’t work either, Brad.
BradWarthen: This young man, Eric Miller of Chapin, is passing out Donald Trump literature. He likes his “common sense philosophy”…yfrog.com/gyxv9onj
BradWarthen: @scott_english What was that about? The “conservative” thing? You know I can’t stand that bumper-sticker stuff…
scott_english: @BradWarthen Well, your snark is disproportionate in general. I was referring to the red ballot. That’s an effort at ballot integrity.
BradWarthen: @scott_english Aw, that was FUNNY. betcha Kevin Hall would laugh if you show it to him…
BradWarthen: @scott_english As I recall, your old boss Mark Sanford was also inspired to irony by GOP conventions. Always liked that about him…
scott_english: @BradWarthen I don’t think it was limited to the GOP conventions. That might be why I’m not there today though.
BradWarthen: Florence County chair (I think) referred gratuitously to “that scoundrel Clyburn.” Crowd went “ooooohhh.” Not what you’d call a cheer…
BradWarthen: John was keeping count: “@johnroconnor: Connelly tally is Connelly 46%, Brown 30%, Connor 24%”
BradWarthen: Ran into Ray Moore earlier, and he updated me on how his campaign to shut down the public schools is going. He’s encouraged…
RETWEET: AlbertBrooks: Sitting in airport waiting to fly Virgin America. There’s a 72 Virgin America joke here but security is watching.
RETWEET: You must be serving beer… “@donnareedshow: Next- interview w Dem Caucus Leader @PhilBaileySC on @donnareedshow on @560WVOC”
BradWarthen: Just had a nice chat w/ Alan Wilson, who STILL seems like a mild, sensible young man, in spite of that red-meat speech…
RETWEET: jimdavenport_ap Jim Davenport: AP – Huntsman takes on Obama role in first SC speech:http://apne.ws/iqok36
RETWEET: Not today, I hope… “@jimdavenport_ap: AP – Videos show bin Laden watching himself on TV: apne.ws/lOnvTU”
AshleyLandess: That was pretty funny, Brad! @BradWarthen @jimdavenport_ap
BradWarthen: Kevin’s getting tough; he just used the gavel…
BradWarthen: There’ll be a 2nd ballot w/ all three candidates staying in (which I don’t get). Crowd booed, which doesn’t bode well for 3rd place Connor.
BradWarthen: Kevin repeatedly says 2nd ballot will be on “the white ballots.” I will not make a joke. I will not make a joke. I will not make a joke…
RETWEET: johnroconnor John O’Connor: First ballot results: Connelly 399.5, Brown 247, 194.5. All three stay in for second ballot. Crowd boos.
BradWarthen: I need to get close enough to get a picture of that Connelly fellow. Don’t think the one I got of Connor is going to do me much good…
BradWarthen: On 2nd ballot, only one county spokesman has tried to give a cute speech about his county. Kevin called him up VERY short…
BradWarthen: Sounds like Connelly might make it this time, bringing the process mercifully to a close…
TylerMJones: @BradWarthen Can we get a diversity update from inside the convention? Just for kicks.
BradWarthen: @TylerMJones From where I stand, I see 2 black guys, but really can’t make out most of the delegates from here…
BradWarthen: @TylerMJones Earlier, a speaker bragged on Tim Scott, got a nice hand. They’re right proud of him, and by extension themselves…
johnroconnor: Unofficial Connelly count: Connelly 55%, Brown 33%, Connor 12%. Waiting on official result.
BradWarthen: Just chatted with Katon Dawson, who calls me “Rolling Stone” (old joke). He’s going to be helping Gingrich, expects race to get lively…
BradWarthen: Chad Connelly promises to be Dick Harpootlian’s “worst nightmare”…
BradWarthen: Gotta be the signs that did it… yfrog.com/h8bg1cij
dphamilton: @BradWarthen @tylermjones thanks for keeping it on the “content of character”…
BradWarthen: @dphamilton @tylermjones Hey, all I did was answer the question…
lianaorr: @BradWarthen @TylerMJones I’m proud of Tim Scott bc he’s a true conservative & statesman. And his motion just made this conv a lot shorter.

I don’t know what motion she meant. I was gone by then.

Bachmann running DOUBLE ads at thestate.com! Where’s my taste?

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OK, this is getting ridiculous. I knew that Michele Bachmann throwing around Web ad money in SC, but multiple ads per page on thestate.com? (On one page, I saw THE SAME AD twice, with one copy of it stacked on top of the other, the way those two slightly different ones are below. But when I tried to call it up like that again to grab a screen shot, I couldn’t get it to refresh quite that way.)

And not a single ad on bradwarthen.com. Which would probably give her a better deal.

At least, not yet.

Is this right? Is this fair? Is this the way the world should be? To quote the guy in the movie that came out today, “I say thee nay!”

If this pattern keeps up, I’m going to start seriously questioning this lady’s judgment…

Anybody see anything good at GOP debate? (FYI, this post mentions Ron Paul)

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As I mentioned before, I didn’t go. To the GOP debate in Greenville, that is. And I didn’t even think to watch it on TV last night (was it even on live? I wouldn’t know). When I got home from the Five Points event, the fam was watching a 1944 musical comedy called “Bathing Beauty,” starring Red Skelton, Esther Williams, Basil Rathbone, Xavier Cugat and Harry James and his orchestra. Which caused me to realize something: When he was young, Red Skelton looked a lot like Conan O’Brien.

Anyway, I read the stories about the debate in The State today — this one and this one — and didn’t get the sense that I missed anything at all.

But perhaps some of my readers DID see it, and were impressed by something or other. If so, this would be a good time to share.

I’m sure it wasn’t as bad as this guy says:

Hollywood is reportedly at work on a remake of the 1991 film “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead.” This, however, is unnecessary, because a remake is already playing. It’s called the Republican presidential primary.

In the original, a mom leaves her kids with a babysitter for three months, but after the babysitter dies of a heart attack, the children fend for themselves for the summer.

The GOP nominating contest so far follows a very similar plot. With the grown-ups (played by Jeb Bush and Mitch Daniels) out of town, the field has been left in the custody of caretakers (played by Mitt Romney, Donald Trump and Newt Gingrich). When even the babysitters fail to show up at the first debate of the season, the juveniles run the thing themselves.

At Thursday night’s debate in South Carolina, Libertarian Rep. Ron Paul explained why heroin and prostitution should be legal and why the Department of Homeland Security should be eliminated…

As I said, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t that bad. But… I don’t seem to have missed anything. There IS quite a bit of excitement among Ron Paul fans, partly because they’re always excited (which is why I put him in the headline — that’s always good for about 1,000 page views), and partly because apparently no one at the debate offered him any competition in attention-grabbing.

Bottom line, what’s going on here is… nothing. You might see some activity at some point in the future among some Republicans who, if they gain the nomination, just might have a chance of giving Barack “Hey, I Just Killed bin Laden” Obama a run for his money, but none of them were going to poke their heads out this week.

And I’m not going to bet that this ever gets competitive, with serious candidates really running hard. At least, not soon. (Which is a shame because, you know, I’d like to get some of those ad bucks here on the blog.)

The contrast to four years ago is palpable. In May 2007, there was a GOP presidential debate here in Columbia, and while I didn’t actually go to that one, either, I did watch it on TV. I watched it in a bar with Bob McAlister. The reason we were in the bar was that John McCain was supposed to show up there after. He did, and that’s when I shot my most popular candidate video ever — the one that has been viewed 62,671 times on YouTube — the one in which McCain refers to Lindsey Graham as “that little jerk.”

There were enough actual contenders for the nomination there that Ron Paul, while he attracted attention, was regarded as a curiosity, as the outlier he is. Not this time. Did you see that Rep. Paul had again raised a boatload of money? Don’t know exactly what he plans to do with it. Surely not even he believes he is ever likely to be president of the United States. I suppose it will be like last time — lots of posters and such, not all that many voters beyond the passionate core, who are sort of doing their own thing. Perhaps Doug can explain it to us…

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