But only in a real emergency, mind you…

Thanks to Jack Kuenzie for bringing our attention to this via Twitter:

Andre Bauer, describing himself on his FB page: “The only candidate who will tell the truth when need be.” Perhaps not the best wording. 1:21 PM Jun 9th via web

And sure enough, there it is, right where Jack said. The entire blurb:

From the honks to the road side chats our people are determined to vote for the real conservative in race for governor.The only candidate to give back his paycheck.The only candidate who runs his own business.The only candidate who has experience marketing South Carolina to business leaders across the world.The only candidate who will tell the truth when need be.

He means it, too. When the chips are down and all other options have been exhausted, ol’ Andre will flat tell you some truth, and take a polygraph to prove the amazing feat.

I am reminded of one of my favorite quotes from Huck Finn, which I long ago used in a column about Bill Clinton:

So I went to studying it out. I says to myself, I reckon a body that ups and tells the truth when he is in a tight place is taking considerable many resks, though I ain’t had no experience, and can’t say for certain; but it looks so to me, anyway; and yet here’s a case where I’m blest if it don’t look to me like the truth is better and actuly SAFER than a lie. I must lay it by in my mind, and think it over some time or other, it’s so kind of strange and unregular. I never see nothing like it. Well, I says to myself at last, I’m a-going to chance it; I’ll up and tell the truth this time, though it does seem most like setting down on a kag of powder and touching it off just to see where you’ll go to.
Ol’ Huck had a finely developed moral sense, and could tell when it was time to do something as outrageous and “unregular” as tell the truth. And ol’ Andre’s making sure that we know that if and when the need arises, he can do the same.

Virtual Front Page, Thursday, June 10, 2010

Taking a break from all-Alvin Greene new, all the time, here’s what else is going on:

  1. Sanford signs $300M in across-the-board vetoes (P&C) — Contains some more details than in yesterday’s story on the subject.
  2. General McChrystal: Kandahar operation will take longer (WashPost) — More time needed to get local leaders on board before the big push against the Taliban. Oh, and in case you’re wondering why we should keep fighting these people, check this out: “Officials: Taliban executes boy, 7, for spying.”
  3. U.K. Speaks Out in Defense of BP (WSJ) — HMG getting fed up with folks on our side of the pond beating up on their lads.
  4. BP accused of ‘lack of integrity’ by US House speaker (BBC) — Meanwhile, this is what they’re hearing over in Britain.
  5. Clyburn wants feds to probe SC Senate candidate (AP) — OK, so there’s some Greene news on my front…
  6. Politicians, analysts question new open primary system (LATimes) — Meanwhile, I’ve been neglecting California’s Proposition 14, which sounds absolutely wonderful to me. We need to start pushing to try it right here in South Carolina. (Thanks to Phillip for getting me to pay attention.)

Free Times story on Greene BEFORE the vote

Corey Hutchins over at the Free Times brings my attention to his story about Alvin Greene, posted this afternoon:

…State party executive director Jay Parmley looked like he’d bitten down on a joy buzzer as he sat in the chair of his office, scrolling up and down the precinct reports on his computer monitor shaking his head, cursing under his breath, wondering why, why, why; how, how, how?
In the race for United States Senate, political unknown Alvin M. Greene had walloped challenger Vic Rawl.
Around the state, Democratic activists were facing the smacking electoral truth that a non-campaigning, unemployed, black, country-living, coo-coo-for-Cocoa-Puffs nobody who’d been kicked out of the Army and was currently facing federal sex charges had just beaten — in the Democratic primary, and by 17 percentage points — a well-known former legislator, judge and current Charleston County councilman who’d raised a quarter of a million bucks for the race and for months been campaigning his ass off.
The news wasn’t sinking in as much as it was settling like a depth charge….

But I wasn’t nearly as impressed by that as I was by the fact that Corey had done a reasonably complete story on Greene well before Tuesday’s vote. An excerpt from that May 19 piece:

At the end of a dirt driveway off a dusty highway in rural Clarendon County, just outside the town of Manning, a lawn overgrown with weeds sports no campaign sign for the man living in a house there who has filed to run as a Democrat for the U.S. Senate.

The candidate, a 32-year-old unemployed black Army veteran named Alvin Greene, walked into the state Democratic Party headquarters in March with a personal check for $10,400. He said he wanted to become South Carolina’s U.S. senator.

Needless to say, Democratic Party Chairwoman Carol Fowler was a bit surprised.

Fowler had never met Greene before, she says, and the party isn’t in the habit of taking personal checks from candidates filing for office. She told Greene that he’d have to start a campaign account if he wanted to run. She asked him if he thought it was the best way to invest more than $10,000 if he was unemployed.

Several hours later, Greene came back with a campaign check. The party accepted it, and Greene became an official candidate for the U.S. Senate. He was eager to have his picture put on the party’s website to show he had filed, says state Democratic Party executive director Jay Parmley.

And Corey was asking Greene himself some of the questions that should have been asked:

Reached by phone May 12, and asked how he thought his campaign was going, Greene said, “So far, so good.”

Asked when he planned to file with the FEC, he replied, “OK, yeah, so what do you need? What are you trying to get from me, now? I’m in a hurry.”

Greene says he decided to run for the United States Senate two years ago when he was serving in Korea.

As for the $10,400 he used to get on the ballot, Greene says it was money he’d made from being a soldier.

“That was my personal pay,” he says. “Money out of my pocket.”

Parmley says he finds the whole thing odd.

He says running for any other office in the state would cost much less money. “If you’re going to file for something and not do anything, why waste $10,000?”

Even then, ahead of time, Corey was raising the Republican conspiracy theory, rightly or wrongly:

Greene’s curious candidacy raises the question that something else might be going on.

Republican place markers in Palmetto State Democratic primaries are campaign legend.

In the early ‘90s, a Republican strategist was prosecuted and forced to pay a fine when he was found to have coaxed an unemployed black fisherman into running in a primary race to increase white turnout at the polls in a Lowcountry congressional race. The political operative paid the man’s filing fee.

Greene says he’s never heard of such a thing. He says he just really wanted to run.

Regardless of how or why he got into the race, his candidacy has certainly created some political intrigue.

Good enterprise, young man. Too bad more of us didn’t read it at the time.

Vic Rawl statement about Alvin Greene

This just in — an e-mailed statement from the very stunned Vic Rawl regarding the guy who beat him Tuesday:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Statement by Judge Vic Rawl

Judge Vic Rawl issued the following statement today:
It has been an eventful three days for our state.
The results of the Senate primary on Election Day surprised almost everyone in the state, apparently including Mr. Greene.
There are a number of serious allegations out there about the election. No one yet knows if they are true.
I do know that Jim Clyburn is an icon in state politics and what he had to say today should be taken very seriously.
If any of the allegations have merit, the people of South Carolina have a right to know that.
My campaign is looking closely at data from Election Day and otherwise for irregularities.
As for Mr. Greene, what happens next is entirely in his hands. I wish him well, and hope he makes his decisions in the best interests of his family and the people of South Carolina.
Paid for by Vic Rawl for U.S. Senate

The Candidate Was A Spy, and other startling revelations from Alvin Greene

I may have found a paucity of coverage of the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in my local paper this morning, but the intel is coming in thick and fast from other sources today.

For instance, speaking of intel… didja know Alvin Greene served in military intelligence in the U.S. Army. Really. That’s what he told The Root, anyway. Kind of gives new meaning to the whole conspiracy theory thing, huh?

Read the whole interview here. An excerpt:

TR: Where did you campaign?
AG: All across the state.
TR: Any specificstops or speeches you can remember?
AG: Nothing in particular. I talked with a lot of people over the phone, and people in the press. They’ll print what they want in the press, just bits of it. I don’t know. It worked out. I worked hard. It’s not a big surprise.
TR: How do you plan to beat Jim DeMint in November?
AG: I would like to debate him in September. I would like an hour on a major network. Just to, you know, discuss issues about South Carolina and the rest of the country.
TR What do you think makes you a better candidate than DeMint?
AG: We have more unemployed now than any other time in South Carolina’s history, so something isn’t working. We spend two times more on inmates than students. Priorities are not in order. I want to make a difference and Jim–the incumbent Sen. Jim DeMint–he’s against the health care reform. They’re trying to repeal the health care law that was passed. The Republicans are trying to repeal the health care bill that was signed into law recently. Things like that. That’s the difference. I’m for health care reform. And getting folks to work here.
TR: Do you plan on getting a Web site now that you’re through the primaries?
AG: Well, I need campaign contributions to really get my Web site up. I’m working on that now, but that comes from campaign contributions.
TR: Do you have any?
AG: No, but I’m working on some things.

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.

Clyburn expands upon conspiracy theory

Alvin Greene isn’t the only candidate that Jim Clyburn thinks has nefarious secret backers, according to TPM Muckraker:

House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn has called for a U.S. Attorney investigation into the mysterious candidacy of Democratic Senate nominee Alvin Greene because he thinks the mischief goes far beyond one wacky race. Clyburn (D-SC), Congress’ highest ranking African American, told TPM in an interview today he believes at least two other Democratic candidates on Tuesday’s primary ballot were planted by people with deep pockets and nefarious motives.

“The party’s choice in the 1st Congressional district lost. The party’s choice for U.S. Senate lost. Sounds like a pattern to me,” Clyburn told TPM. He said Greene was one of three Democratic candidates in three separate races whom the state party didn’t back or even recognize. All three candidates are African American.

One is Gregory Brown, who ran unsuccessfully against Clyburn in the 6th Congressional district. Another is Ben Frasier, who prevailed against state party-favored candidate Robert Burton in the 1st district. Greene, Brown and Frasier have something else in common — they haven’t filed any campaign finance reports with the Federal Elections Commission…

Wow. This is getting deep. Conspiracy this broad and far-reaching suggests the resources of a nation-state, or quasi-national players, such as the old Soviet Union, or the Hezbollah-Iran axis, or Howard Rich. Or something. As the Church Lady would have said, “Could it be… the Devil!?!?”

Naahhh…

The Politico profile of Will Folks

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.

Where was The State on Alvin Greene TODAY?

As I’ve been saying to anyone who asks, the nomination of Alvin Greene is a failure with enough blame to go around to everyone. The voters, of course (as politically incorrect, as anti-democratic, as it is to blame the precious voter). The Democratic Party. And definitely the media — both MSM and the vaunted, tell-you-everything (according to the hype) blogosphere. Apparently, bloggers were too busy telling you who they’d slept with to check out who the hell this guy was. (And yes, I include myself — not on the kiss-and-tell part, but on the not-checking-out-Alvin part.)

As for the MSM — well, it’s awfully easy to beat up on them on this. And they deserve it. That is NOT to blame the reporters and editors who are busting their butts trying to get the job done with grossly inadequate resources. It’s to blame the media as institutions that have failed as businesses to stay viable enough to do their jobs properly. Sound self-interested, since the failure of newspapers is why I don’t have a job with them any more? Well, yeah. But as a former newspaper exec, and an editor for three decades, I know whereof I speak.

True, newspapers have long ignored noncandidates. And they have long ignored, to a lesser extent, primary races to nominate a sacrificial lamb to go up against an invulnerable incumbent. Not because that was the right thing to do, but because when you’re covering scores of races, you have to set priorities, and the hotly contested ones get most of the ink.

But that traditional bias against the boring has been exponentially exacerbated by the emptying of newsrooms via the layoffs of recent years. Now, it’s not a choice; some important races simply are not going to be covered.

This year, you pretty much had to be in the governor’s race to get the media’s attention. And even then, if your name wasn’t Nikki Haley, it was hard to get free media. After he withdrew from the race several months ago, Dwight Drake told me that he had expected it to be hard to raise money (and it was so hard for him that that’s why he quit). But what surprised him was that the media was not to be found. As an old political hand, he was stunned at the lack of coverage.

But still. For none of us — not even people like me, who TRY (but often fail) to keep up with as much of it as possible — to know anything about this Alvin Greene guy is just outrageous. At the very least, even if this noncandidate was ignored, Vic Rawl should have gotten the minimal coverage necessary to give him the name recognition to win. But he didn’t.

OK, so at any rate, at least the media has jumped all over this story now, right? Mr. Greene has TV crews chasing

Finally, I found it -- at the bottom of Page B3.

him. Mother Jones had a story about him on Tuesday (a day earlier would have been nice, but then it’s not Mother Jones responsibility to inform SC about its own candidates). Everywhere I go, people are asking about him. “All Things Considered” called me this morning to get my thoughts on how all this happened.

Well, yes and no. Yes, he’s getting a lot of coverage now. But… and I really hate to say this about my old paper, because I love it and wish my friends still there all the success in the world … The State was weirdly negligent on the story in today’s paper.

When I read my paper this morning, it was the first thing I looked for. On the front page, of course — that’s where I put it. But it wasn’t on the front page. OK, on the Metro front — nope, not there. OK, so it’s packaged with the jump of another election story… nope. All right, back to the front page, to read the cutesie “winners and losers” story that I had initially bypassed about all the quirky little water-cooler talker stuff from the primary. I mean, it’s weird that this didn’t TOP that story if it was in it, but maybe it’s down farther… nope.

I gave up at that point, because I needed to leave to keep my appointment at ETV. But bewildered, I searched the paper again after lunch… and finally found it as a brief on page B3. Not in a roundup of election briefs, but just generic Metro & State briefs. It wasn’t even the first item. It was below a crime brief. As for the content, it was essentially the same brief I had seen on the Web site the day before.

I’m sure the paper will have more complete coverage of this tomorrow, and play it better. Even in the good old days of full staffs, things tended to be disorganized on the day after all-out election day coverage. I see Clyburn’s intimation that it’s all a foul GOP plot is getting some play at thestate.com now.

But I was really disappointed this morning.

Barrett brings back Sarge, leaves out GOP

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

Watch me tonight on SC ETV with Mark Quinn — but WITHOUT Nikki Haley

Just taped a segment over at ETV with Mark Quinn for tonight’s installment of “The Big Picture.”

Watch it at 7:30 p.m. on WRLK, as well as on ETV-HD. The show will also air on the radio Friday at 1 p.m.

My understanding is that Gresham Barrett will be on the show as well, although he wasn’t on with me. My part was just Mark and me shooting the … stuff… about Tuesday’s results. We talked Nikki Haley, Vincent Sheheen, Alvin Greene, and other stuff.

However… Nikki Haley, last I heard, will NOT be on the show. In fact, I was told that her campaign had not even responded to any of ETV’s invitations. I asked “What did you try?” and the answer was, “Everything.” Multiple times, in case an e-mail or something got lost.

Could it be … and I’m just speculating here… could it be that Nikki doesn’t want to face the folks at ETV because she plans to vote to sustain the governor’s veto of their funding next Tuesday?

Nahhhh. Probably just a miscommunication. When somebody with her campaign sees this (and apparently someone over there is watching, since it took no time for them to set me straight last week — which I appreciate), no doubt they’ll call ETV back, and you’ll see her on the show tonight.

Maybe.

Who’s that following me? Could it be the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate?

OK, I’m not falling for this stunt again. At least, not entirely.

This morning, I got a message that “Alvin Greene is now following you on Twitter!”

And sure enough, there he was. So I responded, “Apparently, Alvin Greene is now following me on Twitter. Welcome, Alvin. But where were you before now?”

But I was immediately suspicious. Not that there was anything especially odd (considering who we’re talking about here) at his profile page. Here were the only three Tweets to be found there:

Test. Putting South Carolina back to work. Greene for Senate.
about 11 hours ago via web

please email me [email protected] for you volunteer. putting sc back to work!!!!!
about 10 hours ago via web

need help findin a camapgin manager. hit me up at [email protected]. peace.
about 1 hour ago via web

But I doubt it’s him, because I’m seeing a pattern here. Remember when I thought Nikki Haley’s husband was following me last week? Well, that turned out to be a hoax. And here are the things that that follower and this one had in common:

  1. The fake last week called himself “MichaelHaleySC.” This follower was called “AlvinGreeneSC.”
  2. There were exactly three Tweets on each site, all of them new.
  3. The Tweets were sort of plausible, yet with a hint of parody. The “AlvinGreeneSC” one reads as more of a parody than the “MichaelHaleySC” one, but both had a bit of that feel to them.

So who is this sorta kinda wiseacre out there? If it IS a wiseacre. It’s the nature of the Web that one seldom knows for sure anymore…

Just for fun, a bit of philosophy football

Well, I have a front page, but if I’m ever going to have a full virtual newspaper, it must have a sports page, right?

Right.

So it is that I thought I’d share this wonderful Monte Python skit. Maybe you’ve seen it, but I never had. At the end of a long day, I looked it up tonight, having read about it this morning in a book review in the WSJ, to wit:

In a blissfully funny, vintage Monty Python sketch, there is a soccer game between Germany and Greece in which the players are leading philosophers. The always formidable Germany, captained by “Nobby” Hegel, boasts the world-class attackers Nietzsche, Heidegger and Wittgenstein, while the wily Greeks, captained by Socrates, field a dream team with Plato in goal, Aristotle on defense and—a surprise inclusion—the mathematician Archimedes.

Toward the end of the keenly fought game, during which nothing much appears to happen except a lot of thinking, the canny Socrates scores a bitterly disputed match winner. Mayhem ensues! The enraged Hegel argues in vain with the referee, Confucius, that the reality of Socrates’ goal is merely an a priori adjunct of non-naturalistic ethics, while Kant holds that, ontologically, the goal existed only in the imagination via the categorical imperative, and Karl Marx—who otherwise had a quiet game—protests that Socrates was offside.

What, you were expecting Gamecock football? Perish the thought. You want that, go elsewhere…

Virtual Front Page, Wednesday, June 9, 2010

I’m tired. But here’s a front page anyway:

  1. U.N. Security Council Passes New Sanctions Against Iran (NYT) — The Obama administration has decided that the whole “talking to them” thing wasn’t working. Further proof that whatever Obama may have said to please his base during the election, he’s a pragmatist in office.
  2. Obama Pledges New Aid for Palestinians (NYT) — But we face the same old problem: Since Abbas has no control of Gaza, what does he do with it there?
  3. Party asks nominee with pending charge to withrdraw (thestate.com) — No, I didn’t make a mistake. That’s the way “withdraw” was actually spelled in the headline at thestate.com.
  4. In the ‘year of the woman,’ few mentions of gender (WashPost) — Story mentions Nikki, among others.
  5. BP Shares Plunge 16% as Pressures Mount (WSJ) — Looks like maybe the market’s doing its job, huh?
  6. Google accused of criminal intent over StreetView data (BBC) — The Germans are almost certain to prosecute. But how are they even going to look up the law?

The Question of the Year

… 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?

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?

OK, let’s beat up on ME: I’m a horrible citizen

People are giving me a hard time for being mean to Andre, as I knew they would. I just got to thinking about how recently lots of folks were worried about him becoming governor (with reason) and thought someone should take note of how fortunate things turned out.

So now I’m going to feel like a louse next time I see Andre. Only I won’t tell him that because I hate backing down, and that’ll make me feel like even more of a louse… It’s tough being a Catholic blogger. All that guilt.

But let me see if I can expiate a little of it with some mortification of me. Don’t feel bad, Andre: I’m a horrible citizen. I’ll bet Andre at least knew who he wanted to vote for for U.S. Senate. But I didn’t, so I left it blank, and look what happened: A guy facing charges for indecency got nominated over the only candidate I’d heard of on the Democratic side — a guy who, as far as I know, was perfectly fine.

How can a guy facing a morals charge, a guy with “no campaign funds, no signs, and no website” even, win the primary over a guy who had at least campaigned a little? Someone suggested it was because his name was on the ballot first. Kind of makes you wonder about this whole Democracy thing, huh?
I mean, come ON, people — I’d never heard of this Greene guy. I didn’t know MUCH about Vic Rawl, beyond the fact that he’s one of my 542 Facebook “friends.” At least he’d taken the trouble to do THAT.
But I can’t castigate anyone but myself. I didn’t vote in that race. And that was supremely irresponsible of me. I should have done the research, in spite of the fact that Jim DeMint seems inevitable. I don’t like having DeMint as my senator, and I should at least do my best to decide whom I want going up against him, however slim that candidate’s chances may be.
But I didn’t. I was so mesmerized by the governor’s race, and a couple of others that happened to catch my eye along the way, that I neglected that one. And of course, I hadn’t even decided to vote in the Democratic primary until the last minute.
My problem is, I’m so accustomed to knowing a lot about these candidates in spite of myself, because they all used to come see me for endorsement interviews. I have to learn to do what everybody else does (at least, they do it if they are good citizens), and do my research as a citizen and be prepared. Next time, I will.
Y’all remind me.

Just in case you thought DeMint was in trouble…

Not that you did, but just in case you did, I’ll share this release from Democratic Party HQ:

Columbia, SC- Today, South Carolina Democratic Party Chair Carol Fowler asked Alvin Greene to withdraw from the race for US Senate. Greene, a resident of Manning S.C., was the apparent winner of the Democratic Party’s nomination for U.S. Senate in yesterday’s primary. Since the election, the Associated Press has revealed that Greene was recently charged with disseminating, procuring or promoting obscenity after showing obscene photos to a University of South Carolina student. Fowler released the following statement after her conversation with Greene:

“Today I spoke with Alvin Greene, the presumptive Democratic nominee for the US Senate, and asked him to withdraw from the race. I did not do this lightly, as I believe strongly that the Democratic voters of this state have the right to select our nominee.  But this new information about Mr. Greene has would certainly have affected the decisions of many of those voters,” said Fowler.

“We are proud to have nominated a Democratic ticket this year that, with the apparent exception of Mr. Greene, reflects South Carolina’s values.  Our candidates want to give this state a new beginning without the drama and irresponsibility of the past 8 years, and the charges against Mr. Greene indicate that he cannot contribute to that new beginning.  I hope he will see the wisdom of leaving the race.”

You see, the Democrats are jealous: The Republicans are getting all that free media on “The Daily Show,” and they want some, too…