As an innocent bystander observing Republican politics in South Carolina from the opposite sideline for the last 40 years, it seems to me that my home state, the birthplace of Lee Atwater, Strom Thurmond and Harry Dent (all deceased) and the place where the notorious "Southern Strategy" (still very much alive) was hatched, is a microcosm of what’s going on in the Republican party writ large. The Schizophrenic crackup happening before our very eyes in the Grand Old Party can be perfectly demonstrated right here in our beautiful little triangle of a state.
John McCain was initially supported by the moderate (albeit Confederate-loyal) wing of the Republican Party here in South Carolina or as I like to call them, the Business Confederates. Many of the folks I went to Wofford and Clemson with are in this category, which also includes high income professionals, especially physicians and surgeons (whose three big issues are tort reform, income tax and the death tax in that order) Many of them couldn't care less about the Iraq War itself, but it is a war, and Americans are fighting it under an American flag so they have been fierce defenders of the whole bloody, drawn out surging muck of it all-- lies, false pretenses, mission accomplished or not. If Saddam didn't have WMD he would have had 'em if could have. so what's the difference? Most of these particular boomers didn't serve in the regular military (unless they absolutely couldn't get out of it) but in their minds and emotionally, good boy scouts that they all were, they are militarists, so no talk of "surrender" or withdrawal (same thing) is welcome. Strom Thurmond was a deity to these people, warts and all. Don’t even try to figure that out. It is part of the South Carolina baby-boomer psyche, something like Gant button down shirts, khakis and Bass Weejuns. Well, as a matter of fact, that is all part of the same phenomenon. Those starched button down shits and khakis were all as much a uniform to a Wofford Fraternity pledge in the 1960's as dress blues to a Marine. Old Strom was loved here. Hell, Joe Biden loved the old man and famously eulogized him. What does that tell you?
A cornerstone of McCain’s support in South Carolina has always been Richard Quinn. (Yes, even before Lindsey Graham, there was Richard Quinn.) That would more accurately be the Quinns (plural) now. Richard is a powerful patriarch of Southern tradition and head of a political consulting firm that has worked the whole South for McCain since the turbulent 2000 campaign. Richard’s son, Rick the former Majority Leader of the South Carolina House is a power in his own right, even though he lost his House seat to an evangelical neophyte a couple of years back. Then, of course, there is Richard Quinn’s long client list, including McCain’s best friend, Lindsey Graham. (By the way, this morning, Senators Graham and McCain are meeting with President-elect Barack Obama to get themselves a seat at the table for the coming four years, or at least the foreseeable future.)
The Business Confederates are what you might call the non-evangelical wing of the Republican Party here in South Carolina. Because they give generously at election time, they have lots of good friends in the South Carolina Legislature. Senate President Glenn McConnell and House Speaker Bobby Harrell of Charleston would probably put themselves in this group.
That brings us to the other half of the Republican baby in South Carolina-- the evangelicals. The upstate of South Carolina is loaded to the gills with bible-believin’, gawd-fearin’, hell fire and brimstone preachin’ evangelical Christians who don’t care if the DOW falls to a hundred and ten and the annual budget deficit reaches a $Trillion and beyond, as long as there’s hope that someday, somehow there might be five Supreme Court Justices that will overturn Roe v, Wade. Now, all they want is the second coming of Sarah Palin. These folks have voted against their economic interests in election after election on the abortion issue alone. Unbelievable as it may seem, Bob Jones III was so worried about a Rudi Giuliani – Hillary Clinton general election match up (both are pro-choice candidates) in November that he endorsed Mitt Romney as a strategy to preclude that horrid possibility. Imagine that; the old evangelical purist, endorsing a heretical Mormon (who he actually thinks is unsaved by his account of the Bible) in order to achieve something that was, as it turned out, absolutely unachievable anyway.
The SC evangelicals seem to be most closely aligned with our junior Senator, Jim DeMint. This week, DeMint, often called the most conservative Republican in the United States Senate, declared that John McCain's "liberal campaign positions," such as his support of global warming cap and trade programs and his vote in favor of the bailout put the "final nail in the coffin of the Republican Party this year." Basically, DeMint is now proposing to his Republican colleagues that (and I'm paraphrasing here) "Since conservatism has failed us so miserably for the past eight years (or twenty-five years depending upon whom you ask) and has gotten us into the fine mess we’re in, we definitely ought to adopt a lot more conservative policies as soon as possible! " He might actually have a taker in our (almost) lame duck Governor, Mark Sanford, who has just been selected as Chairman of the Republican Governors’ Association.
South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford is a Charleston BTFB (Blueblood-Trust-Fund-Baby) Republican, caught in the middle somewhere between Country Club Republicans and Evangelicals. He may be the most schizophrenic pol of the lot. Maybe that's why the eighteen Republican governors picked him. At times, Sanford can be a modern, forward-looking, pro-business, upbeat Republican, like Charlie Crist or Tom Ridge, but he this week he’s gone back to peddling some of the same old stuff—that worn out Reaganism like Sarah Palin and Bobby Jindal. It’s actually Hooverism —small government, low taxes, trickle down economics, unregulated and unfettered free markets and self-sufficiency (the you're-on-your-own economy.) Whatever it is, it hasn't worked anywhere lately and it's not likely to start working anytime soon. In any case, he is going to have the unenviable job of being the public face of those eighteen Republican Governors for the next year. I think he should have to answer this question as representative of all of them:
"Name one aggressive strategic policy initiative that you have undertaken to create new jobs in South Carolina and do you have a strategy other than across-the board budget cuts to deal with the current dramatic revenue shortfall in your state?"
If Governor Mark Sanford can answer that two-part question without drawing a blank, we’ll know we can count on him to do everything within his power as Governor of South Carolina to help address the national economic emergency. If he draws a blank or skirts the question with typical Dittohead doublespeak, we’ll know that we have a lame duck Governor until January, 2011 and we are in for a long bout of depression in our little state.
The challenge that McCain failed to meet in the general election and the challenge that Republicans nationwide are failing to meet right now is the dearth of the big idea. The country is in crisis mode. This is a time for "big idea politics." So...specifically, I just want to know (and I think most Americans would like to hear) what the Republicans propose in terms of big ideas (besides low taxes and less regulation, smaller government and blah, blah, blah-- Joe the plumber –blah, blah, blah) to solve our huge problems-- ideas that we can sink our teeth into and say, YEAH! I can see that working. That’ll solve the problem, alright... or... Yeah, I can understand why that might work.
Alright, let’s forget about who drove the cart into the ditch. We know who got the blame for it on November 4th. Whether that was a fair judgment on the part of the American people remains to be seen, I suppose, but we have to move on to part B of the test now. We need to figure out how to get the Ox out of the ditch. And to further mix my metaphors, we can all plainly see that the house has burned to the ground. Now we need to do something. We need to clear away the debris, save what can be saved, and start to rebuild our country, modernize and make our military more efficient, retrofit our energy grid, retool our factories, restructure our mass transit and rail systems, revolutionize our schools to be the best in the modern world, rebuild our roads and bridges and our crumbling cities and in doing so, revitalize our economy and bring ourselves into harmony with the rest of the world again. Then, and only then, will we be able to share our message with the rest of the world; but it won't be a message of diplomacy by shock and awe. No. Quite the contrary.
So as I watch my Republican Senators Lindsey Graham and Jim DeMint and my Republican Governor Mark Sanford continue to make news representing the various schizophrenic parts of the fractured Republican Party, I wonder if they’ll join the house building party or whether they are going to stand at the edge of the woods yelling and throwing stones at the rest of us for the next four years. We'll see, won't we? Somehow I would bet the farm (if I had one, which I don't) that Huck and McCain are gonna stake out their ground this morning in their meeting with Barack Obama. I don’t hold out much hope for the others. I have a feeling that somebody really great will challenge Jim DeMint in 2010; and if he keeps doing what he’s doing, a lot of those Business Confederates will be ripe for the plucking.