Last week, Republican Senator Olympia Snowe pointed out in the New York Times after Arlen Specter switched parties that “It is true that being a Republican moderate sometimes feels like being a cast member of ‘Survivor’ — you are presented with multiple challenges, and you often get the distinct feeling that you’re no longer welcome in the tribe.”

As leading Republicans including Eric Cantor, Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh continue to wage self-interested battles to shape the future of the Republican Party in the way that best serves their own political aspirations, Americans are voting themselves off the island, and out of the Republican party.

Watch “Survivor: GOP” by clicking here.

A Leadership Vacuum in South Carolina

In recent weeks, South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford has been making the rounds of the Sunday morning talk shows and speaking out in our nation’s major newspapers, explaining why he might become the only governor in the country to turn down federal stimulus funding for health care, education, and public safety.

The national audiences he is appealing to should be aware that Governor Sanford is not speaking for his state. In the real South Carolina, our leaders, Republican and Democrat, have watched in dismay as he has worked to further his political prospects at the expense of our state, touting grand principles with complete indifference to their practical effects.

Governor Sanford’s stubborn insistence on holding hostage $700 million in stimulus funding designed to plug the gaping holes in South Carolina’s decimated budget invites what the Republican chairman of the state’s Senate Finance Committee describes as “budgetary Armageddon.”

If he prevails, South Carolinians in every corner of the state will feel the effects.

Education budgets at the agency I oversee, cut by hundreds of millions of dollars already, will remain in shreds. More than 2,600 public education employees will lose their jobs, including 1,500 classroom teachers. State funding for schools will fall to its lowest level in a decade.

College tuition costs will skyrocket. Law enforcement, compromised by budget cuts already in a state with one of the highest violent crime rates in the nation, will be further jeopardized, prompting the Governor’s own appointed head of the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) to break ranks and publicly describe his decision as “devastating.” More than 3,000 criminals could be released. State troopers will be let go; prisons may close.

None of this real-life devastation seems to matter as much to the Governor as protecting the purity of his anti-government principles.

The leadership vacuum so well illustrated by the current crisis is nothing new to South Carolinians. We have paid a heavy price over six long and fruitless years for a governor who consistently puts politics ahead of policy and who cares little for what it costs his state in stalled progress and human suffering.

Former governors, Republican and Democrat, understood clearly the role of an engaged government in setting the stage for state prosperity. Their intensive and consistent focus on attracting jobs, improving public schools, building infrastructure, and creating opportunities to overcome poverty, bequeathed to Governor Sanford a state with an abundance of promise and opportunity.

Today, after years of shortsighted governing bent on reducing government at any cost and innumerable impasses between the governor and his Republican legislature, foreclosures in South Carolina are on the rise. Poverty has increased. Roads and bridges across the state are in disrepair. Prisons are understaffed and past capacity.

Unemployment, which was rising steadily even before the recession, has soared, reaching second-highest in the nation and heading rapidly for first place.

Education is now also endangered after improving substantially in recent years. Instead of tackling urgent needs including tax reform, adequate resources, and equitable funding to improve schools, we have been mired in useless debate over private school vouchers, engineered entirely by out-of-state ideologues attracted here by the governor’s indifference to public schools.

South Carolina’s leaders have done what we can to move our state forward without the benefit of an effective chief executive. In education, we have become a national leader in public school accountability and in expanding choices for parents and students within the system of public education. We have pursued innovations like teacher pay-for-performance and done the legwork on comprehensive tax and funding reform.

We will regain our momentum. But we will never recover the time wasted over the lost decade of this governor’s two terms.

Governor Sanford hopes his model of uncompromising fiscal austerity will make him the new face of a revitalized Republican party. He may seek to spread his style of leadership to the rest of the country as a candidate for president in 2012.

In his home state, we look forward to the day when solving problems will be more important than political stunts, when progress will matter more than abstract principle and personal ambition, and when the needs of real people assume their rightful place as the top priority of the governor who represents them.

As I questioned Gov. Mark Sanford’s pending decision not to take the economic recovery funds offered to the Palmetto State last month, Rep. Ted Vick and I begged him to leave his multi-million dollar Sullivan’s Island home, and we asked him to look around the rural parts of South Carolina where federal aid is needed.

Apparently he did not take our advice, opting instead to base his decision on what will get him closer to his party’s presidential nomination and endear him in the hearts of the Cato and Goldwater institutes.

Since being elected to Congress in 1994, Mark Sanford has made a political career out of saying “no.” He was nicknamed “Dr. No” by some of his colleagues in Washington and he carried that same mentality with him to the Governor’s Mansion in Columbia.

Since his election in 2002, South Carolina’s economy has tanked. For nearly that entire time, the former Goldman Sachs employee who claims to know so much about economics has presided over a state that has hovered at 48th and 49th in the nation’s employment statistics.

During this same time we have watched our state’s commerce chiefs come and go.

As more and more South Carolinians find themselves out of work, employers coming to the Southeast continue to ignore South Carolina for our friends in Georgia, North Carolina, and Alabama, and just last year, Volks-wagen passed on us and went to Chattanooga.

Now, six years after Sanford took the reins in Columbia, Barack Obama has been elected president of the United States. After touring the rural parts of South Carolina while running for president, something Mark Sanford has rarely done, President Obama witnessed the need for recovery aid to rural and small-town America. He saw the dilapidated schools in our “Corridor of Shame” along I-95. He saw the closed textile mills and the rural communities still struggling to find jobs to replace those decades-old closures.

After traveling on our crumbling roads and seeing our shortcomings, President Obama is now in a position upon his election to help rural America, and he is offering us a helping hand.

Sadly, Gov. Sanford now has the audacity to say, “No.”

Mark Sanford, never one to turn down an ultra-conservative brownie point, was quick to return to the habits of his days in Washington, and he gave a Ron Paul-style “No” to the president’s offer to assist the people of South Carolina.

Why, in the face of all of our needs, would the governor of a poor, rural state neglect the citizens who elected him?

The answer is clear. Sanford was just continuing his political games.

Instead of listening to the needs of a state that is either stuck in neutral or in full reverse, he chose to champion the agenda of the radical right-wing think tanks.

By attempting to divert $700 million away from efforts that will save 7,500 teachers their jobs, fix our crumbling schools, repair our roads and bridges, and create needed jobs, Mark Sanford has failed the people of South Carolina.

Mark Sanford is more concerned with promoting his political philosophy than he is defending our fellow South Carolinians, and because of this, he just doesn’t get it.

Essentially, our governor does not realize that we are not a discussion or a case study in a Washington think-tank seminar, or a political science classroom.

However, we are in the real world, and his decisions have consequences and affect the lives of South Carolinians.

Boyd Brown, a Democrat, is a member of the S.C. House, representing rural Chester and Fairfield Counties. At the age of 22, he’s the youngest state lawmaker in the nation.

Warthen: Looking ahead to 2010: Are we hopeful yet?
By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor

Since the current occupant has sort of put the whole being-governor-of-South-Carolina thing behind him — nowadays you have to track national media to know what he’s up to — let’s follow his lead, and look forward to the time when he no longer holds the office even technically.

In the spirit of getting us to that point as quickly as possible, I spoke last week with the one declared candidate for the 2010 gubernatorial election, Sen. Vincent Sheheen.

If you don’t know the 37-year-old Camden attorney, you might know his daddy, former Higher Education Commissioner Fred, or his uncle, former House Speaker Bob. He is like them in his dedication to public service, yet very different. His uncle was the last Democrat to run the House, while the nephew has been shaped by having to get things done in a world run by Republicans. It’s made him a consensus-builder, and he thinks that has prepared him well for this moment.

Not only does he think he has a good chance of gaining the Democratic nomination among those who have been mentioned — and his close allies who might have drawn from the same base of support, Rep. James Smith and Sen. Joel Lourie, are not running — but, “at this point in the state’s history, I have a good chance in the general election,” whoever the GOP nominee is. Why? “Because people are not satisfied.”

He can identify with that: “I’ve reached this point out of frustration and hope.”

“We have been stuck in a rut for a long time,” he said, and “I am not seeing things changing at all. And that’s very frustrating.” He senses a similar frustration in the electorate. He thinks voters realize that “if we keep… not doing anything, then we’re not going to improve.”

So what does he want to do?

• “Get real again about job creation and economic development.” He says the state needs a governor who will treat that as a priority, playing an active part in recruiting business, and working to see that the whole state, including the rural parts, benefits.

• “Pulling South Carolina’s governmental structure into at least the 20th century, and maybe the 21st century.” Some of what he wants to do is what the current governor has said he wanted to do. But the plan that Mr. Sheheen has put forward (parts of which he explains on the facing page) actually has some traction — enough so that Mark Sanford mentioned it favorably in his State of the State address this year. Sen. Sheheen believes the time has come to move restructuring past the starting line, and he thinks he can do it” “I’m not knocking anybody; I’m just saying it’s time to have somebody who can build consensus.”

• “Change the way we spend our money.” As he rightly describes the process, “We budget in the dark.” He wants to see a programmatic budget, followed by the legislative oversight that has been missing, to make sure the spending does what it’s intended to do.

• Combine conservation with economic development. He thinks we need to move beyond setting aside just to conserve, but convert what is conserved to benefit “the humans in a community.” He points to the ways the Camden battlefield has been used to promote tourism.

• Change the way we fund education. Make funding equitable, based on pupils, not districts, so that “a similarly situated student will have the same opportunities … regardless of where they live.”

“When I ask whether there’s anything else, he confesses: “I’m a geek. I could keep going, but … I’ve got to think of something that’s politically catchy. I’m supposed to do that.”

At which point he proves his geekhood by mentioning comprehensive tax reform, which he’s been advocating “since my first day in the House.”

But while that issue might not make voters’ hearts beat faster, he speaks again of what he sees as “a growing consensus that we need to do something.”

And he thinks the high-profile, counterproductive “contention between the current governor and the Legislature” has created an opportunity for someone who wants to move beyond that.

But how would a Democrat fare in that task in a State House run by Republicans? Quite well, he says. He calls Republican Carroll Campbell “one of the most effective governors,” a fact he attributes in part to the “constructive friction” between him and the Democratic Legislature that his Uncle Bob helped lead.

Ironically, Vincent Sheheen seems to be suggesting that his party has become enough of an outsider in the halls of state power that a consensus-minded Democrat could be less threatening to, and more successful in working with, the GOP leadership. “Someone who is not jockeying for position within their own party could actually help to bring together some of the different factions.”

As a representative of “swing counties” — Chesterfield, Lancaster and Kershaw — he sees himself as having the ability to be that Democrat.

Thus far — perhaps because he’s the only declared candidate in either party — he wears the burden of this campaign lightly. At one point he asks me, “Am I making you hopeful?” — then chuckles when I decline to answer.

But I will say this to you, the reader: He’s talking about the right issues, and he’s talking about them the right way. That’s a start. Here’s hoping that the candidates yet to declare, in both parties, do the same. Then perhaps we can have a gubernatorial choice, for once, between good and better.

 Interview With South Carolina State Representative Anton Gunn
February 19, 2009 Thursday

NEIL CAVUTO, HOST: All right, a group of Republican governors getting slammed for merely considering turning down stimulus dough. Sarah Palin is one of them, Mark Sanford in South Carolina another.
My next guest says that Sanford is putting politics ahead of the people. Anton Gunn is a Democratic state representative from South Carolina. Congressman, so you think your governor is — is hurting folks in your state?

ANTON GUNN (D), SOUTH CAROLINA STATE REPRESENTATIVE: Of course I do. I mean, we have such inadequate needs in South Carolina around roads, around schools. There`s so much investment that needs to take place, that we don`t have time to play politics, that we should accept the stimulus money and let`s get to work fixing South Carolina.

CAVUTO: All right. I apologize, Representative. You`re a state representative.
So, you are saying, look, you might be against this, Governor, but it is what it is; the money has been parceled out; take it, right?

GUNN: Yes, of course.It`s not difference than, if you have a whole in the roof of your house. You know, you don`t want to borrow money to fix that hole in your roof, but you know it`s important to fix the hole in the roof in your house.

CAVUTO: All right, but if the governor is arguing that it`s wrong to get money from Washington when the state can handle its own matters, should handle its own matters, and some of these governors are saying much the same thing, that there`s a principle here, you`re saying they`re wasting their time talking about principle?

GUNN: Well, I mean, I think principle is very important. But here`s the bottom line. The federal government is not going to give South Carolinians an exemption to pay back those federal taxes because we borrowed all this money. So, if we`re going to have to pay it back, as South Carolinians, anyway, why not take the investment and figure out how we can fix these crumbling roads we have, our schools that are woefully inadequate, that don`t have any investment?
It only makes sense to take advantage of that. And, so, let`s put the politics aside.

CAVUTO: But how do you know, Representative, states are going to do that? But how do you know that states are going to do that, right?
I mean, they might say, all right, we`re going to use the money for this, just like we had a lockbox for Social Security and lottery money was going to be used to help our schools, and neither happened.
So, saying your governor, other governors rejecting this are saying, we know where this — this goes, and we know that it will — it will take us away from taking responsible budgetary actions and be good fiscal stewards of our state, so we don`t want to go down there.

GUNN: Well, I understand about being good fiscal stewards.But if the money does not get spent right, that is the leadership`s responsibility. And, so, Mark Sanford is the governor of our state. I have confidence in his leadership. If he accepts the money, I expect him to make sure that it is spent properly.

CAVUTO: OK.Representative, thank you very much. We will see where all this goes.

GUNN: Thank you.

CAVUTO: Have you conveyed that, by the way, to the governor?

GUNN: Yes, I have.I talked to some folks in the Department of Commerce. I talked about this with some other folks that we have to just get beyond the politics and move forward.
And I will be glad to sit down with Governor Sanford and have a little bit more conversation about how we move South Carolina forward with this stimulus package.

CAVUTO: All right, Representative, thank you very much.

Just after November’s election, Republican senators huddled in a closed-door meeting to consider a package of rules that would have tossed Ted Stevens out of their conference, imposed term limits on party leaders and otherwise changed the way the Senate Republican Conference does business.

South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint, who proposed the rules, saw quickly that they weren’t going to be popular with his colleagues. So one of his staffers urged him to withdraw the proposal setting term limits on the GOP leader, and DeMint hoped the others would remain packaged together so they could be considered in a single vote.

But Conference Chairman Lamar Alexander of Tennessee took issue with the staffer and quickly called a vote on the term-limit proposal before DeMint decided to withdraw it. Then party leaders proceeded to call up each of DeMint’s other proposals separately, creating a long series of votes that DeMint lost badly.

“No doubt,” DeMint said, Republican leaders were “trying to humiliate” him.

But some Senate Republicans say privately that DeMint has done plenty to humiliate himself.

As Republicans seek a way forward after two disastrous elections, social and fiscal conservative activists off Capitol Hill are rallying behind DeMint because of his unrelenting style to force his party to return to its small-government, free market roots. DeMint, 57, said in an interview that he’s not dwelling on his previous battles with the GOP leadership and sees areas where his party’s leaders and the Obama administration can work together to solve the country’s problems.

But DeMint is less willing to compromise with Democrats than many in his party, and some Senate Republicans doubt his fiery tactics can lead their party out of the political wilderness when the public is seeking an end to legislative gridlock.

DeMint’s critics, including senior Republican senators and top aides in the Senate, say his refusal to work within the norms of the body — by showing deference to party leaders and chairmen and building support behind closed doors without airing concerns first to the news media — undermines his ability to draw support for his cause.

In interviews, some aides and senators say privately that while they believe he is fighting for a worthy cause, the drama he creates between GOP leaders and himself is designed to project his image as an unyielding reformer — even though he agrees with his leaders on most issues.

Asked in early December for his thoughts on DeMint, Sen. Bob Bennett of Utah — a close adviser to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky — said: “I have no comment. That should be a comment in and of itself.”

After learning of the Utah Republican’s comments, DeMint said that Bennett is “a good guy, but I think sometimes he’s part of the problem.”

DeMint, up for reelection in 2010, is genial by nature and says he tried to work within the Capitol’s seniority system during his three terms in the House and his first two years in the Senate.

But he has learned, he said, that lawmakers in both parties “only respond to pain.”

“They don’t respond to good policy, persuasion, being nice. I’ve tried it all,” he said. “There’s nobody nicer than I am.”

In a chamber where relationship building is seen as paramount to legislative successes, DeMint said that “club friendships [have become] more important than the party and where we’re going as a country.”

DeMint has also tried to build support from within the party, as chairman of the Senate’s conservative Steering Committee, which holds weekly lunches.

DeMint, however, says his approach to build pressure off Capitol Hill is most effective. He claims credit for drumming up grass-roots anger through blogs and radio talk shows that led to Barack Obama’s support for a one-year ban on earmarks, the defeat of the immigration bill in 2007 and GOP leaders’ rejection of the auto bailout last month. And he plans to take the same approach to derail the proposed economic stimulus package.

But GOP leaders don’t always respond well to DeMint’s sometimes uncompromising tactics.

For instance, members in both parties criticized DeMint last summer for forcing a Friday vote on a Global AIDS bill and then a Saturday vote on a housing rescue bill after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) would not allow his amendments to come forward for a vote. Adding to frustration from his party, DeMint insisted on his amendments even though they were likely to fail, and he missed the Friday vote because of a family wedding he had to attend.

DeMint recognizes that his style may cost him the support of leadership when it comes to some things he wants — such as a seat on the powerful Senate Finance Committee.

Nowhere was the tension between DeMint and the leadership clearer, however, than at the Nov. 18 Republican Conference meeting in the Capitol’s Mansfield Room.

According to people who attended the meeting, Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) argued that the adoption of term limits for leadership could be perceived as an attack on McConnell, even though the rules would have taken effect after McConnell’s tenure as minority leader ended.

The argument caused DeMint to reconsider the motion. But when one of DeMint’s staffers stood up to remind his boss he had the right to withdraw it, Alexander took strong exception, scolding the aide because only senators are typically allowed to address such meetings.

Alexander then called for a vote before DeMint withdrew the motion — and Republican senators overwhelmingly crushed his proposal. DeMint says that he wanted senators to be able to vote for eight other motions at once, so the vote could be concluded quickly. (He previously withdrew the motion to kick Stevens out of the conference until after the Alaskan’s reelection race was called, promising a vote at another meeting later that week — but that never occurred.)

By holding the votes one by one, DeMint said, party leaders were sending him a message about how little support he had within the conference.

“It’s part of the whole display [to say], ‘Here’s what happens, guys, if you buck the tide,’” DeMint said. “It’s the milieu, it’s the Senate, and we don’t do that.”

GOP leadership aides said the votes were spread out so each motion could be considered on its own merits, including one that was actually adopted: to require that all internal secret ballot elections be conducted by the party’s secretary.

“Discussion time had been requested for each proposal, so there was going to be a significant period of debate regardless of the vote process,” one GOP leadership aide said.

A senior GOP aide rejected DeMint’s contention that it was the leadership who tried to embarrass him. The aide said that while the senator has “certainly contributed to leadership policy positions, the rejection of an amendment to the rules was a rejection by the caucus as a whole, not by any faction — leadership or otherwise.”

Yet Florida Sen. Mel Martinez told Politico at the time of the meeting the session had been “terrible” and “caused consternation” within the conference.

DeMint says he’s sympathetic to McConnell, who has to reconcile views of a diverse caucus, and he says that on most issues, the GOP leaders “actually appreciate somebody going out there … and loosening the ground up, where they can’t necessarily go in the beginning.”

Indeed, Alexander says that his relationship with DeMint is “terrific.” He’s hosted DeMint and his wife at his home in Knoxville, Tenn., and has given him a spot on the conference’s advisory board. Alexander declined to comment on the Nov. 18 conference deliberations, saying such meetings are intended to be private.

Don Stewart, a McConnell spokesman, called DeMint a “valuable member of our conference and among the strongest advocates for the American taxpayer.”

And DeMint’s home-state colleague, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) praised DeMint for fighting for what he believes — even though the two backed different Republican presidential candidates and Graham backed an immigration plan that DeMint derided as “amnesty” for lawbreakers.

“People that I’ve even been at odds with — I didn’t think they’d speak to me again,” DeMint said. Singling out former GOP Sens. Pete V. Domenici of New Mexico and John Warner of Virginia, DeMint said that “a lot of them will whisper in my ear: ‘Keep fighting.’”

 Talk-Radio Politics for “The People”: A Response to Governor Sanford

After the South Carolina conservative spoke out in defense of the “anti-bailout Republicans,” Esquire writer-at-large John H. Richardson offers a point-by-point breakdown of where the GOP went wrong.

By: John H. Richardson

While he clearly didn’t warm to my column this week on the GOP’s Battle Against the Bailout — and wrote a lengthy op-ed in response — I actually found myself agreeing with South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford once this week: There is no moral equivalency between Israel and Hamas. Hamas is a party with an official policy of slaughtering women and children on school buses. It is truly sad and disgusting how people on the left, in their instinctive sympathy for the underdog, choose to ignore that stark fact.

That is why we need responsible Republican voices.

But alas, Governor Sanford is not a promising candidate. So allow me to address each of the points from his response, in order:

1. Is such a rising figure in the Republican party seriously choosing this moment to tell us that we’re actually “on the hook for over $52 trillion in unpaid-for political promises?” To get that number, the governor adding up all our debts and loans, as well as Social Security and Medicare commitments, decades into the future. But the future goes on forever, so why not say $52 trillion trillion? Point is, we have an actual crisis right now. We don’t have to resort to fear tactics to make one up.

2. Sanford says Americans shouldn’t take our smashed economy to the mechanic because the mechanic never fixed the problem before. What does that even mean? That the economy has always been broken? That government has no role in the economy whatsoever? Does that mean we should just shut down the Federal Reserve? Stop issuing the T-Bills that keep our economy afloat? Or just that opportunistic Republicans can keep blaming Washington until the state finally drowns in the bathtub and withers away? (Yes, I am linking the philosophies of Grover Norquist and Karl Marx, who both wanted to smash the state in the name of an ideal.)

3. The governor tries to blame the financial crash on the Democrats, saying it’s all because that mean Barney Frank pushed Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac to give more loans to poor people. This popular GOP talking point ignores the global nature of the collapse while almost suggesting that Republicans have gone impotent, since they had eight years to fix this Democrat perfidy but somehow didn’t get around to it. It also might as well suggest there is no God, since any member of the party of Enron and Blackwater who has the nerve to accuse a Democrat of “crony-capitalism” should immediately be struck down by the lighting bolts of a just God.

And all that’s before the man who might just be the Republican candidate for president in 2012 gets to his Bizarro-world Stalinist airbrushing of the Great Depression. Once again, Governor Sanford, the nation went from a giant stock market crash in 1929 to steady nine- and ten-percent growth under Roosevelt. I guess you could say that “did little to improve the economy” — if you ignored the actual statistics along with the millions of people who ate food and lived indoors because of government relief programs. Sanford’s remarks echo the Depression-era Republicans who insisted that the economy would recover by itself in the long run. The best response came from one of Roosevelt’s greatest cabinet members, Harry Hopkins: “People don’t eat in the long run. They eat every day.”

And yes, Herbert Hoover built the Hoover dam. We can all agree on that. But once again, Governor Sanford, what exactly are you trying to say? That all government projects are bad? That we would be better off without the Erie Canal and the Interstate Highway System and rural electrification? And public schools and public hospitals? And water treatment plants? And the post office that takes mail to every small town in America? Do you want the free market to take care of nuclear waste?

By the end of his piece, Sanford concludes that because government spending can’t prevent a recession, it shouldn’t do anything at all. By that logic, doctors who can’t prevent diseases shouldn’t try to treat them. No wonder the governor completely ignored the main point of my original column, which is that World War II finally put the economy in the black by releasing a massive wave of government spending.

At bottom, all of Sanford’s arguments echo the bizarre Republican party line that emerged during the recent presidential election — that just about anyone who believes the government has any role at all in the national economy is a socialist, that all taxes are theft, and that “the people” know better than the government how to spend their money. This idea is so fundamentally insane it’s hard to know where to begin. But here are three pointers:

1. No matter how many bake sales they hold, the people are never going to build an interstate highway system.

2. In the real world that exists outside of the Rush Limbaugh fantasia occupied by so many modern Republicans, the progressive income tax and other progressive programs like the G.I. Bill and Social Security helped create the largest economic engine in the history of the world, which is not the “American entrepreneur,” as Sanford suggests, but the American middle class.

3. This is a government of the people and by the people, and there is something profoundly un-conservative about these constant attacks on the legitimacy of our democracy.

It’s just sad. At a time of national crisis — a time when we could really use a wise and principled opposition voice — too many Republican leaders only offer dishonest history and petty partisan squabbling. Their talk-radio version of reality just makes them seem foolish.

In his guest column Thursday (”A jobs plan that will work”), Sen. Jim DeMint offered his belief that “certainty about the future is essential for economic growth.” As a historian who has studied many of yesterday’s “certainties,” I’m skeptical that such certitude is realistic. It is, however, possible to evaluate the senator’s misuse of history in his critique of President Obama’s stimulus plan and his attempt to sell his own alternative.
In order to shoot down Obama’s proposals, DeMint inaccurately recounts the New Deal of the 1930s. Most egregious is his conflation of the Great Depression (which began under President Hoover in 1929) and the New Deal (which began under President Roosevelt in 1933, in order to address the problems created by the Depression).
Sen. DeMint claims that 10 years into the Great Depression, “unemployment remained above 20 percent” because of flawed New Deal tax and spending policies. In fact, 10 years into the Great Depression was only six years into the New Deal,and even so, unemployment fell steadily during the era of the New Deal, from over 30 percent in 1933 when FDR took office to about 17 percent in 1936 and then up slightly (although never over 20 percent as DeMint erroneously claims) until the government-funded mobilization for World War II brought unemployment down to less than 5 percent by 1942.

Moreover, New Deal tax policy was far more complex than DeMint allows. Yes, FDR raised taxes on the richest Americans; he did so because he recognized that an unequal distribution of wealth was at the root of both the overproduction and underconsumption widely believed to have caused the Depression in the first place. But he also funded key programs, such as Social Security, with regressive payroll taxes. Far from ideological support for what DeMint calls “predatory tax increases,” FDR evinced a pragmatism in tax policy that served the nation well.
A more fundamental point is that the New Deal did a great deal to create precisely the kind of stable economic environment that Sen. DeMint claims is a prerequisite to economic health. New Deal institutions provide the bulwark of our economic system. By stabilizing and regulating the banking system, insuring bank deposits, initiating Social Security and developing projects that modernized the nation’s infrastructure, New Deal politicians laid the basis for the unprecedented economic growth of the postwar years. Indeed, the dismantling of the New Deal regulatory framework, promoted by Sen. DeMint, laid the groundwork for the uncertainty and instability of our current economic crisis.
Like many modern Republicans, Sen. DeMint’s solution to the economic crisis is deep and permanent tax cuts. There is a broad and bipartisan consensus that targeted tax cuts should be an aspect of our economic recovery. But tax cuts alone won’t work; indeed, an ideology of obsessive tax cutting, without regard to such other important matters as the regulation of markets and infrastructural development, is what help get us into this mess in the first place.

This column appears in The State.

Area residents, lawmakers have high hopes for the new commander in chief’s actions
By Robert Behre

WASHINGTON — As the days-long inaugural party came to an end here Wednesday, people began wondering now that Barack Obama is president, what exactly will change.

And South Carolinians who either work here or who traveled here for the festivities have a lot of specific hopes.

Rachel Collier of Summerville graduated from the College of Charleston last year but had trouble finding a job and had to borrow to make ends meet. She hopes Obama can turn around the economy soon.

“I’m treading water now financially. It’s the same story with all the folks who graduated with me in May,” she said. “I have a three-year plan to get out of the debt that I’m in. It’s just going to take some time.”

During his inaugural address, Obama called for “a new era of responsibility.” Marlene Johnson of the College of Charleston said Obama’s message has been that he can’t do it all himself.

“He’s really energized the youth. A lot of the change he’s calling for will not come about by government,” Johnson said. “It has to be individual effort. If they don’t do anything about it, change will not come about.”

Sarah Eble, 21, a senior at American University and a 2005 Wando High School graduate, spent the last several days attending inaugural events. Eble said she’s hopeful that the policy decisions by the Obama administration and the president’s support of congressional actions designed to cure the country’s ailments will turn things around.

Longtime journalist and Southern historian Jack Bass of Charleston said Obama indicated during his inaugural speech that notable change could take a few years. The country has moved from pessimism to hope, Bass said.

Jared Esselman, who interned in the Bush White House and serves as president of the College of Charleston’s political science club, said his hope is that Obama can rescue the tumbling housing market and the nation’s credit crisis. But Esselman also said Obama needs a little luck in the form of no fresh crisis while he focuses on the current ones.

“He cannot afford a Katrina. He cannot afford a 9/11,” Esselman said, “but he can’t control that.”

Longtime Democrat and College of Charleston political science professor Tom Chorlton hopes Obama will advance the gay rights agenda but hopes even more that he will close Guantanamo Bay prison. “I think that is fundamentally central for our relationship with the world,” Chorlton said.

South Carolina’s congressional delegation also has its own set of hopes.

While U.S. Rep. Henry Brown is a Lowcountry Republican, he hopes Obama can break down the political barriers of which he often speaks. “I’m hoping with a new face and a new voice somehow we can find unity,” Brown said.

State Superintendent of Education Jim Rex said South Carolina provided, at the administration’s request, a list of “shovel-ready (school) projects” that could be part of the recovery package being drafted in Congress. The list includes replacing J.V. Martin Junior High School, the crumbling Dillon school where Obama campaigned, and Rex noted there also are local referendums in place to help pay the cost.

U.S. House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn said the argument should not be over how big or small government is but whether it works. The country must use its best minds to figure out how to put Americans to work, he said.

A key to moving forward is managing expectations, Clyburn said. “We have to be patient.”

The Charleston County Election Commission has certified Rep. Hutto’s victory. The South Carolina Election Commission has certified Rep. Hutto’s victory and so has the Secretary of State. Mr. Scarborough’s protest was unanimously rejected by the state Election Commission as being meritless.

Last month, Rep. Hutto was sworn into office and is the official representative for House District 115.

Unfortunately, Mr. Scarborough has refused to concede defeat and congratulate Representative Hutto. Instead, he has taken his appeal to the South Carolina House and is asking his former colleagues to overturn the will of the voters and reverse the election results. This would be a slap in the face of democracy and a downright theft of the election from voters of district 115. Your representative will vote on this matter this week in Columbia!

Please call or email your representative right away. It is crucial that they know how strongly we feel about this. The people elect their representatives, not the politicians. We cannot allow this election to be stolen.
Use this link to find your house member: http://www.scstatehouse.gov/html-pages/housemembersd.html

Borrowed stimulus will make America’s problems worse

By Mark Sanford

Friday, January 9, 2009

One would be hard pressed to find a more vocal advocate for the Charleston area than Mayor Joe Riley, and as such I can certainly understand his reaction to my recent comments about it being a bad idea to try and bail out cities and states with borrowed money.

I don’t begrudge him that view — after all, his job is to look after Charleston and not to look after the best interests of the taxpaying public at large. That being said, I think it’s important to put these proposals for supposedly more “stimulus” in context because of their long-term implications for each of us as taxpayers.

I’d make three quick points on this front:

First, the idea that more “stimulus” is the answer is approaching the point of flat-out unbelievable. We were told by leaders in Washington last spring that if we just sent the $150 billion in stimulus checks things would get better, and we were told the same as we reached $2.3 trillion spent and committed to various stimuli and bailouts for the year. The tab for what’s been committed has now crossed $7 trillion — half of the yearly U.S. economy. A group of Democratic governors recently promised that spending just $1 trillion more would be the answer.

We’re in a global slowdown of the $67 trillion world economy. Is it believable that spending a fraction of a percent of that amount on building projects around the country — no matter how meritorious they may be — is going to do anything to turn around the world economy when far greater sums of money have failed to do so?

All told, Americans are already on the hook for over $52 trillion in unpaid-for political promises. That represents a hidden mortgage of $450,000 per American household, and we don’t think it’s right to bury future generations even further under this mountain of debt.

Second, I’d simply say that while the mayor might be an authority on Charleston’s history, his grasp of what happened to get us in (and out of) the Great Depression is a little shakier.

Mayor Riley mistakenly believes that Herbert Hoover was a believer in the free market and against big-government intervention, when nothing could be further from the truth.

Amity Shales’ book, “The Forgotten Man” chronicles the real history of the Depression, and it shows the consequence of pulling money from the private sector to fund large public projects. Few people know that it was Hoover, not Roosevelt, who initiated the practice of piling up big deficits to support huge public-works projects like the San Francisco Bay Bridge, the Los Angeles Aqueduct, or the Hoover Dam.

History also shows that the Depression was prolonged and worsened by raising taxes and limiting free trade. Depression-era policies of expanding labor union power and increasing spending did little to improve the economy, as we had nearly 20 percent unemployment in 1939 — 10 years after the stock market crash.

In short, if government spending was the key to preventing recessions, then we’d never have one since increasing spending is often the default response from Washington when times are tough.

Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it — and given the severity of what’s happening in the economy, it’s important we don’t so now.

Third, we believe that this larger notion of bailouts being a first resort is threatening the very underpinnings of our economy. Our market-based system — responsible for creating 200 years of wealth in this country — is being jeopardized by this ever-increasing universe of bailouts.

Each bailout leads many who work hard and take prudent risks to wonder in some ways why they should work hard while Washington strays toward a political economy where you need the right lobbyists or a loud voice to be heard by Congress.

I suspect that if cities and states are ultimately given some form of stimulus, the dictates from Washington in how that money is spent will be based far more on political pull than on merit.

That kind of cronyism is what largely got us to where we are in the first place, and is the same force responsible for paying $100 million to the connected few who ran organizations like Fannie Mae in Washington. Politics drove a big part of what has happened in our economy.

The bottom line is this — issuing debt on top of debt to solve a problem created by too much debt threatens both the financial strength and the sustainability of our country. If we want to build infrastructure projects, that’s fine - just don’t do it with borrowed money.

“Economic stimulus” is more than simply borrowing money and sending checks out of Washington. It is about making sure that our country’s finances are on stable ground so that our real source of economic stimulus — the American entrepreneur — isn’t paying for today’s political quick fixes for generations to come.

 Clyburn Leads Charge For Rural Stimulus
By: Christian Bourge
Some House Democrats led by Majority Whip Clyburn are pushing for language in the economic stimulus package that will ensure that rural communities and more impoverished areas receive their fair share of development funds.
With package specifics and just how to move forward still up in the air, Clyburn raised the issue in Tuesday’s closed-door, bipartisan meeting of congressional officials with President-elect Obama.
He broached the subject again at the weekly meeting of Democratic committee chairman Wednesday morning, receiving what he and others at both meetings categorized as a positive response.
Clyburn confirmed his efforts to CongressDaily, saying that lawmakers must be careful in developing the package and cognizant of the discrepancies that occurred in federal spending during the Great Depression.
“Those of us who studied what the government did, we know that various communities and various entities were excluded from that recovery,” said Clyburn. “We have to be careful that we do not create a 21st Century New Deal because we very well might be visiting on rural communities and others a raw deal. This legislation will have to be written in such a way to be fair to these communities.”
Of specific concern to him and other lawmakers, according to senior Democratic aides, is the level of power governors will hold in distributing funds.
Clyburn said that in his state of South Carolina, Republican Gov. Mark Sanford is saying he does not need the funds, joining Texas GOP Gov. Rick Perry in decrying the proposed spending.
He argued that governors should have a timeline to spend the funds allocated and if they do not, public entities like cities, counties and regional developments, along with public-private entities that oversee community development agencies, empowerment zones and enterprise communities should be given access to the funds.
Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman James Oberstar outlined a plan Wednesday on how $85 billion in infrastructure projects he has recommended should be disbursed, which appears to provide at least some of what Clyburn is looking for when it comes to transportation-related spending.
The Transportation Department and EPA would begin doling out funds to states, cities and public transit agencies within the first week, with priority given to projects where bids can be awarded within 90 days.
Those entities and others receiving funds are required within 90 days to submit how they will use the money and include a priority list for projects. States within 30 days would need to report to either lawmakers or the administration what jobs would be created. Federal agencies overseeing the funds will need to report to Congress every 30 days for the first 180 days on how funding will be doled out, the number and status of projects and how many jobs are created or sustained.
Clyburn is not alone in raising concerns about rural areas getting their piece of the pie.
House Armed Services Chairman Ike Skelton sent a letter to Speaker Pelosi Wednesday arguing for funds to be directed toward existing rural programs outside of transportation infrastructure.
Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-Fla., echoed Clyburn in saying rural needs have historically been ignored.
“If it is formulaic, and I believe it should be, the concerns of rural people so they are not left out as they have been in the past must be addressed,” said Hastings.
Clyburn met with Oberstar Wednesday to discuss the issue and is expected to meet with Appropriations Chairman David Obey and Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank soon on the issue.
A Pelosi spokesman said she is “very supportive of rural investments in the economic recovery package because it will create jobs and make crucial investments in areas that have been hit just as hard during this recession as our cities.”
A spokesman for Majority Leader Hoyer said he shares Clyburn’s “concerns that money must be most effectively targeted on where economic recovery is most critical” and that such concerns must be addressed in the package.
Separately on Wednesday, rural development specialists made their pitch for money for rural infrastructure in the stimulus, saying it would move quickly through the economy.
Rep. Mike McIntyre, D-N.C., chairman of the House Agriculture Specialty Crops, Rural Development and Foreign Agriculture Subcommittee, told a meeting of congressional staffers that many rural counties, particularly in the South, have had to stop infrastructure projects due to the recession.
“Rural America must be a part of the economic stimulus package,” McIntyre said in a release after the event. “At a bare minimum, we have to allocate sufficient funding to address the backlogs I have identified in USDA water and wastewater systems and community facilities programs. The backlogs total $1.4 billion in budget authority for a $4.8 billion program level.”
Rob Johnson, a Loco, Okla., official representing the Rural Water Association, said USDA can get rural water construction money “into the field in 75 to 80 days.” Officials also said USDA’s money can move faster because USDA maintains so many local offices and has projects approved in advance.
It remains unclear what level of support Clyburn’s plan will have among Republicans, although Clyburn said he plans to meet with Minority Whip Cantor soon.
“We are very happy that [President-elect Obama] believes tax cuts ought to be a major part of the package,” Minority Leader Boehner said Wednesday. “The president-elect has made it clear that he is interested in our ideas. I think that is a good start.”
Across the Capitol, Senate Budget ranking member Judd Gregg said he is trying to win support for a provision in the stimulus that would help ensure that the money is not spent on frivolous projects.
“The problem is, if every state is acting like New Hampshire, every community in New Hampshire is drawing up their wish list. I have seen lists that have shown things like the alarm system for a dorm at UNH,” said Gregg. “This is an earmark feeding frenzy of a scope that we have never seen before and it can’t be that way.”

“We are deeply saddened by the recent passing of our fellow Democrat and friend Representative Olin Philips. He will be fondly remembered for his quiet strength and long term commitment to the Democratic Party and the people of District 30. He will be greatly missed by South Carolina Democrats,” said South Carolina Democratic Party Chair Carol Fowler.

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Available:  55 seats on the MBF Tours and Travel charter bus; room at the Courtyard by Marriott in Charlottesville, VA a King bed and sleeper bed.
Two in a room $488 each includes travel, breakfast buffet on Jan. 20 & 21
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 Warthen: Inez Tenenbaum for Obama’s Cabinet?

 NOW THAT HE’S got his economic and national security teams lined up, President-Elect Obama can turn to the “second-tier” Cabinet positions, such as Secretary of Education.

Normally, I wouldn’t take all that much interest in the Education job. I don’t see education as a proper function of the federal government; it’s a state responsibility. And when the feds have gotten involved in K-12, they’ve generally mucked it up. I’m not a fan of Ronald Reagan, but he did get some things right, and one of them was proposing to do away with the U.S. Department of Education. You’ll notice, however, that after all that talk, he didn’t actually get rid of it. So the department is there, and somebody is going to run it.

That being the case, I hope the somebody Barack Obama chooses is our own Inez Tenenbaum. At this point you’re thinking two things: First, “Does she really have a shot at that?” I don’t know. There are a lot of lists, short and long, floating around, and she’s on some and not on others. The Associated Press had her on a short list of five names (which also included Colin Powell) at the end of November, but when they moved the same list on Thursday, she wasn’t on it (nor was Gen. Powell). On the same day, MSNBC posted a long list on its Web site that included her (and Gen. Powell). Other names regularly mentioned include Arne Duncan, who runs Chicago public schools, and Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas.

Inez (disclosure here — I call her Inez because her husband, Samuel, is a friend) doesn’t make it on David Brooks’ short list in his column on the facing page. But we’ll see.

Now for the second thing you’re thinking, especially if you’re one of those who buy into the notion that public schools in South Carolina are irredeemable, and anyone who has ever had anything to do with them is tainted. When I mentioned Inez as a contender for the job the other day, someone who should know better said it would be ironic for two Democratic secretaries in a row to be from South Carolina, since our schools struggle so.

No, it wouldn’t. It would be perfectly fitting, especially given Inez Tenenbaum’s record as state superintendent from 1999-2007.

There are achievements that can be quantified, such as South Carolina’s students scoring at or above the national average on nationally recognized standardized tests for the first time. Our fourth- and eighth-graders even scored at the very top in math and science on the National Assessment of Education Progress.

But what of the SAT, the favored test of naysayers? During her tenure, our average rose 32 points, the greatest gain of any state where most graduating seniors take the test. No, we didn’t catch up — we just improved faster than anyone.

But what impressed me most about her performance was that she took the situation she had and did the most she could with it. The most dramatic example: her implementation of the Education Accountability Act. The EAA was enacted the year she was elected, pushed by business leaders and a conservative Republican governor, and largely opposed by Democrats and professional educators. She might have dragged her feet, but instead she fully embraced the task of implementing accountability, in spite of institutional resistance.

How did she do on that? The year she left office, Education Week ranked South Carolina No. 1 in the nation for accountability. The research organization Education Trust ranked our state as tied (with Maine) at No. 1 in the rigor of our proficiency standards; The Princeton Review rated our testing system 11th best.

Our state’s leadership on this front ironically became a liability when No Child Left Behind came along. That’s because each state was judged by how well it met its own standards and expectations, and ours were higher than other states’.

So as long as there is a U.S. Department of Education, and especially while NCLB remains law, I want the person in charge of administering it to know the reality here in South Carolina.

But what makes Inez Tenenbaum, and Dick Riley before her, better suited than folks from other parts of the country at addressing the nation’s real K-12 problems? Consider the sheer magnitude of our challenges, based in generations of slavery, Jim Crow and abject poverty. Before the Civil War, our state had more slaves than free people. We integrated our schools 16 years AFTER Brown vs. Board of Education, even though the case started here. The achievement gap for poor and minority students is a national problem, but no one has more experience combating it than Gov. Riley and Inez Tenenbaum.

Inez isn’t talking about her candidacy, or non-candidacy. But she did say some things about Barack Obama and education that I liked hearing.

She’s had time to think about this because she’s one of the experts who helped him draft his education platform (which you can read online, linked from my blog). Rather than talk about the federal government trying to run our schools, she speaks of the historic opportunity Mr. Obama has to lead by example.

She remembers how John Kennedy got kids engaged in physical fitness when she was in school, mainly by talking it up. A president Obama can do the same with parental involvement, parlaying the excitement his election has generated into an ongoing movement. She has been deeply impressed by his own commitment to education, from seizing every opportunity offered in his own life to his involvement in his daughters’ schooling — she heard him, on the campaign bus here in South Carolina, talking to his girls on the phone about every detail of their day at school. He was engaged in the way all parents should be.

Barack Obama, as she describes it, has the potential to lead on education without pushing coercive new laws or creating new bureaucracies.

Now that’s a federal role in education I can get behind.

 Bush pardon recipient gave money to Inglis, Thurmond
BY JAMES ROSEN
Posted on Thu, Nov. 27, 2008

WASHINGTON — A Travelers Rest man pardoned by President Bush this week had made political contributions to Rep. Bob Inglis and the late Sen. Strom Thurmond, and had hosted Inglis on a tour of his chemical plant.

Carey C. Hice was one of 14 people this week to receive a pardon from Bush, who forgives fewer people of past crimes than any of his 10 immediate predecessors going back to World War II.

Hice, 66, was convicted of income tax evasion and sentenced in March 1996 to three years’ probation, with 180 days’ home confinement, and required to pay a $13,000 fine.

Hice said Wednesday he was stunned when a Justice Department official called and told him he’d received a presidential pardon. He said he had no idea why he was one of the few pardoned.

“The only way this thing happened is Jesus Christ had his hand on it,” Hice said. “That’s just the truth.”

Hice, called “Buddy” by friends, is one of only 179 people to whom Bush has granted pardons or sentence commutations, among more than 10,000 requests.

Hice said he submitted the pardon request himself after a lawyer declined to take the case.

The retiree said he downloaded an eight-page pardon form from the Justice Department Web site, completed it with a pencil — erasing mistakes as he wrote — and mailed it to Washington in 2001.

Over the next seven years, FBI agents contacted Hice’s pastor, neighbors, and former business associates as part of a thorough background investigation, he said.

Although income-tax evasion isn’t a felony, Hice said he wanted his record cleared.

“I’d never really been in trouble. I work a lot in my church. It was important to me to have it clean.”

Inglis, a fifth-term Republican lawmaker, and Hice both live in Travelers Rest, an Upstate town of 4,237 people near Greenville.

Hice contributed $1,000 to Inglis in 1995 and gave the same amount to him in 1997. Hice contributed $1,000 to Thurmond in 1996.

Inglis on Wednesday corrected earlier statements by an aide who had said Inglis didn’t know Hice. He said he toured Hitec Chemicals, a Travelers Rest chemical plant then owned by Hice, in the 1990s. Hice retired in spring 2007.

Hice also permitted the congressman to erect a large 2004 campaign sign on commercial property he owned, Inglis said.

Inglis, though, insisted he had nothing to do with Bush’s pardon of Hice and learned of it only after the Justice Department announced 14 pardons and two sentence commutations Monday.

“I didn’t know anything about it,” he said.

Inglis served three House terms in the 1990s, lost a 1998 Senate race against incumbent Fritz Hollings and regained his House seat in the 2004 election.

The congressman says the humility that loss taught him, and his Christian faith, have softened some of the hard-edged views of his first congressional tenure in the 1990s.

“I believe in forgiveness and rehabilitation,” Inglis said.

Inglis, 49, said he supported the past unsuccessful efforts by Willie Mays Aikens, a Seneca native and former Kansas City Royals baseball slugger, to obtain a presidential pardon.

Aikens served 14 years in prison after being convicted of selling crack cocaine. Inglis said he did not write a letter or formally intervene on Aikens’ behalf, but talked about his case in an ESPN-TV interview.

The Justice Department makes pardon recommendations, but a president can ignore them or pardon criminals who weren’t recommended.

The White House and the Justice Department declined to comment on Hice’s case.

 Hillary will be a wise choice to represent U.S.

THE ISSUE: Hillary Clinton as secretary of state

OUR OPINION: Obama, U.S. will be winner with Hillary as face of U.S. diplomacy

Remember the TV spot about the phone ringing in the middle of the night at the White House? Hillary Rodham Clinton’s point was that she was better equipped to deal with an international crisis than Barack Obama.

In the Democratic presidential primary race, Clinton pounded away at Obama’s inexperience with foreign affairs. She touted her experience as making her more qualified to deal with issues on the international stage.

It appears now that Clinton is ready to provide that very experience as a key player in the Obama administration that takes over in January. Reports have it that Clinton will become Obama’s secretary of state, thus becoming the leading representative for the United States in international affairs.

The selection by Obama is a logical one. By bringing her onto the team, he has turned the former adversary into a key ally who will have every reason to work closely with the new president. Had she remained in the Senate, Clinton would have been an Obama supporter. But every lawmaker, particularly one with Clinton’s national stature, has priorities. There is no guarantee that any lawmaker will be an Obama ally in every instance.

Internationally, Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, enjoy great popularity and respect. Hillary will be welcomed as secretary of state. Bill will be a great asset as a former president and leader with international clout.

The challenges will be many. Russia is showing it is ready to be a major international player again and doing so at the expense of U.S. influence. China is doing much the same. The nuclear issue with Iran is a top priority. North Korea, Africa, Latin America: The list of problems and priorities goes on and on.

Clinton has been highly critical of the Bush administration and its approach to diplomacy. She has stressed the need for engaging adversaries and working through friends to defuse crises. Obama has been on the same page, going so far as to say during the campaign he believed the president should talk directly with leaders of states such as Iran and North Korea.

Ironically, Clinton was critical of Obama as being ready to propose such direct presidential talks without preconditions. Generally, a secretary of state would hold talks ahead of any session between heads of state. She won’t be talking to foreign leaders as president, but Clinton will be the key player on the international stage just as she said she should be.

Currently South Carolina only has absentee voting in person or by mail. Voters must meet certain requirements to vote by absentee ballot such as health reasons or if their work hours keep them unable to vote on election.

Jackson’s plan would eliminate those requirements and make early voting available to all registered voters.

“With this year’s level of voter participation and enthusiasm, South Carolina needs to be better prepared to handle high voter turnout. Early voting would be an effective tool in addressing long lines at polling places and making it easier for people to participate in the election process,” said Jackson.

Under Jackson’s proposal, modeled after North Carolina’s system, counties would open early voting locations and allow all registered voters within the county to vote. North Carolina early voting begins the third Thursday before the election and ends the Saturday prior to the election.

“This would eliminate the sometimes daunting paperwork that voters and election workers have to complete. Voters should be able to just show up and vote early,” said Jackson

Democrats Have G.O.P. to Thank, at Least in Part
By JOHN HARWOOD

The encomiums greeting Barack Obama’s victory last week presented a reverse image of the darts for John Kerry after his 2004 defeat. But Kerry campaign veterans could not help noticing a surprise in the returns.

In the battleground state of Ohio, where Mr. Kerry lost the presidency to George W. Bush, the 2.74 million votes he received almost precisely matched Mr. Obama’s 2008 total. Mr. Obama won because John McCain received 300,000 fewer votes than Mr. Bush did.

That points to a cautionary reminder for Mr. Obama and his team: the election turned partly on what they did right, but also on what Republicans did wrong. And there is no assurance that Democrats will confront a similarly star-crossed opposition in elections to come.

“We should be confident, but not cocky,” said Donald Fowler of South Carolina, a former national Democratic Party chairman. “Several things that worked against them in this campaign could change quickly.”

Among them, Mr. Fowler said of the deeply unpopular Republican incumbent in the White House, “Bush is going to disappear.”

Mr. Obama, a senator from Illinois, inarguably fashioned an impressive victory for any Democrat, much less the first black nominee in American history. His 52 percent share of the popular vote exceeded that of any Democratic candidate since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964 — and topped Ronald Reagan’s 1980 majority against Jimmy Carter. With breakthroughs in the South, Midwest and Mountain West, Mr. Obama captured at least nine states carried by Mr. Bush in 2004, with the outcome in Missouri still unclear.

Yet the record-shattering turnout that some observers predicted appears not to have materialized. Curtis Gans of the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate projects that, when outstanding votes are tallied, the number of Americans casting ballots will fall short of the 130-million floor predicted by the McCain and Obama campaigns.

Mr. Gans ascribes that shortfall in part to diminished Republican fervor — a “demobilization” that created political openings for Mr. Obama’s disciplined campaign organization. The reasons for that begin with Mr. Bush’s political infirmity, but they do not end there.

Lacking a deep wellspring of support among conservative party regulars, Mr. McCain courted them to win the Republican nomination — in the process weakening his once-formidable standing among independents. He sought to appeal to both factions with his selection of Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, and saw most Americans deem her unqualified for the presidency.

The campaign’s unalloyed appeals to cultural populism drove well-educated, high-income voters to the Democratic ticket. Meantime, disarray among Congressional Republicans over the financial bailout package in September compounded injuries Republicans suffered throughout Mr. Bush’s second term to their reputation for pragmatism and competence.

Democrats “benefited greatly from tapping into voters’ frustrations about a very badly damaged Republican brand,” said Mr. McCain’s political director, Mike DuHaime, a former Republican National Committee official.

That created new campaign dynamics for the post-civil rights era in which Deep South states became the Republicans’ redoubt. Instead of distancing themselves from their national ticket, as Democrats have customarily done, the North Carolina candidate for governor Bev Perdue and the Senate candidate Kay Hagan linked themselves to Mr. Obama.

All three won in the Tar Heel state, and Democrats gained a House seat for the second consecutive election. After controlling a majority of North Carolina House seats at the outset of Mr. Bush’s term, Republicans now hold just 5 of 13.

“Without Bush and Cheney and Rove, the Democrats couldn’t have done what they did” in 2006 or 2008, observed David Rohde, a political scientist at Duke University. In his first television advertisement for the Dec. 2 Senate runoff in Georgia with the Republican incumbent, Saxby Chambliss, the Democratic Senate candidate, Jim Martin, promises to “work with Barack Obama to get our economy moving again.”

Democratic veterans warn against assuming the party can sustain such successes against a reinvigorated Republican opposition. “The country remains very evenly divided,” said Harold Ickes, a former deputy chief of staff in the Clinton administration. “The lease on the office space is likely very short.”

Indeed, Mr. Clinton’s experience highlights the risks. The misadventures of his first two White House years helped pave the way for the Republican Revolution led by Newt Gingrich that ousted Democrats from control of Congress.

After four years in the Senate, Mr. Obama may move into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue with closer ties to the Democratic Congress than Mr. Clinton brought from the Arkansas governor’s mansion. If he gives higher priority than Mr. Clinton did to party-building below the presidential level, Mr. Fowler said, the political breakthroughs may continue.

“If we improve as much between now and 2012 as we did between 2004 and 2008,” Mr. Fowler predicted, “we can win South Carolina.”

Election fires up S.C. Democrats
By JOHN O’CONNOR
Posted on Fri, Nov. 07, 2008

On Sunday, Irmo resident Roberta Carroway was in Charlotte working for U.S. Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign to turn North Carolina blue for the first time since 1976.

Carroway was one of roughly 1,500 to 2,000 South Carolinians who headed north to knock on doors or who placed nearly 30,000 telephone calls from campaign phone banks in South Carolina.

When Obama officially won North Carolina on Thursday, Carroway said she felt like she had a role in reshaping regional politics.

“I’m so excited. That’s a truly Southern state,” Carroway, 43 said. “Change can come … that’s very positive that that state is more progressive.”

Carroway was among a group of neighbors organized around their mutual support of Obama, and inspired by other supporters from around the country who volunteered in South Carolina during the campaign.

These volunteers were supposed to provide a tailwind for Democratic candidates across South Carolina.

But when the results were counted, South Carolina remained Republican red. Presidential nominee John McCain easily won the state and Democrats failed to win any GOP-held Congressional seats.

Still, Democrats point to signs of progress:

• At polling places around the state, Democrats recorded more votes than they did in 2004, cutting the Republican margin of victory for president in half.

• Turnout was high among black voters, a traditional pillar of the party.

• Young voters broke for Obama. Among those younger than 45, according to exit polling, 55 percent voted for Obama.

• Democrats gained two seats in the state House of Representatives. This is the third straight election Democrats have gained State House seats, however few.

• Democrats implemented new, successful get-out-the-vote techniques.

“When you think about how red this state was,” said Joe Erwin, a former state Democratic Party chairman of the presidential results, “that’s a huge hill to climb.

“It’s a very, very positive sign. It’s a great accomplishment.”

Obama’s campaign, state Democrats said, could have two lasting effects.

The first is the network of activists, such as Carroway, the campaign built from the ground up. Many of these voters, Erwin said, had tuned out on politics.

The campaign used cell phones, text messages, e-mail and the Internet to keep in direct, personal communication. That network helped supporters stay in touch as well.

Obama, both Carroway and Erwin said, created a sense of community where members regularly challenged each other to do just a little more: one more donation; one more call; one more voter registration.

Columbia attorney Dick Harpootlian, a veteran Democratic adviser and former party chairman, said Obama’s campaign was the best he’s ever seen.

“There are many, many folks who came into this process because of him who will stay in the process,” Harpootlian said.

Obama’s campaign spent no money on S.C. advertising. Republicans hold the money advantage here, he said, and the constant opposition to Obama hurts local candidates as well.

“There’s no counterweight to that,” advertising critical of Obama and Democrats, Harpootlian said. “It’s no surprise that candidates were affected.”

The second impact is on demographics.

Democrats believe they now have the advantage with young voters, one they can maintain even as those voters age.

Obama “helped us solidify a couple key constituencies that were up for grabs,” said former Gov. Jim Hodges. “Young voters are going to be Democrats and they’re going to stay Democrats.”

Others noted that both Charleston County and Richland County councils grew more Democratic, and that Democrats are gaining traction between the Midlands and the coast.

U.S. Rep. James Clyburn said Democrats are no longer conceding seats of retiring Democrats, noting the state Senate win of Greenwood’s black mayor Floyd Nicholson in a majority-white district.

But there are still problems.

Republicans hold the money edge in S.C., and Obama’s fundraising ability is not something Democrats can expect to continue.

Likewise, Clyburn and others were disappointed that Democrats could not manage a serious challenge against U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham. The Democratic nominee, Bob Conley, backed Republican Ron Paul for president and refused to endorse Obama.

But Carroway and others said they have been emboldened this year. The governor’s race, she said, is just two years away and it’s time to get to work.

“We got our eyes now. We know how to bring ourselves together,” Carroway said. “We can do it. We’re not going to let this die.”

WHO WILL lead us through these extraordinary times — John McCain or Barack Obama?
Which of these men — both uniquely qualified to be president — can not only return confidence and stability to a country shaken at its foundation, but get Americans to see and embrace a future beyond today’s challenges?

The top question Americans confront as foreclosures rise, credit dries up, jobs are cut and financial markets free-fall is: Are you better off today than you were yesterday? We’re engaged in two wars — one of which was an ill-timed war of opportunity that has distracted us from the war on terror. Other threats and hot spots dot the globe.

While America remains a beacon of hope, our light doesn’t shine as brightly. The next president must shoulder the dual burdens of strengthening the home front while leading globally.

Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama are both capable, but only one possesses extraordinary qualities to shepherd our country through these extraordinary times.

That’s Sen. Barack Obama.

Under Mr. McCain, I see an America that’s safe, stuck and satisfied. The middle class would remain stuck, while only the wealthy would be satisfied.

But Mr. Obama’s a game-changer. He’s a gifted leader who possesses the right judgment, leadership skills, temperament and steadiness. He has a consistent, coherent vision for America, whereas Mr. McCain has been all over the place.

Mr. Obama’s health care plan is far superior and will actually expand the number of people covered. And if we’re going to have tax cuts, it should be for the many working people who have seen their wages stagnate, their plans for their children’s future endangered and their lifestyles dwindle.

Mr. McCain has lots of experience in national politics and a record of legislative and diplomatic leadership. He’s worked across party lines and is rightly hailed for his service to this great country. But there are questions about his temperament as well as his ability to craft a cohesive vision.

The John McCain of 2008 isn’t the stalwart leader many admired in 2000. He walked away from some of his independence in exchange for a shot at the White House. He embraced positions straight from the Bush playbook, including wanting to continue tax cuts he once denounced.

For a man who said he would rather lose an election than a war, he has gone to great lengths to win, even to the point of saying that if he is elected and something happens to him, Gov. Sarah Palin, who is clearly not ready, is the one he would choose.

That irresponsible choice says a lot about Mr. McCain’s judgment. A number of things he’s done or has allowed to be done on behalf of his campaign suggest that he’ll do anything to win.

Mr. McCain’s unrelenting support of the Iraq war and inability to clearly articulate the “victory” he speaks of is troubling. Yes, he was right about the surge. It brought violence under control. But now what? Where’s the victory? Where’s the political progress in Iraq? It’s time we get out and allow Iraqis to run and defend their country.

Sen. Obama would be much wiser about getting out of Iraq. He would focus us back on the dangerous situation in Afghanistan, the war on terror and Osama bin Laden.

One of Sen. Obama’s greatest strengths is the fact that he thinks. Wow, a thinking president. I know. Wild, isn’t it? Many who have sat with him — including me — notice quickly he doesn’t give stock answers, and genuinely considers questions and issues.

As intelligent as he is, Sen. Obama won’t hesitate to surround himself with other smart people who will challenge him. He would build an experienced, credible and bipartisan Cabinet. He’s already given us a glimpse of the kind of choices he would make by selecting Sen. Joe Biden.

Some have mocked Mr. Obama’s rhetorical prowess as being “just speeches.” Powerful oratory has built nations and reshaped civilizations. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s “speeches” transformed the soul of America. John F. Kennedy’s “speeches” united America to do the extraordinary — to go to the moon.

Sen. Obama has energized millions of all races, ages and socio-economic backgrounds. People are engaged, waiting for the messenger to lay out the vision. He’s shown he can and is willing to talk about tough issues with Americans when he gave his speech on race.

Mr. Obama is one of those rare leaders who come along too seldom. His bi-racial background and multicultural experiences give him a unique lens through which to see an America that is becoming more like him. He represents where America is headed, and might be the one who can convince a broad range of people to help mend our fractured country, already the greatest on earth, and make its light shine brighter both at home and abroad.

His well-organized, record-setting campaign has been well-managed, features an awesome army of staff and volunteers in nearly every state and hasn’t suffered the infighting that characterizes — and kills — so many campaigns. Mr. McCain’s campaign has been woefully disorganized and has done a pitiful job of capturing who Mr. McCain really is and why he should be elected.

Has there been anyone more unflappable, more consistent, more thoughtful, more engaging — when he speaks, the nation listens — than Sen. Obama? Has anyone been more presidential?

No. That’s why we need an Obama presidency.

Columbia – The South Carolina New Democrats today launched the Fight Howard Rich Campaign to expose Howard Rich and his flood of campaign money into our state and the candidates that take his ‘shady’ money.

The campaign launched with an innovative interactive web site, www.FightHowardRich.com and will include email alerts to voters, research reports on Rich’s activities, press events and other public information activities. The site details how much money Rich and his network have funneled to various South Carolina candidates and his other activities.

“What Rich is doing is just plain wrong and we want to fight him by exposing him and the South Carolina politicians that take his ‘shady money’ said Phil Noble, President of the SC New Democrats. “Rich’s education voucher scheme is nothing less than a radical social experiment that endangers our children by undermining our education system.”

As is well documented on the web site and in numerous media reports, Howard Rich is a wealthy New York real estate mogul who along with his allies have dumped millions of dollars into South Carolina in support of candidates and organizations that seek to undermine South Carolina’s education system by instituting a system of vouchers and tax credits for private schools.

“We want everyone in South Carolina – Democrats, Republican and Independents - to join us to help fight Rich and protect our children” said Noble. “People can go to www.FightHowardRich.com and sign up for more information, to donate and to join the fight.”

Rich and his cronies contributed over half a million dollars in the primary campaigns alone and one of his favorite tactics is to unleash a last minute flood of donations to his favorite candidates in the closing days of the campaigns to avoid public disclosure before Election Day.

“Most people in South Carolina are deeply offended by this rich New Yorker trying to ‘buy’ political influence to impose his radical social experiment on our children,” said Noble. “We believe that if we give people the information about Rich and who he is supporting, voters will make the right decision on Election Day.”

THOSE EMAILS ARE NOT TRUE!! (more…)

Who will it be: McCain or Obama
By Larry Franklin
Published: Wednesday, October 8, 2008 9:06 AM EDT
Good news, bad news.

The good news is we elect a new president in 28 days. The bad news is the new president doesn’t take office until next January, so we’ve got four more months of President Bush trying to speak in complete sentences. (more…)

Will you help Democrats win in November? (more…)