Category: South Carolina

Herman Cain Set to Win S.C. Debate

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Herman Cain appeared on the Neal Cavuto show Wednesday afternoon to talk about Thursday’s debate in Greenville, South Carolina. Asked about the presumed GOP 2012 candidates who are skipping the debate, Cain said: “I think they’re making a mistake by not being here.”

Indeed, the state’s new Republican governor says the same thing:

With the first 2012 GOP presidential debate Thursday in South Carolina, top Republicans in the Palmetto State are warning several hopefuls who have chosen to skip the event that it will hurt them.
“Anyone that discounts South Carolina is making a huge mistake,” said South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley.
South Carolina traditionally holds the first primary in the south. Since it began in 1980, no Republican has won the GOP presidential nomination without first winning the state. . . .
Gov. Haley believes skipping Thursday’s debate will put some of the candidates at odds with demanding Palmetto State voters eager to begin reviewing the candidates and their character.
“They’re gonna have to work twice as hard to prove that they’re in the game and while it is early, to show that you’re strong early makes an important difference in South Carolina,” Haley said. “So I would advise all of them get here, get here fast and make sure every part of the state notices you.”

Cain will be joined by Rep. Ron Paul, former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson in Thursday’s debate (9 p.m. ET). Dave Weigel runs down the lineup, and explains why the no-shows are no-shows. The latest news from the Mitt Romney campaign is intriguing; one of his top New Hampshire supporters has quit:

Romney’s wishy-washy political identity and inability to stake out firm, consistent positions as a candidate were the reasons for his decision to cut ties with Romney. “He struggled with that in the last campaign,” [Bruce] Keough explains, “and to some extent I think he’s still struggling with it.”

Jazz Shaw at Hot Air: “For Keough to not only decline Romney’s invitation to the 2012 dance, but immediately take to the pages of Mother Jones to trash his former boss’s bona fides is fairly remarkable.” Also fairly remarkable: The Quinnipiac Poll ignores Herman Cain.

Meanwhile, back to Thursday’s debate, Carl Cameron of Fox News observes: “Retail politics is key in South Carolina. The voters here insist on meeting the candidates and kicking the tire and figuring out what the candidates are all about.” Retail politics is where Cain says he’s strongest in early primary states. As he told Cavuto in Wednesday’s interview: “Start looking at some of the results we’re getting on the ground in Iowa and New Hampshire.”

Cain mentioned his straw-poll win after Friday’s debate in Manchester, N.H., sponsored by Americans for Prosperity. Also, a poll of Hot Air readers showed Cain in a virtual tie for second place with Mitt Romney, behind front-runner Sarah Palin. Here is a video profile of Herman Cain by Brett Baier of Fox News:

Isn’t it time you joined the online grassroots army at Citizens for Cain?

Just a Coincidence, I’m Sure

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Aleister at American Glob:

September 11, 2009 – Obama Skips Ground Zero Memorial, Sends Joe Biden

September 11, 2010 – Obama Skips Ground Zero Memorial, Sends Joe Biden

May 5, 2011 – Obama to visit Ground Zero

And how convenient that he’s decided to visit Ground Zero on Thursday — same day as the South Carolina GOP debate. Just a coincidence.

Also a coincidence? Romney will skip the Carolina debate.

Also skipping: Newt Gingrich and Michelle Bachmann. It should be kept in mind that, since 1980, no Republican has won the nomination without winning the South Carolina primary. Georgia’s Herman Cain is practically on home turf there, and coming off a strong showing Friday in New Hampshire. Yeah, I know it’s early, but the key GOP activists in South Carolina will remember who dissed them by skipping this debate.

Isn’t it time you joined the online grassroots army at Citizens for Cain?

Fort Sumter 1861: ‘Strike a Blow!’

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Today, a most momentous anniversary is the subject of my column at The American Spectator:

Visitors to Princeton, New Jersey, may find there the grave of a former New York state judge who died in 1919 at the advanced age of 90. Judge Roger Pryor was not from New Jersey, however, nor was he a native of New York. A Virginian by birth, as a young man Pryor had been one of the Old Dominion’s foremost secessionist “fire-eaters.” Impatient with Virginia’s reluctance to secede from the Union, Pryor traveled to South Carolina in April 1861 and gave a speech urging the newborn Confederacy to resist Abraham Lincoln’s attempt to reinforce the U.S. Army contingent holding the fort that commanded Charleston harbor.
“Strike a blow!” Pryor cried, assuring his “immense and enthusiastic audience” that if the crisis led to war, Virginia would secede immediately — “within an hour by Shrewsbury clock,” he said. . . .

Please read the whole thing. And by all means, sing along!

And here, by the way, is that grave in Princeton, N.J.:

Cleanup Crew To Lindsay Graham’s Office. Or: With Senators Like That, Who Needs The Constitution?

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by Smitty (via IowaHawk on Twitter)

Blogprof has the clip:
Mark Steyn is truly the human chainsaw of sarcasm, but his wrecking of Lindsay Graham is a wonder:

I have no expectations of Harry Reid or the New York Times, but I have nothing but total contempt for the wretched buffoon Graham.

A mob of deranged ululating blood-lusting head-hackers slaughter Norwegian female aid-workers and Nepalese guards — and we’re the ones with the problem?

I agree with the Instaprof: Lindsey Graham is unfit for office. The good news is there’s no need for the excitable lads of Mazar e-Sharif to chop his head off because he’s already walking around with nothing up there. And, as for his halfwitted analogy with World War II, he’s too ignorant to realize it but he’s singing the dhimmi remake of an ancient Noel Coward satire.

Yeah, Lindsey earned it.
I mean, really, Lindsey. You served in the Air Force, defending the First Amendment against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Possibly you could refresh your recollection, sir.
This blog is on record as being against Qur’an burning on grounds that it’s tasteless and not something Jesus of Nazareth is likely to have done, temporal issues notwithstanding. However, when it comes to idiocy like flag burning, or even Stolen Valor, giving more power to the beltway goober squad ain’t the answer.

Fight Over GOP 2012 Primary Calendar

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The 2012 Republican National Convention is scheduled for Tampa, but Florida is trying to monkey around and move up its primary, prompting at least two state chairmen to threaten to strip Florida of the convention. Ben Smith at Politico:

South Carolina Republican Party Chair Karen Floyd today brought into the open the simmering tensions between the traditional early states and the others — particularly Florida — jockeying to break into the primary calendar.
Floyd’s demand: If Florida won’t step aside, the RNC should move its convention out of the state.

Michael O’Brien in The Hill:

The chairman of Iowa’s Republican Party on Thursday backed an effort to possibly move the 2012 Republican National Convention out of Florida if that state sticks to its January primary date.
Iowa GOP Chairman Matt Strawn said he would join the chairwoman of South Carolina’s Republican Party, Karen Floyd, in an effort to reopen the process to select the site of the 2012 convention, which is slated to be held in Tampa.
“If Florida refuses to move its primary date into compliance with RNC rules, that consequence should be the re-opening of the process to select the site of the 2012 RNC Convention,” Strawn said in a statement.

Let’s hope this threat will be supported by other state GOP chairs, and that Florida stops futzing around. You’ll remember that Florida and Michigan tried to jump the line in 2008, which ended up causing a big fight among Democrat over delegates.

The three first big events of the campaign calendar — the Iowa caucuses, followed by the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries — ought to be protected in their traditional priority.

Why should this tradition be carved in stone? The basic reason is predictability: Knowing in advance which states go first — because they go first every time — permits candidates who want to “test the waters” to set up early operations in those states. And because all of these three states are relatively small, this means that the early voting to sift the field and sort the frontrunners doesn’t award a decisive number of delegates: Even after Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina have chosen, the overhwelming bulk of delegates are still up for grabs.

Recent attempts to “front-load” the primary calendar, with other states moving their primaries earlier and earlier, is bad for the process, because it permits less time for candidates to campaign everywhere. As could be seen in the 2008 Democratic primaries, where Obama and Hillary Clinton battled all the way into May, the result of a longer primary campaign is ultimately better-tested candidates.

Meanwhile, there is good news from California:

The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation announced Wednesday that it will postpone what was supposed to be the kickoff debate for the GOP presidential nomination contest, moving it from May 2 to Sept. 14. The reason? There aren’t enough candidates ready to debate yet.
There will still be a GOP debate in May. South Carolina, the site of the first 2012 primary in the South, will host a Republican debate on May 5. But with the delay of the Reagan Library debate, the decades-long trend where each successive presidential campaign starts earlier than the last one may finally be ending. Virtually all the potential 2012 GOP candidates are still waiting before launching their campaigns.
“Although there will be a long and impressive list of Republican candidates who eventually take the field, too few have made the commitment thus far for a debate to be worthwhile in early May,” John Heubusch, executive director for the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation, said in a statement Wednesday.

This is good news, because it gives me more time to raise money for the Shoe Leather Fund.

Please go read my post about that — it’s “monthly bonus” time, and I’m trying to impress my wife.

Obligatory: ‘Hey, Did Anybody Notice That Allen West and Tim Scott Are Black?’

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Video via The Right Scoop:

Quoted at The Hill:

“So I think that the — the liberal progressives saw the strength of the grass-roots movement that we call the Tea Party which stands for ‘taxed enough already’ and they tried to turn against it,” Rep.-elect Allen West (R-Fla.) said Friday on “Hannity” on Fox News.
“And the number one thing that you always try to do to silence an opponent in the United States of America is to call someone a racist.”
West said that attempts to tarnish the Tea Party did not foil his campaign. “And we see that that did not work whatsoever,” he said.

Ann Coulter: “MSNBC is still searching for the ‘Republicans are racist’ angle in all of this.” And speaking of MSNBC, I like Allahpundit’s take on Keith Olbermann’s suspension:

If you’re going to rant against the other team every night, own it. Please, no more Murrow-esque professions of avoiding the voting booth in the name of objectivity when you’re on the air five hours a week screeching about wingnut fascists and the racist dystopia they’re about to impose on America.

Someone needs to compile a highlight reel of Olbermann’s most hyperbolic pronouncements about the Impending Dark Night of Fascism. He’s done that Martin Niemoller lecture so often — we’re always just one election away from cattle cars and concentration camps — that even liberals must be tiring of it by now.

UPDATE: Susannah Fleetwood has this video of an earlier “Fox and Friends” interview with Tim Scott:

This year, a record total of 13 black candidates won Republican congressional primaries, two of whom won their elections Nov. 2. Another candidate we covered extensively here, Charles Lollar, got just 35 percent against Steny Hoyer in Maryland’s 5th District, but fared well in Calvert and St. Mary’s counties.

We should remember that Allen West didn’t win his first campaign against Ron Klein in 2008, and we should also keep in mind that district lines will be re-drawn before the 2012 election. Black GOP candidates who didn’t win this year ought to be encouraged to try again, using the fundraising and other resources they developed in 2010 as the basis for building stronger campaigns for 2012.

Nikki Haley Update: Good Fight Worthwhile

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by Smitty

Jesse Hathaway offers an excellent overview of one of the more sordid examples of Lefty character assassination this campaign season. If it isn’t Sarah Palin it’s Nikki Haley, or Sharron Angle, or Christine O’Donnell, or Carly Fiorina, or Meg Whitman. Thankfully free of a suspicious nature, I’m somehow capable of avoiding the conclusion that there is a streak of misogyny on the Left. Oh, these lying eyes of mine.
But back to Jesse’s story, where he concludes:

Palmetto State politics may be corrupt, but fresh, outsider candidates such as Haley seek to change that, and it appears that the War on Nikki Haley will be for naught.

Noted New York Times blogger and former sports statistician Nate Silver has run 100,000 separate Monte Carlo simulations, each with “random variation in local and national [environmental effects],” and has come to the conclusion that Haley has a 91.1 percent chance of winning in November. Silver’s analyses are considered the gold standard in political circles, and his predictions rarely miss.

The War on Nikki Haley is nothing more than the death throes of a moribund, elitist ruling class of politicos.

Perhaps Jesse is overly optimistic here. He is, after all, young. Yeah, we may chop back the current crop of moribund elitists, but what really matters will be the attention afforded by the common voters going down the road. BHO was quite correct to point out that sunlight is a great disinfectant. However, it’s you and me that have to be that shining sun on the hill. Otherwise, these elitists will beat us down every time, often in the name of lifting us up, or some other folk tale.

Aside: could Jim Clyburn be in trouble?

Senator Jim DeMint Rocks

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by Smitty (via Cubachi on Twitter)

DeMint is a statesman. He, along with a few dozen other Senators and a few score in the House are the best hope for the country. This Weekly Standard profile offers a window into the Progressive rot that must be expunged, dating to DeMint’s Representative days:

But when he arrived in Washington to assume his House seat, no one would have pegged him as a troublemaker. He was elected president of his House class and regularly attended seminars given by the House GOP leadership.

But something happened to DeMint in these leadership seminars that would change the course of his life. The gatherings were entirely focused on the means for concentrating and preserving political power: How to milk K Street lobbyists for political contributions; how to place earmarks into appropriations bills so they would be deemed essential to the folks back home.

One day, DeMint had had enough. He rose up in a seminar to question why representatives of the party of smaller government were so focused on earmarks and political fundraising. Why aren’t we talking about reforming the federal tax code or addressing the health care mess?

Midst laughter, someone shouted, “You’ll catch on to the system, DeMint.” But DeMint never did.

The Constitution is predicated upon an informed, attentive electorate. The internet has been a catalyst for the Tea Parties to become informed. The Ruling Class is cordially invited to step aside.

Kudos to DeMint for being like Lot, and managing to stay righteous amongst the wicked, as opposed to Lott, who seems to have had less success with that.