Well, this is just weird. Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina is resigning from the Senate in January to take the top spot at the Heritage Foundation. Governor Nikki Haley will select his replacement and there will be a special election in 2014 for the right to serve out the last two years of DeMint’s term. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina will also be on the ballot in 2014, but he’ll be running for a full six-year term. I’ll let someone who knows Palmetto State politics better than me start the speculation about who Gov. Haley will tap.
I can kind of see why Sen. DeMint would prefer the job at Heritage to the one he has, especially since he had already pledged not to run for a third-term. It is much harder for me to understand why Heritage wants him. I thought they fancied themselves the preeminent right-wing thought center, not a backwater for Tea Party cast-outs. Handing the keys of the foundation over to a nutcase like Jim DeMint is highly irresponsible and signals a coming break with the Washington Establishment, as the GOP leadership considers how to pivot for the 2016 presidential campaign.
DeMint spent his time in the Senate knocking heads with the party leadership and actively recruiting and supporting alternate candidates who frequently wound up costing the party Senate seats. I wouldn’t be surprised if part of DeMint’s motivation in resigning is that he’s burned too many bridges with his colleagues and he doesn’t like going to work in a hostile workplace. If I am not mistaken, he is turning down an opportunity to be the ranking member on the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. That could have translated to a nice chairmanship after the 2014 midterms. As an aside, I expect that John Thune of South Dakota will land the spot in DeMint’s stead.
In any case, I am glad to see DeMint leave the Senate. He’s an irredeemable bastard. I just hope Haley doesn’t make Joe “You Lie” Wilson his replacement.
wonder if him seeing an end to the free filibuster played any role.
Not as much as the 10x increase in compensation.
I was thinkin even his pals in the Senate would prefer to seem him exit but the only way to get rid of him was to line his pockets. His exit does lessen the TParty power.
Any takers on the bet that his replacement WON’T be a woman or a minority?
DeMinted is supporting Tim Scott, a black bagger.
[url]http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/senate-races/271433-sources-say-demint-wants-rep-tim-scott-to-re
place-him[/url]
yeah saw that right after I posted, humphhfffttt!
What, the second coming of John C. Calhoun, to resign? Whatever will the wingnuts say? How did that demon Pelosi engineer this?
Don’t let the senate door hit your ass on the way out, Mistah Duhmint. You are a turd of the highest order and a disgrace to the nation.
And with this loon heading up a leadin’ “conservative” think tank, I think you can see the chances of the Grand Repub party “moderating” to any degree…
I can actually see it – in an “only Nixon could go to China way” – so when Heritage recommends moderation it comes from the mouth of a certifiable teabagger and holds weight with the GOP base. I doubt it will work, but I can see the strategy.
Strategy? I’m not discerning any strategy, but it might take pressure off the Republican leadership if DeMint loses clout in setting up primary challengers. To me, it’s more DeMint reading the handwriting on the wall and not wanting anything to do with the compromises or electoral smackdowns to come. It’s the old cliche of rats fleeing a sinking ship. DeMint is the first rat.
I would almost be willing to put money on Joe “You Lie” Wilson as the replacement, subject to TarheelDem’s take on things.
I’m not sure that would be smart. Haley is quite extreme and I wouldn’t put it past her but even she must know that Wilson would prove controversial, even in South Carolina. The powers that be in the Senate might not be real happy with an idiot like that in their midst.
I’m no expert on South Carolina politics, but I wonder if Tim Scott, who is very conservative but way less inflammatory and would provide another face of color might be what the Republican party is seeking. Even the racists bastards of the deep south seem open to the occasional “good nigger.”
According to new reports, Scott is Demint’s choice to replace him. As to SCers being uncomfortable with a nutcase like Wilson, they apparently weren’t uncomfortable with Demint, so all’s ok with them as long as it’s reliably neo-fascist.
You should check out Tim Scott. Allen West without the military baggage.
I read this as DeMint not wanting to be around for the Republican Congress’s big cave.
It’s all part of Alvin Greene’s evil plan to win the seat.
J-Rube is appropriately shrill.
Yes, indeed, she’s a brave Truth-Teller–once they’re resigning.
Mistah Duhmint will still be on the cocktail circuit, J-Rube. Better watch your step….
What is this compromising, deal making conservative group of people of whom Ms. Rubin speaks? Is there some rare indigenous political group that I am not aware of? Because she must be in contact with some small band that no one else has encountered. I read in the history books that there used to be such creatures. But I understand they all perished in some sort of calamity in the early days of the 21st century. Sounds like the political version of the Ivory Billed Woodpecker to me.
Biggest shocker of the day is I found myself agreeing with Rubin on pretty much everything right up until her very last sentence, where she calls Mitch McConnell an honest man.
By the way, did you see this?:
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/borowitzreport/2012/12/boehner-obama-needs-to-stop-acting-like
-he-won-election.html
On election night, after Obama had been declared the winner, Cokie Roberts suggested that now Obama should do some “soul searching.”
On planet GOP, GWB won and Obama lost.
Obama did win 51% of the popular vote in the last count I saw. What the hell is McConnell talking about?
HuffPo currently has him at 50.9%. Mitch doesn’t know how to round and doesn’t acknowledge that not all the ballots have been counted.
Your sarcasm detector is on the fritz.
Re-booted. Thanks. Forgot for a moment that Boehner and McConnell don’t plainly speak what they think.
McConnell prefers to filibuster his own motion.
nevertheless, the 51% comment makes no sense. they don’t know how to do irony?
Word on your McConnell comment.
So much schaudenfreude here, with J-Rube acting all Mean Girl as the brave, brave Tea Partier runs away. A DeMint/Palin ticket would make sense; two camera-seeking pols who quit and chased the money after obsessively pretending they were defending the Constitution and their constituents, when in reality they were only servile to national leaders of the fundamentalists and plutocrats.
I love the first comment to Rubin’s post: “Now we’ll see if Jennifer continues to cut and paste papers from the Heritage Society.” Yeah, she’s not fooling anyone except those who actively wish to be fooled.
The Senate’s loss is the Heritage Foundation’s gain. :::rolls eyes:::
speaking of rolls, you are definitely on a roll these days boran2!
This here was quoted by Laura Conaway at the Maddow Blog:
So it sounds like basically he’s going to be writing boilerplate legislation for the 24 states the Republicans control. Which makes sense. Let others do the obstructing in Washington, and meanwhile he can get to work on fucking up the 24 states the Republicans already control.
“So it sounds like basically he’s going to be writing boilerplate legislation for the 24 states the Republicans control.”
If so, he’s got a lot of catching up to do. ALEC is already several years ahead of him. For example:
Guess he figured it was either take the money and run or stick around and let McConnell clip his wings.
Boy-oh. When The State, Columbia’s newspaper is caught by surprise, it’s a real shocker. This decision must have been very closely held.
Here’s their take:
For a term until a special election in 2014, there are a lot of reasons that a Scott appointment would make sense to Nikki Haley. For one, it might open a path for her future career. I would think the other players, Mick Mulvaney and Trey Gowdy would let Scott take it for the next two years and primary him if he doesn’t drop out. So the question then becomes “Who primaries Lindsey Graham?” It could be that Graham just came into some good luck on the GOP side. I wonder what role the Senate leadership had in creating that bit of good luck.
It’s a little soon for Gowdy to make his move, but Gowdy in the Senate would make one long for the moderate days of Jim DeMint.
I think the current attitude is that Joe “You Lie” Wilson is not conservative enough or TEA Party enough or there’s some bad personal conflicts with others in the GOP.
Both Graham and DeMint are Upcountry politicians. Will Haley select a Low Country or Midlands region politician to replace DeMint. If so, Scott is a likely choice as Mulvaney (who holds Spratt’s old district) and Gowdy from (Greenville-Spartanburg) are both from the Upcountry. And yes, those regional divisions still carry some weight.
Oh, in the comments to The State article, there is some speculation that DeMint is positioning to run in 2016.
Oh please, please let Jim De Mint run for prez in 2016!!! De Mint/Palin!!!
b/c a guy that scores less than zero on charisma is the path to GOP victory.
My co-worker is a native and has assured me that whoever gets the nod, s/he’ll be demonstrably worse.
Apparently the well of OMGWTFIWWY runs deep.
I’m proud to have figured out this (to me) new acronym right away. I feel that my online skills are increasing. Thanks for the laugh, and the ego bump.
Glad to be of service.
And I’ll claim credit for the acronym, as I have not seen it anywhere else.
My first thought was to wonder if this is part of a deal on a criminal indictment of some kind. The guy’s been on the fringes for a very long time. Anyway, good riddance to him. He should do great work destroying the HF’s shred of reputation as an “objective” “think tank”. Win win.
Why wouldn’t she nominate herself? It’s got to be better than being governor of that shit-hole, even for just two years.
Better to be a big fish in a little pond than a little fish in a big pond.
The last governor to resign and have the Lt. Gov. nominate him to a Senate seat in SC was Donald Russell in 1965. In 1966, he lost the special election in 1966 to Fritz Hollings who served through 2004.
The Lt. Gov. Robert McNair, who served from 1965 until 1971 in a state that then limited the governor to one term.
Wait, it gets MUCH better;
Mark Sanford Considering Bid To Replace DeMint
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2012/12/06/mark-sanford-mulls-second-act-in-south-carolina/