Category: South Carolina

‘I Guess I Won’t Do This Again’

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Famous last words:

A woman who was attacked and killed by an alligator in a gated community in South Carolina on Friday was trying to touch the animal when it grabbed her and dragged her underwater, authorities said today.
After briefly getting away from the alligator, the woman stood in waist deep water in the Kiawah Island pond and said ‘I guess I wont do this again,’ but the alligator grabbed her in its jaws again and took her under the water, according to a supplemental police report released Tuesday.
Cynthia Covert, 58, died of drowning before Charleston County deputies and firefighters were able to shoot and kill the alligator and use poles to get her out of the pond, authorities said.
Animal lover Covert came to Kiawah Island, a gated community southeast of Charleston, to give the homeowner a manicure Friday, according to the police report.
The woman told deputies Covert typically was professional in her salon, but was relaxed and excited at the home, talking about her boyfriend’s visit from Tennessee, and brought a glass of wine with her.
Covert saw the alligator while working on the woman’s porch and when Covert finished she started taking pictures of the alligator, the woman told deputies.
The woman and her husband started screaming for Covert to get away from the alligator because they saw it grab a deer a few days earlier, deputies said.
Covert said ‘I don’t look like a deer’ and reached to touch the alligator when the animal attacked, according to the report.

One glass of wine too many, I’d say.




 

Democrats Engage in Angry Shouting Match in Charleston, South Carolina

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The worst debate in the history of American politics:

The CBS News moderators came under fire on social media Tuesday as the Democratic presidential debate in South Carolina grew heated, with crosstalk often drowning them out.
Meghan McCain compared the debate’s atmosphere to the contentious discussions she faces on “The View,” saying, “these moderators need to get this under control.” . . .
Former Vice President Joe Biden in particular spoke over moderators attempting to cut him off on several occasions, insisting, “I am not out of time. You spoke over time, and I’m going to talk” and later asking, “Can we just speak up when we want to? Is that the idea?”
Later, as Biden attempted to break in again, moderator Gayle King quipped, “I promise, Mr. Vice President, we are going to get to you,” with Biden responding, “You keep promising me that, but you never get to me.”

Some commentators declared that Joe Biden had his strongest debate performance to date, but what I noticed was he kept shouting at the top of his lungs, as if being loud was whole point — aerobic shouting. Meanwhile, almost everyone directed their fire at Bernie Sanders, except Elizabeth Warren, who spent much of the night attacking Mike Bloomberg, who isn’t even on the ballot in South Carolina. Jim Geraghty might have explained that strategy best:

 

In general, the debate was a colossal waste of time, and time is the valuable commodity that Democrats can’t afford to waste now:

Time is running out for the Democratic Party and, by this time next week, it will probably be too late for them to turn back. More than a third of the delegates to their national convention will be chosen next Tuesday, when 14 states including California and Texas hold their primaries. One the one hand, this means that the party’s agonizing struggle over its 2020 presidential nomination may soon be effectively over. On the other hand, if Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders claims a decisive victory next Tuesday — which now seems likely — the “Anybody But Bernie” faction of the party will be pushed to increasingly desperate measures in their efforts to deny him the nomination. . . .

Read the rest of my latest column at The American Spectator.




 

She’s Crazy and Married to a Democrat

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But I repeat myself:

Democratic congressman Joe Cunningham’s wife is furious that their taxpayer-subsidized healthcare plan declined to pay for therapy sessions, according to a rant on an insurance bill she posted on Instagram.
The South Carolina Democrat is currently serving his first term in Congress, where members are given access to Obamacare “gold” plans from Blue Cross Blue Shield and are responsible for paying about a quarter of the premiums. The plan is apparently not good enough for his wife, Amanda Cunningham, who told her Instagram followers she would be urging her husband to do something about it.
“I’m gonna have a little bit of a rant here on social media because I think this is important,” she said on her Instagram story last week. “I’ve been going over my not-a-bill bill here from Blue Cross Blue Shield, and realizing that once again, all of my mental health therapy sessions are denied, in addition to all of our marriage counseling sessions.”
“It’s just mind-blowing to me that these basic well-known needs, that mental health is health care, are still being denied, that we’re still fighting for these absolutely basic things, it’s unbelievable to me,” she said.

Wait a minute, she’s getting “mental health therapy sessions” and also “marriage counseling sessions”? Does the name Eagleton ring a bell?

Never mind the coverage gaps in your health insurance plan, lady, you’ve just told the entire world that (a) the Congressman is married to a lunatic, and (b) your marriage is circling the toilet bowl.

Yeah, I understand that mentally-ill women are a crucial part of Democrat grassroots coalition, but having the congressman’s wife babbling insane nonsense on Instagram might not be a winning strategy in South Carolina’s 1st District, which was represented by Republicans since 1981. Trump won that district by double-digits in 2016, and Cunningham is likely to be a one-term fluke, especially once voters in the district realize that he’s married to a deranged woman who demands insurance coverage for her marriage counseling sessions.

By the way, Amanda met her husband when they were both working on a luxury yacht in 2011. She’s a yoga instructor.

(Hat-tip: Rollo Tomassi on Twitter.)



 

Memo From the National Affairs Desk: Final Wisdom and a Failed Coup

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Gonna miss the sunshine and palmettos.

LITTLE RIVER, South Carolina
Last night, while I was pounding out 1,700 words about the Marianne Williamson presidential campaign, the political world at large was going insane over the conclusion of Robert Mueller’s investigation:

For President Donald Trump, the fight over the “witch hunt” is only just beginning.
Now that special counsel Robert Mueller’s two-year investigation into Trump’s campaign is over, it’s being transformed into a rallying cry and a weapon for the president’s re-election campaign.
The pall of the two-year probe lifted Sunday, when Attorney General William Barr released a summary of Mueller’s findings that said the wide-ranging investigation found no evidence of collusion by Trump’s 2016 campaign with the Russian government. Barr’s four-page letter was immediately seized upon by the Republican president and his allies as a weapon to use against Democrats, the so-called Deep State and the media.
Even before Mueller’s conclusions were revealed, it was clear that Trump saw the end of the investigation as a political opportunity. . . .
“Democrats and their liberal media allies for two years slandered President @realDonaldTrump for ‘conspiring with Russia,’” press secretary Sarah Sanders tweeted. “It was all a malicious, preposterous lie given wall to wall media coverage despite zero evidence. This should never again happen to an American President.”

You can read the rest of that Associated Press report, but you see the biased angle here. The liberal media narrative now is how Republicans weaponized the Mueller findings as ammunition for Trump’s re-election, as if we are supposed to forget how Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself) pushed the “Russia! Russia! Russia!” conspiracy theory as a weapon to de-legitimize and undermine Trump’s presidency. The media’s bias consists mainly of assuming that whatever Democrats say or do is always right, whereas anything Republicans say or do is always wrong, and we’re not supposed to notice this bias. Therefore, even when a 675-day investigation (inspired by a phony dossier paid for by the Clinton campaign) fails to find evidence of Trump’s wrongdoing, the media cannot simply report the fact that the president has been exonerated, nor acknowledge that he was absolutely right in calling the investigation a “witch hunt.” No, Trump is a Republican and therefore, according to the biases of the media, he must be guilty of something.

So rather than reporting the actual news — the attempted “Deep State” coup has failed — instead the Associated Press spins the Republican reaction to the Mueller report as inherently sinister. It’s wrong, according to the AP, for this result to be “transformed into a rallying cry and a weapon for the president’s re-election campaign.” Why is it wrong? Because it is wrong for a Republican president to try to get re-elected. These professional journalists claim to be objective, yet they apparently lack the ability to step back and question the accuracy and fairness of their own assumptions. But I digress . . .

Probably not the ideal wardrobe for Myrtle Beach.

Anyone can, and lots of people do, sit in front of a laptop tapping out political screeds about the latest Drudge Report headlines, and it’s ridiculous for me to sit here in South Carolina ranting like this when that’s not what I traveled 500 miles here to do. My three days and two nights in the Palmetto State weren’t merely an excuse to enjoy the sunshine and scenery, but rather I came here to see what the Williamson campaign looks like on the ground at close range. It’s one thing to sit home nurturing a wild hunch that a long-short dark horse candidate could exceed expectations in a year when Democrats might be desperate enough to beat Trump that they’ll risk going with an untested outsider. It’s another thing to travel to an early primary state and directly examine the candidate’s operations. To do this, as a conservative journalist covering a Democratic primary, one must undertake the difficult task of trying to gain psychological distance from the situation. Pure journalistic objectivity is a mirage, a delusional ideal, but nevertheless I must attempt to set aside my own undeniable biases and try to think of this campaign from the perspective of a typical Democratic primary voter: What do they want? What kind of messages will appeal to the enraged grassroots gripped by Trump Derangement Syndrome?

Buttigieg surges to third place in new Iowa poll
— The Hill, March 24

Do you see what I mean? As crazy as it seems to me, many grassroots Democrats in the crucial early caucus state of Iowa believe that the gay mayor of South Bend, Indiana, could be the next president. And if Mayor Booty-Judge must therefore be taken seriously, who can confidently say Marianne Williamson has no chance in the 2020 race?

As I say, however, doing this kind of coverage requires more than merely believing that the long-shot candidate actually has a chance, it also requires me to soberly and accurately report policy statements and rhetoric that are almost entirely antithetical to my own beliefs. Picture me sitting in a black church in the South Carolina Low Country, listening to a speech by Marianne Williamson, jotting down notes and praying that my head doesn’t literally explode Scanners-style.

 

The only common ground of agreement between Williamson and myself is a resentment of our out-of-touch political elites, and while our worldviews might otherwise be 180 degrees diametrically opposed, Democrat primary voters may just be in a mood for an outsider candidate who does what Donald Trump did to the GOP field in 2016 — stomp through it like Godzilla destroying Tokyo. The way Bernie Sanders got screwed over by the DNC, an insider scheme to deliver the nomination to Hillary Clinton, who then proceeded to bungle away what looked like a sure thing — she never set foot in Wisconsin! — has inspired a wrathful mood among Democrat grassroots activists, who are as contemptuous of their party’s leadership cabal in much the same way grassroots conservatives despise the GOP elite. In such a climate of populist discontent, almost anything is possible, and I guarantee you that campaign managers for Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar and Kirsten Gillibrand — all of whom are United States Senators, for crying out loud — are wondering how their candidates could possibly be trailing Mayor Booty-Judge in Iowa.

And so I sit here drinking my sweet iced tea and using the free wifi, while I deliver The Final Wisdom from South Carolina:

Marianne Williamson was in the pulpit at Bethel A.M.E. Church Sunday morning, and the sermon she was preaching began with a reference to Esther, the Jewish wife of Persia’s King Xerxes, who saved her people from destruction by the king’s evil minister, Haman. Williamson evoked Esther as “a vessel for the salvation of her people” who were “disadvantaged and oppressed.” Certainly this Bible-based message about deliverance resonated with the black congregation, whose historic church dates back to the 1860s. However, the woman in the pulpit, who has been called Oprah Winfrey’s “spiritual guru,” had not come to the South Carolina lowlands as an author promoting her books, but rather as a candidate for the Democratic Party’s 2020 presidential nomination.
“Being American does not only give us rights, it gives us responsibilities,” Ms. Williamson told the congregation. “This country must have a great rising up.”
For all the talk about the Religious Right’s role in Republican politics, little attention is paid to the influence among Democrats of the Religious Left, of which Ms. Williamson is a recognized leader. And if the odds against her winning her party’s 2020 presidential nomination are a million-to-one, there are nonetheless serious Democrats who believe she can achieve such a miracle. One of them is Dr. Gloria Bromell Tinubu, state director of the Williamson campaign. An experienced politician who served in the Georgia legislature before returning to her native South Carolina, Dr. Tinubu was twice the Democratic nominee for Congress in the 7th District, getting more than 100,000 votes against Republican Rep. Tom Rice in this deep “red” district. Dr. Tinubu introduced Ms. Williamson at Bethel A.M.E. by saying, “I consider her a sister,” which is about as strong an endorsement as any Democrat needs here. . . .

Read the rest of my column at The American Spectator. Now, I’m heading north toward Fort Bragg, where I’ll visit my granddaughter before heading back home, where the high temperature tomorrow will be 50°F and the low will be below freezing. Gonna miss the sunshine, but remember the Five Most Important Words in the English Language are:

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!



 

PREVIOUSLY:

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A Sunday Blessing in South Carolina

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“May this pittance help as you go to look madness in the face. It should make for some very interesting reading. Remember, as a wise man hath said, crazy people are dangerous. Be careful out there and God be with you.”
— Roger C., who hit the tip jar this morning

GEORGETOWN, South Carolina
To “look madness in the face” is a fair description of my job, I guess, and it’s true that crazy people are dangerous. Readers have warned me that Bill Schmalfeldt is somewhere in this vicinity, so your prayers on my behalf are certainly welcome. Typing away here at my undisclosed location (hint: they serve crispy golden french fries and the wifi is free), I might not even notice that neckless freak if he came through the door, and who knows what might result from such a confrontation, especially if the deranged cyberstalker catches me by surprise? God forbid!

The Lord’s protection is always helpful when you’re out on the campaign trail, and so it was that I found myself in the pews of historic Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church on Broad Street, which is right across the street from the historic Jewish cemetery.

 

There were Jews in South Carolina before the Revolution, and Abraham Cohen was on the committee that welcomed George Washington to this town in 1791, to give you an idea of how highly esteemed that prosperous merchant was. In a largely agricultural society like the Old South, the skills possessed by Jewish settlers made them valued citizens. The effect of the color line was such that Southern Jews (mostly of Sephardim ancestry) were both better integrated into their communities and, generally, far more conservative than their northern kinsman (mostly Ashkenazi) so that, for example, Judah P. Benjamin became a U.S. Senator from Louisiana and served in Jefferson Davis’s Cabinet. And that’s today’s Southern history lesson, boys and girls . . .

Marianne Williamson in the pulpit at Bethel AME Church.

Did I mention Marianne Williamson is Jewish by birth? “Should she win the presidency, Williamson, 66, not only would be the first woman president but the first Jewish one,” reports New York Jewish Week.

So she’s got that going for her, and all she needs to qualify for the first televised debates, according to the Democratic National Committee’s official criteria, is 65,000 unique donors. Her campaign is driving steadily toward that number — they say they’re already past 25,000 — and if she gets her spot on the stage, she’s got a natural appeal to those Democrats who are deeply disillusioned with the status quo.

While I don’t want to say much here about her sermon at Bethel AME this morning — you’ll get that in tomorrow’s American Spectator column — it is fair to say that Ms. Williamson speaks for the Religious Left. She is against the military-industrial complex, and mentions U.S. support for the Saudi war in Yemen in every stump speech. If the Bernie Sanders voters in Iowa and New Hampshire lose faith in their hero and start looking for a fresh face, a lot of them will like Ms. Williamson’s message.

Marianne Williamson talks to a local Democrat at Sunday’s luncheon.

Meanwhile, there’s the grassroots retail politics side of the operation. The Williamson campaign’s signup table at the after-church luncheon collected names and contact information from about 40 people, and her state campaign chairwoman, Dr. Gloria Bromell Tinnubu, is an experienced political professional who has twice gotten 100,000+ votes in congressional elections in South Carolina’s 7th District. Oh, and here’s a look at the candidate’s campaign literature:

 

You can click that image to enlarge and read it, e.g., “Politics . . . should be, as everything should be, an expression of the heart.” My conservative readers will shudder in horror at such gooey emotionalism, but this is about Democrat primary voters, remember? There’s plenty of policy talk out there among the 16 or so candidates running for 2020, and also plenty of anti-Trump rage. While there is no shortage of anti-Trump rhetoric in Ms. Williamson’s stump speech, her campaign is offering voters something very different than the rest of the candidates, and she’s aiming to own a particular niche overlooked by the various senators and governors and a Certain Former Vice President running for the Democrat nomination. Did I mention she’s been called Oprah Winfrey’s “spiritual guru”? My hunch is that’s gonna count for something.

Also, my hunch is I’d better get cracking on that column for Monday, which I’ve got to finish before either (a) this fine dining establishment closes for the evening or (b) the deranged cyberstalker Bill Schmalfeldt comes staggering through the door. Pray for me, and please remember the Five Most Important Words in the English Language are:

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!



 

Saturday Scenes from South Carolina

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Marianne Williamson talks to a supporter Saturday in Columbia, S.C.

MYRTLE BEACH, South Carolina
The National Affairs Desk is located at a McDonald’s on Kings Highway today because the wifi at the hotel was down, and I’ve got about an hour to put this together before I head down to Bethel AME Church in Georgetown, where Marianne Williamson has a 10 a.m. appearance.

Saturday’s events were about as “retail politics” as it gets. First, there was the state Democratic Party’s executive committee meeting, held in an auditorium on the campus of Midlands Technical College. There were about 100 people in the auditorium, the most influential members of the Democratic Party in South Carolina. This is a deep “red” state, with Republicans controlling all statewide offices, both chambers of the legislature, and five of seven congressional seats. However, one of the metrics by which the Democratic National Committee has said it will determine candidates’ eligibility for the televised debates is the presidential candidates’ poll numbers in the first four states (Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada) to hold caucuses or primaries. Therefore, the 2020 candidates are working to build their presences in South Carolina. While I attended the executive committee meeting to see Marianne Williamson, when I arrived, Peter Buttigieg was speaking.

 

“Mayor Pete” is what people call him, because that way they can avoid attempting to pronounce “Buttigieg,” which I’m told is supposed to sound something like “Booty Judge,” and this is just . . . unfortunate.

The guy is a Harvard alumnus, a Rhodes scholar and an Afghanistan war veteran, but I’m sorry, America will not elect President Buttigieg. And this would be true even if he weren’t gay, but he is. A few months after being re-elected as mayor of South Bend, Indiana, Buttigieg announced he was gay and married Chasten Glezman two years later. My hunch is that his presidential campaign is either (a) actually a bid for the vice-presidential nomination or (b) a warm-up for a future run at statewide office — senator or governor — in Indiana. So, if the governor of Colorado gets the presidential nomination, maybe your Democrat neighbors will have “Hickenlooper-Buttigieg” bumper stickers on their Volvos.

 

Buttigieg can talk, man. You can click and watch that video, where he’s talking about “white nationalism” as a national security issue, to get an idea. As crazy as his ideas may be, he expresses them cogently and the Democrat audience gave him a standing ovation at the end. There was hearty applause when Marianne Williamson made her entrance at the executive committee meeting, as you can see from the video:

 

That’s just the first four minutes. She talked for about 15 minutes. She seemed a bit nervous at the start, talking too fast, but she made her points, finished strong and did much better, I thought, in her shorter speech from the stage at the Cornbread Festival in downtown Columbia.

 

Some diligent reader could do me a big favor and transcribe those videos in the comments, because I know I’m going to be sweating it on deadline tonight here at McDonald’s, trying to file my American Spectator column before they close the lobby. And I’ve got about five minutes now to wrap this up and hit the road for Georgetown. So there’s only time to just dump a bunch of photos from Saturday’s events in Columbia.

 

 

 

 

 

 

You see there a picture of the drum line of the Benedict College marching band, whose performance at the Cornbread Festival followed Williamson’s speech, and buddy, they rocked it. Speaking of which, I’d better get rocking down the highway, if I’m going to be in Georgetown in time for that event at Bethel Church. Ciao, baby.



 

Memo From the National Affairs Desk: Who’s Heading to the Cornbread Festival?

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COLUMBIA, South Carolina
Rolled into town at 11:30 a.m. after an eight-hour drive, and after I post this, I’ll be heading to the South Carolina Democratic Party Executive Committee meeting where Marianne Williamson will make an appearance before her visit to the Cornbread Festival downtown.

Apparently, this street festival is a big deal, because two other Democrat presidential hopefuls — New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker and South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg — will also be in attendance. Booker’s at 4% nationally (sixth place) in the Real Clear Politics average of national polls and, for reasons I don’t understand, Buttigieg’s in eighth place at 1.3%, which is better than Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper (who watches porn with his mom) and New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who thinks rape hoaxes are awesome. Why is Buttgieg polling so well? Also, if your last name is “Buttgieg” why on earth would you name your son Peter? But it’s probably a better choice than Richard, I suppose . . .

Before I left home, my 16-year-old daughter Reagan came home from her spring mission trip (which is what she chose instead of an actual vacation), and I took her and my wife out to dinner ($54), driving the Subaru Outback I rented for this trip. The Outback is a fine vehicle, however, I’d expected a compact sedan, but the lady at the rental agency told me they were out of sedans, so this “upgrade” to the Outback was free. On the other hand, because we’ve got only liability coverage on our old Nissan, I had to get full-coverage insurance on the rental ($28 a day, $112 for four days), which I hadn’t previously figured into the trip cost. But just in case I hit another deer, y’know . . .

My podcasting partner John Hoge notes that tonight’s edition of The Other Podcast (7 p.m. ET) will feature me calling in from my hotel in Myrtle Beach, to report whatever the heck happens at the Cornbread Festival, I guess. Also, Hoge reports that our fellow Kimberlin co-defendant Aaron Walker got locked out of his Twitter account for calling Chris Matthews an “ignorant slut.” Apparently that’s a no-no word . . .

Speaking of no-no words, have I mentioned that a guy named “Buttigieg” is running for president? Because I don’t care what his policies are, there’s no way America’s going to elect President Buttigieg.

Liberal journalist Matthew Walther is worried:

Why are Democrats so weird? Only a few days after his long-shot candidacy had begun to attract some interest from the mainstream press, Andrew Yang came out strongly against circumcision, surely one of the most pressing political and social issues of our time. He even doubled down on this by agreeing on Thursday to debate right-wing Wunderkind Ben Shapiro on the subject. Last month Sen. Kamala Harris (Calif.) told a painfully obvious lie about listening to Snoop Dogg and Tupac while smoking weed in college (she graduated many years before either of them released their debut albums). Even her own father told her to cut it out. Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (Mass.) insistence on releasing the results of a DNA test in the hope of vindicating her past claims of Native American heritage was one of the most bizarre events in recent political history. . . .
Maybe Democrats even think that by embracing their inner weirdness they can channel some of Trump’s electoral magic. Or maybe they just think that the American people can no longer be bothered to care about the sorts of things that would have been career ending for any politician back in the remote past — 2014 or so. . . .

If liberals are worried, that’s good news. And speaking of good news:

The long-awaited Mueller report was submitted to the Attorney General yesterday, and to the stunned, unhappy shock of the left, he has reportedly not recommended any further indictments.
Reports are circulating that Attorney General William Barr could release a summary to Congress as early as today. . . .
With the Mueller investigation over, The Washington Examiner notes five things that did not happen.

1. Mueller did not indict Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, or other people whose purported legal jeopardy was the subject of intense media speculation in the last year.
2. Mueller did not charge anyone in the Trump campaign or circle with conspiring with Russia to fix the 2016 election, as was the subject of intense media speculation in the last year.
3. Mueller did not subpoena the president, as was the subject of intense media speculation in the last year.
4. The president did not fire Mueller, as was the subject of intense media speculation in the last year.
5. The president did not interfere with the Mueller investigation, as was the subject of intense media speculation in the last year. In his letter to Congress, Barr noted the requirement that he notify lawmakers if top Justice Department officials ever interfered with the Mueller investigation. “There were no such instances,” Barr wrote.

A big fat nothingburger, that’s what it is. Six hundred seventy-five days of investigation, inspired by a phony dossier paid for by the Clinton campaign, and Democrats got zilch, zero, nada. Meanwhile . . .

Former DNC chairman Ed Rendell (D-PA) advised 2020 Democratic presidential candidates to look toward the center and not to the far left.
“I think all of a sudden, the 2020 election went from a slam dunk for Democrats to something where we’re going to have trouble beating this guy because he’s going to make Democratic socialism swing to the left, which I don’t think is real, but he’s going to make it into the issue,” the former governor told CNN on Thursday.
“AOC does not speak for the Democratic party,” Rendell said of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and her growing influence.

Sorry, Ed, you’re too late. The governor of Colorado’s talking porn movies, a guy named Yang is talking foreskins, a New York senator is trailing in the polls behind a guy named “Buttgieg,” and my hunch is the craziness of 2020 Democrats is only going to get worse. That’s why I’m out on the campaign trail so early. Even though I swore I’d never do it again after the relentless bummer of 2012, the scent of craziness attracted me like a plate of hash browns scattered, covered and topped.

By God, a campaign this crazy requires my coverage. Have I mentioned that Marianne Williamson “was the first to discuss reparations for African Americans in this presidential campaign and it was part of her announcement speech”? Because this is South Carolina, you see, and it’s one of the early-primary states where candidates’ poll rankings will count toward qualifying for the first Democrat debates. And I’m sure my readers will say there’s no way in the world America can afford $100 billion for reparations, but that’s only 1/1,000th of the $100 trillion in spending promised by Elizabeth Warren. When you’re talking that kind of money — ONE HUNDRED TRILLION DOLLARS — what’s a measly few billion, huh? “Nurse, more Thorazine, stat!”

Who else can handle such intense craziness as this? So it’s about time for me to pack up the laptop and get back at it, with the executive committee meeting, the Cornbread Festival, and then drive 150 miles to Myrtle Beach for tonight’s podcast at 7 p.m. ET — don’t miss it — and remember The Five Most Important Words in the English Language are:

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!



 

Just Got Off the Phone . . .

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. . . with the press spokeswoman for Marianne Williamson’s presidential campaign, to whom I found it necessary to explain:

  1. How I managed to pick not one, but two dark-horse candidates (first Herman Cain and then Rick Santorum) who became contenders in the 2012 Republican primary campaign;
    and
  2. I don’t do “gotcha” journalism. I’m not hunting for scandals, I’m a guy doing old-fashioned shoe-leather reporting, and my biases are so obvious, I can’t be accused of having a hidden agenda.

As I explained, I believe the way to cover a presidential campaign is to start with a candidate that all the big-name pundits don’t take seriously. This means I don’t have to worry about being one of 30 reporters in a scrum following the candidate around on the campaign trail, and can thus cover the grassroots effort at close range.

This is the Gonzo way, and there’s no reason a conservative journalist can’t cover a Democrat primary, considering that the liberal media expect to be taken seriously when they cover Republicans. So this morning, I booked my hotel (two nights in Myrtle Beach for $165.76) and reserved a rental car ($175.68 for four days, Friday through Tuesday) for a South Carolina trip made possible by the tip-jar hitters.

Great minds think alike, and Professor Ann Althouse also took notice of Marianne Williamson’s campaign yesterday. There is an inarguable logic to this: If the Republicans could nominate an outsider from the world of business, why can’t Democrats nominate Oprah Winfrey’s “spiritual guru”? Last month, ABC’s Nightline featured Williamson:

 

My wild hunches have a strange way of becoming reality, and you never know where my ambition to become ambassador to Vanuatu might lead. I’m already looking at the April calendar for an Iowa trip, where I’ll save money by crashing on Cynthia Yockey‘s sofa, but airfare and a rental car will still be necessary for that trip. Meanwhile I’m on deadline for my next American Spectator column, so I’ll conclude quickly by reminding you that the Five Most Important Words in the English Language are:

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!

Readers in South Carolina should sound off in the comments. It’s possible I might get thirsty Saturday night in Myrtle Beach.

UPDATE: Just by the way, the cheapest round-trip flight to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, with a departure April 1, if I booked it today, would be $428. So if you guys want to send me racing around Corn Country chasing Democrat candidates, that’s the next fundraising target. As I say, Cynthia’s offered to let me crash at her place in Fairfield, “a rural town that is home to the Maharishi University of Management and has a thriving community of practitioners of transcendental meditation,” i.e., the natural habitat of Marianne Williamson supporters.