Category: South Carolina

South Carolina ‘Cash Money’ Loyalty

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OK, we all remember Will Folks, right? The guy who claimed he had an affair with Nikki Haley? The guy is a lowdown polecat, which is another way of saying he’s a South Carolina GOP consultant — or, at least, he used to be one, although his anti-Haley smear may have made him too radioactive even by South Carolina standards.

Payback is hell, as they say, and apparently “Sic Willie” decided to get himself some payback against the Mark Sanford campaign last month:

Former S.C. Gov. Mark Sanford has retained longtime “Republican in Name Only” Wesley Donehue to advise him in the crowded GOP primary for the Palmetto State’s first congressional district. . . .
Last September (a mere five months ago) Donehue offered a graphic description of Sanford at college GOP forum.
“Mark Sanford is a piece of human shit,” the strategist told roughly a hundred college Republicans on the campus of the University of South Carolina. . . .
Loyalty in South Carolina politics is based on one thing: Cash money. That means Donehue will call anybody anything if you pay him enough money.

So if you’re for Mark Bostic in the South Carolina runoff — and certainly, I believe you should be for Bostic — then you can understand why I felt obliged to do what I swore I’d never do, namely link that lowdown polecat Will Folks. It’s a tough world down there in South Carolina politics, as my old buddy Jeff Quinton could explain at length.

Speaking of explaining at length, Dana Loesch was able to express her mystification at the Mark Sanford revival in 140 characters or less, but it took me more than 800 words:

Democrats were exultant when former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford finished atop last week’s Republican primary in a special election to fill the 1st District congressional seat vacated by Tim Scott’s appointment to the Senate. In a 16-candidate GOP field, Sanford got 37 percent, nearly three times the vote of his nearest rival, former Charleston County council member Curtis Bostic. Sanford’s advantages are even larger than the vote totals would suggest: He reportedly has a 15-to-1 campaign cash edge over Bostic and the former two-term governor is almost infinitely ahead in terms of what political strategists call “name recognition.”
Alas, name recognition is a two-edged sword for Sanford, who is perhaps best known for an embarrassment that made the phrase “hiking the Appalachian Trail” a smutty double-entendre in 2009. One late-June weekend that year — the weekend of Father’s Day, to be exact — the governor’s whereabouts became a national mystery. Neither his family nor his staff nor South Carolina law enforcement could find Sanford, whose name had been bandied about as a possible 2012 Republican presidential contender. Before search parties could be sent to find the allegedly missing hiker, however, Sanford flew back from Argentina to South Carolina and held one of the most surreal press conferences in political history. He told how a “remarkable friendship” with a woman he met in Argentina a year earlier had “sparked into something more than that.” He spoke of “trying to get my heart right” and said he had “spent the past five days of my life crying in Argentina.” Sanford’s description of Maria Belen Chapur as his “soul mate” was, as Daily Caller columnist Yates Walker said, “possibly the most sociopathic moment ever captured on live television.”
Sanford was censured by the state legislature, his wife divorced him, and last year he announced his engagement to his Argentine soul mate. His supporters use the word “redemption” to describe the former governor’s potential comeback, but the reaction of other Republicans could best be described as Fear and Loathing. . . .

Read the rest at The American Spectator. Did I mention Joe Biden will be campaigning for the Democrat? The going has gotten weird again, and I’ve got a feeling it’s about time for the weird to go pro.




 

 


#TrustCurtis @Bostic4Congress Campaign Has Eight Days to Stop Sanford in S.C.

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The South Carolina runoff is a week from Tuesday and time is of the essence:

If South Carolina Republicans nominate disgraced former Gov. Mark Sanford in the First District special election, it would be “an off-year election gift” to “the late-night comedians and political press,” Scott Conroy of Real Clear Politics wrote Friday. And given that the Democrats have nominated Elizabeth Colbert Busch, sister of Comedy Central host Stephen Colbert, the campaign to fill the congressional seat vacated by the appointment of Tim Scott to the Senate is sure to attract national attention.
The only hope for the GOP to keep the scandal-stained Sanford from becoming the “face” of the party leading up to the May 7 election lies with Curtis Bostic, the former Charleston city councilman who placed second in the March 19 primary and will meet Sanford in the April 2 runoff. . . .

Read the whole thing at ViralRead. You should also read Matt Vespa’s Red State article comparing Curtis Bostic to Ted Cruz and Jennifer Rubin’s Washington Post item explaining that Republicans “are absolutely in danger of losing the seat” if they nominate Sanford.

To show your support on Twitter, use the #Trust Curtis hashtag and please help promote the campaign’s emergency appeal at TrustCurtis.com. This might be a good time for a road trip . . .

 

S.C. Primary: Will Tea Party Rally Behind Curtis Bostic Against Mark Sanford?

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Family values: Curtis Bostic with his wife and five children

Dana Loesch this morning expressed disappointment that disgraced former Gov. Mark Sanford finished first in the South Carolina GOP congressional special-election primary. But it’s a runoff state, and Sanford only got 37 percent of the vote, while former Charleston City Councilman Curtis Bostic was second with 13 percent in the 16-candidate field. There are only two weeks until the April 1 runoff and, as National Review‘s Jim Geraghty notes, the Republican establishment seems to be lining up behind Sanford, so . . .

What about Curtis Bostic? His campaign page is StopSpending.com — a basic Tea Party theme — and it seems entirely possible that the grassroots, tired of the corrupt GOP establishment’s old-boy style of politics, could rally behind Bostic.

Reading his biography page, he’s a Marine veteran of Operation Desert Storm and the father of five home-schooled children. So there’s your pro-military and pro-family “street cred.”

Two weeks isn’t a lot of time. This is a very safe Republican district — Stephen Colbert’s sister won the Democrat primary, but she’ll get stomped in the May 7 special election to fill the seat vacated by Tim Scott’s promotion to the Senate. It’s a free shot, in other words: Torpedo the establishment pick — the guy who claimed he was “hiking the Appalachian Trail” while cavorting in Buenos Aires with his Argentine mistress — and elect a strong (but unknown) conservative candidate.

Here’s the link to contribute to Curtis Bostic’s campaign. How many small donations — $25, $50, $100 — will Curtis Bostic get this week?

The RNC ignores blogs, but I see here an opportunity to remind them that the Army of Davids can still make a difference. What do you say?

CURTIS BOSTIC for CONGRESS

 

Is ‘Senator Bruce Carroll, (R-SC)’
The New Hotness?

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by Smitty

Props to Bruce Carroll:

I felt it best to resign from GOProud in advance of the CPAC conference this week so that my position in GOProud would not be a distraction from my serious deliberations regarding my potential future plans in South Carolina public service.
I wish only the best to my colleagues and fellow supporters of GOProud moving forward and I’ll always do what I can to be helpful from the crowd.
Over the next few weeks, I will be studying the resources, time and effort it would take to do my part in holding Lindsey Graham accountable for his voting record and his attitude toward the voters in South Carolina.

Feel free to disagree with me on the point, but I’m not holding anything against Carroll, sexual or otherwise. Hopefully we’ve the liberty to support great candidates without that translating into 100% endorsement of all that candidate’s personal choices, fashion or otherwise.
Feel free to request an “Axis of Speedo” photo op with Stacey McCain at CPAC this year for a campaign fundraiser. Stacy would dig that. I think.

Update: Wonkette does a typical Lefty job of focusing on the crotches, and not the issues. Ace of Spades is a supporter.

via Gay Patriot, Sharky, and Red State

Closet-Case Democratic Party Official Infected Ex-Girlfriend With AIDS Virus?

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Jay Parmley and Rebecca Burgin

Last week, we noted that Jay Parmley, who was forced to resign as executive director of the North Carolina Democratic Party after being accused of sexually harassing a 26-year-old male staffer, had claimed to be the victim of “right-wing political enemies.”

Alas, it appears that the real victim was a young Oklahoma woman who says Parmley infected her with the AIDS virus:

Parmley’s ex-girlfriend Rebecca Burgin told TheDC that Parmley forever changed her life by making her HIV-positive. She’s worried, she said, that Parmley may have done to someone else what he did to her.
“My motivation for talking to you was that I have read the articles, I have read the letter [that Ortega sent to Parmley detailing sexual harassment allegations] and everything like that,” Burgin said.
“And after Jay and I broke up, the biggest concern that I had was, ‘what if this happened to somebody else? Would he do this to someone else?’ … My biggest concern is for anybody else that has had a relationship with him that he did not tell.” . . .
“When Jay and I met, I was 20 and he was 32,” she said. “To me, it seems to be a pattern, potentially… The unnerving thing to me is that it looks like he uses his position of authority to prey on younger adults.” . . .
Parmley served as national president of the Young Democrats of America from 1999 to 2001, then becoming executive director and chairman of the Oklahoma Democratic Party until 2005. . . .
In 2005 he left Oklahoma to become a Mississippi state liaison to the Democratic National Committee under chairman Howard Dean, during the former Vermont governor’s 50-state strategy campaign. He took a similar role in South Carolina in 2007, and became executive director of the South Carolina Democratic Party in 2009. In May 2011, the North Carolina Democratic Party hired him as its executive director. . . .
“I met him — I was a student in college and he was my American Government professor,” she told TheDC in a phone interview. “Upon completing that class, we started dating. We dated for a little over three years.” . . .
Around October 2006, after more than 14 months of a long-distance relationship, Parmley became “debilitating[ly] sick” in Mississippi, she said.
Former Mississippi Democratic Party chairman Rickey Cole told TheDC that he and his wife took Parmley to the hospital “because he had lost a great deal of weight and couldn’t keep anything in his stomach.”
And then came Thanksgiving, when Burgin said she was hit with the news that would change her life forever.
“He had called my parents and asked them that they call me and have me come over,” Burgin said, “and that I needed to call him. And so I called him, and it was at that point that he told me the doctors had tested him for HIV. And that he was HIV positive. And that I needed to be tested.” . . .

Read the whole thing, a great story by Matthew Boyle at the Daily Caller.

Notice that Parmley was employed at the top levels of the Democratic Party — as national director of Young Democrats, in Oklahoma, Mississippi, South Carolina and North Carolina — for more than a dozen years before his sexual predations were publicly exposed.

Indeed, according to Burgin’s account, top Democratic officials knew Parmley was HIV-positive more than five years ago, which might have been seen as a huge clue that Parmley was up to no good.

Of course, such an interpretation — that AIDS infection might be evidence of dangerous proclivities — could be seen as “discrimination,” and Democrats consider discrimination a greater danger than an incurable sexually-transmitted disease. And remember that when Parmley was accused of sexually harassing a 26-year-old male aide, North Carolina Democratic Party officials tried to cover it up with a financial settlement, even though Parmley’s high-risk behavior had already victimized at least one other young person. Also remember, as Ed Morrissey says, to keep Rebecca Burgin in your prayers.

 

Memo From the National Affairs Desk: Eyewitness to History in Florida

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Newt Gingrich in Fort Myers, Florida, Monday, Jan. 30, 2012

“Well, it’s past 2:30 now, so I’d better get over to the airport. Let’s hope the Gingrich people don’t sic the cops on me.”
— Robert Stacy McCain, Jan. 30, 2012

How many readers remember the day I covered a Newt Gingrich rally in Fort Myers, Florida? That was the Monday day before the primary and I filed my column for The American Spectator that night from a McDonald’s on Colonial Drive, near Page Field, where Newt had flown in for an event with Michael Reagan and Herman Cain in the airport parking lot. It was a historic day, although I didn’t realize it at the time.

Yesterday, I did some research and discovered that Gingrich and his entourage were flying around Florida that day aboard a 16-seat Gulfstream IV jet. And what made Jan. 30 so historic was that on that day, according to their Federal Election Commission report, Newt’s campaign spent $970,826.77.

That was the peak — the pinnacle, the acme, the zenith — of Gingrich’s campaign spending. On no other day throughout the course of his entire campaign did Newt 2012 spend more money than on Jan. 30.

Not only that, but comparing reported estimates of attendance at Newt’s five rallies that day, the crowd at Fort Myers — which I estimated between 250 and 300 — may have been the biggest. In all, on that day when Gingrich hit his spending peak, his combined audience for all five events totalled fewer than 1,500 people.

And his campaign spent $970,826.77.

That amount was more than twice what Gingrich’s campaign collected on its best day of fundraising. On Jan. 22, the day after he won the South Carolina primary, Newt reported contributions of $403,164.

In case you don’t remember, Jan. 22 was a Sunday, and I was driving back home with my 13-year-old son Jefferson after a week spent covering the South Carolina primary campaign. We stopped in at a McDonald’s at Rock Hill, S.C., so I could do one more post from the Palmetto State. My wife called to tell me that, due to some wacky miscalculation or technological glitch, our bank account balance was near zero, and it was by no means certain that my remaining cash would buy enough gas to enable us to make it home to Maryland more than 400 miles away.

That crisis threatened a premature end to my campaign-trail travels, and it was therefore with a sense of desperation that I posted a “Memo from the National Affairs Desk” from that McDonald’s in Rock Hill:

How the hell am I going to make it to Florida? I’ve got press credentials for Thursday’s CNN debate in Jacksonville, but unless there is some kind of miracle between now and then, there’s no way I’ll be able to buy a plane ticket. Only the most frantic rattling of the tip jar can make it happen.

You came through, guys. Four days later, on Jan. 26, I flew out to Jacksonville to cover the CNN debate, and took note of this headline:

Gingrich Pledges To Establish
Permanent Base On The Moon
‘By The End Of My Second Term’

Yeah. Good luck with that plan, huh?

That Thursday night at the debate, I was wearing my Florida shirt (purchased at a nearby Goodwill store) in the media filing center:

Santorum left Jacksonville and went home to visit his hospitalized 3-year-old daughter, Bella. Meanwhile, I covered two Romney rallies — Friday in Orlando and Sunday in Naples, where I spent the weekend in a posh condo owned by Dan Collins’s parents — and then, on that history Monday, I drove to Fort Myers to cover the Gingrich rally.

Memories? It’s all kind of a blur now. If it weren’t for the daily account of these travels here on the blog and in my American Spectator columns, I’d never be able to re-assemble a simple chronology, much less remember little details about where I bought that crazy shirt.

And yet, despite all the madness and desperation, I was there — The Man on the Scene — the day Newt’s doomed presdiential bid hit its peak.

The $970,826.77 Gingrich’s campaign spent that day was equal to 17.4% of the $5.6 million Gingrich raised in January, which was its best fundraising month of the entire campaign. And I was there.

I saw it happen — an eyewitness to history in the making — without even realizing it at the time. The column I filed for The American Spectator that night at the McDonald’s half a mile from the Fort Myers airport was called “Fear and Loathing in the Sunshine State.” And so yesterday, when I began researching how Gingrich’s campaign spent its way to disaster, it was a kick in the head to realize that the pivotal moment had happened right there in front of my eyes:

Palm trees swayed in a warm Florida breeze one afternoon in late January while we awaited the candidate’s arrival. Four TV satellite trucks were parked outside the terminal at Page Field in Fort Myers, and I was among two-dozen or so journalists waiting in the airport parking lot where about 300 supporters of Newt Gingrich were gathered to greet the man who, just nine days earlier, had defeated Mitt Romney in the South Carolina primary.
On Monday, Jan. 30, the day before the Florida primary, the omens were clear enough that Gingrich was about to be defeated in the Sunshine State, but none of Newt’s supporters that afternoon in Fort Myers seemed to suspect that the former House Speaker’s campaign was on the verge of a catastrophic collapse. Nothing reported by the news media prepared them for the disasters that swiftly followed Gingrich’s Florida defeat — his Nevada meltdown and his fourth-place February finishes in Minnesota, Maine, and Michigan — leading up to his March 6 wipeout, when Newt won only his home state of Georgia out of 10 contests on “Super Tuesday.” . . .

Read the rest at The American Spectator, and thanks to everybody who hit the tip jar and gave me a chance to tell that story.

UPDATE: Looking for the appropriate link for the “posh condo in Naples” — thanks, Dan Collins! — this is what I found:

This morning I drove to Waffle House for breakfast — 5-ounce New York strip steak, two eggs over medium, hashbrowns, wheat toast, large orange juice and coffee, $11.71 — and the waitress had a tattoo on her neck.

Heh. It’s weird how the little details make the difference. The tattoo!

You can read the rest of that and see if you spot the annoying little typo that jumped out at me. Damn, I hate typos.

 

 

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Memo From the National Affairs Desk: Somewhere, There Is an Island …

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Thirteen-year-old editorial assistant Jefferson McCain staffs
The National Affairs Desk, 8:30 p.m., Sunday, Jan. 22, 2012

ROCK HILL, S.C.
Jimmie Bise Jr. was on the phone when I turned off the exit from I-77 North and hooked a left toward the McDonald’s. We were discussing the finer points of blogger ethics, and the importance of disclosing one’s biases in regard to such controversial topics as a contested Republican presidential primary campaign.

Of course, Jimmie was in a fine mood, ready to fire up a cigarette and recline on his pillow to enjoy the post-coital glow, smiling contentedly about having had his way with the breathless sweat-soaked hussy whose name prior to Saturday was “Inevitability,” but whom Newt Gingrich now calls My Sweet Bitch.

That metaphor might be a bit too vividly kinky for some readers, but my point is that Jimmie had openly declared his support for Newt Gingrich and was thus entitled to an honest day in the Gloat Zone.

So Jimmie and I were discussing this when I pulled into the parking lot of McDonald’s and I told him, “No one can ever doubt the objectivity of the Future U.S.  Ambassador to Vanuatu.”

Just then, I glanced up and beheld the frightening sight of a human scarecrow staggering toward my rented Toyota. She was wearing a cheap coat and gestured her solicitation of assistance, but I waved her away, annoyed by this aged burnt-out meth whore’s attempted intrusion. Jimmie and I were laughing about the failure of Romney’s well-funded campaign strategists to recognize my obvious aptitude for diplomacy as I switched off the car.

“Hang on a second, Jimmie,” I said, instructing my 13-year-old son Jefferson to grab my computer bag. Then I started to continue my phone conversation as I got out of the car, but suddenly the phone went dead — dead battery. I sent Jefferson inside to plug in the phone while he set up the laptop, the packing and unpacking of my computer having been his main task as my assistant on this eight-day Carolina campaign road-trip.

From the back seat of the Toyota I grabbed the Sunday edition of The (Columbia, S.C.) State with its banner front-page headline:

GINGRICH ROUTS ROMNEY

I fired up a Marlboro as I scanned the paper, leaning up against the car, and then I looked around to see what had become of the destitute female vagabond who had earlier approached me with her begging gestures. She was nowhere in sight, so I walked around to the front of the McDonald’s, in which direction she had wandered off after I’d waved her away. But she wasn’t there, either.

Had I seen a ghost, some sort of spectral phantom? This possibility bothered me, and the idea crossed my mind that this woman who seemed so haggard with age was probably younger than me. You’ve seen those before-and-after photos showing the ravages of methamphetamine addiction? She was definitely “after.”

Perhaps five or ten years earlier she had been genuinely attractive, but then she got onto the meth and started hooking up with any exploitative scum willing to help her feed her habit and . . .

Well, a hard life like that isn’t exactly “bad luck,” but rather the predictable consequence of bad choices, and it occurred to me that this pathetic woman – prematurely old and compelled to helpless beggary by her habit — might be a fitting symbol of Mitt Romney’s squandered momentum:

Just after the polls closed Saturday in South Carolina, Hogan Gidley was talking to reporters inside Mark Clark Hall at the Citadel, where Rick Santorum was holding his campaign’s Primary Night celebration. Mitt Romney “was going to be 3 and 0 until three days ago,” said Gidley, communications director for Santorum’s campaign, adding that the results of the past two days — including the belated news that Santorum, not Romney, was the winner of the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses — had “blown a hole in [Romney’s] inevitability.”
Newt Gingrich’s victory Saturday took away what was always Romney’s strongest argument: That the former Massachusetts governor’s well-funded campaign machinery made him the odds-on favorite in the Republican field, capable of clinching the nomination early in the primary process, thus uniting the party for the battle to defeat President Obama. The perception of Romney’s inevitability — as the “It’s His Turn” candidate whom GOP voters have so often chosen as their presidential nominee — helped him pile up a huge fundraising advantage over his rivals. Inevitability also helped Romney garner endorsements from eminent pundits like Ann Coulter and popular politicians like South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley. Despite his relatively moderate record, Romney was endorsed by the conservative editors of National Review, who last month mocked Gingrich with a cover story illustrated by a cartoon depicting the former Georgia congressman as a ludicrous space alien.
All of Romney’s advantages evidently counted for naught when Palmetto State voters went to the polls Saturday, where they delivered a shattering blow to any thought that the “inevitable” Romney might lock up the nomination early. . . .

That’s from my special Sunday column for The American Spectator, which I filed before we left Charleston this afternoon, and which I obviously hope you’ll read. Jefferson and I stopped here at the McDonald’s in Rock Hill, the last chance to score some cheap food and free WiFi before crossing into North Carolina, because I wanted to have a South Carolina dateline on my final post of this epic eight-day journey funded by your contributions to the Shoe Leather Fund.

Ah, yes. Like the shambling she-hobo who suddenly loomed into sight near the rented Toyota in the parking lot, and who then just as suddenly disappeared, I find my habits compel me to a mendicant existence only slightly more respectable than being a meth whore.

A freelance journalism junkie trying to match the travel budgets of major news organization by begging alms online? My resemblance to that shabby old hooker was enough to make my conscience ache as I thought to myself, “There but for the grace of God go I.”

Well: The impliied fee-for-service contract involved in this madcap experiment with reader-supported political reporting isn’t quite so degrading as whatever sordid acts lead a meth-head to ruin, although the ironic coincidences sometimes overwhelm my ability to rationalize them away.

Shortly after I sat down at laptop here at McDonald’s, the cellphone rang. “Are you all right?” my wife asked.

“Yeah, I’m fine, why?” Continue reading Memo From the National Affairs Desk: Somewhere, There Is an Island … →

What Does This Sentence Mean?

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“Base hostility will now be exacerbated by Mitt Romney’s backers now undoubtedly making a conscious effort to prop up Rick Santorum to shut down Newt Gingrich.”
— Erick Erickson, Red State

Last night I found myself talking to Caleb Howe, who said how much he hated the argument that a vote for Candidate X is actually a vote for Candidate Y. You see how Erickson deploys exactly that argument in claiming that supporters of Rick Santorum are closet Romneyites.

This would have been news to the Santorum supporters who gathered last night at the Citadel to hear the man they think should be the next president of the United States. There were a lot of home-schoolers and pro-lifers and national security hawks at the Santorum event, and I wonder what they would have made of arguments like this:

“People are mad as hell they are about to be stuck with another boring, moderate, uninspiring choice that has at best a 50/50 shot at losing to the worst president since Carter. They are flocking to Newt not because they think he’s a great guy, but because right now, he’s the only one fighting for conservatism . . .”
— Erick Erickson, Red State

Really? “The only one fighting for conservatism”? Somebody needs to tell this to Newt Gingrich, who praised Rick Santorum in his victory speech Saturday night. And somebody also needs to tell Rick Santorum, who released his Sunday and Monday campaign schedule for Florida a half-hour after the polls closed in South Carolina:

Sunday, January 22:

2:00pm ET:  Senator Santorum will hold a campaign rally at Wings Plus in Coral Springs, FL.
Location: Wings Plus
9880 West Sample Road
Coral Springs, FL

8:00pm ET: Senator Santorum will appear on “Huckabee” on FOX News.

Monday, January 23:

1:30pm ET: Senator Santorum will hold a “Faith, Family and Freedom” Town Hall in Lady Lake, FL.
Location: American Legion Hall
699 East Lady Lake Road
Lady Lake, FL

9:00pm ET:  Senator Santorum will participate in the NBC News/National Journal debate in Tampa, FL.
Location: University of South Florida
Tampa, FL

While nobody has appointed me the Omniscient Arbiter, authorized to write articles titled “What It Means,” I can summarize what one of Santorum’s supporters told me last night about what he expects: Newt and Mitt are going to attempt to destroy each other, and all the while Santorum will keep on campaigning, arguing that he is the “conviction conservative,” steadily accruing support from those conservatives who don’t like either Newt or Mitt.

The Santorum supporter who told me that is a fine young Christian man, and so I did not bluntly express to him what I see as the basic problem with the Gingrich campaign: Sooner or later, people will figure out that Newt is a selfish, arrogant asshole.

And people don’t like selfish, arrogant assholes.