Another Bizarre Moment in South Carolina

South Carolina is known for bizarre politics, but tomorrow’s congressional election surely ranks among the bizarre-est. 

And the whole nation should pay attention, if not because of its national importance, then at least because of its bizarreness.   

Recapping: Voters in South Carolina’s First Congressional District will choose a congressman Tuesday to fill a vacancy.  Our heavily Republican legislature has skillfully gerrymandered the district into a bright crimson, and yet the polls show a political newcomer Democrat might win.

The race has national implications.  If a Democrat can win in this district, a Democrat can win anywhere.

The Republican choice is Mark Sanford, our disgraced former governor and a Tea Party darling.  He’s the one who told his staff, and his wife, that he was going hiking on the Appalachian Trail, then flew to Argentina  to be with his “soul mate” -- paying for  some of his trip with my money.  

Sanford later divorced his wife, got engaged to his paramour, paid the biggest fine for ethics violations in South Carolina history, filed for Congress, asked his ex-wife to direct his campaign (she declined), and trespassed at least once into her home despite a court order telling him to stay away. 

The Democrat candidate is Elizabeth Colbert Busch, a political newcomer best known as comedian Stephen Colbert’s sister but an accomplished woman in her own right.  After a disastrous marriage that produced three children, she put herself through college and rose to the top levels of a male-dominated maritime corporation.  She preaches a traditional Democrat philosophy.  

It’s not a matter of forgiving Sanford. He’s forgiven,  just not forgotten.  After all, he confessed because he got caught, not because of a sensitive conscience.  It’s a matter of fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.

I’ll vote for Busch.

-Skip

That $*#@&>! Tea Party!

Unless that Tea Party crowd comes to its senses this week, hundreds of thousands of people -- including firefighters, police officers and school teachers -- will lose their jobs.  Our armed forces will take a heavy hit. Many social programs will be slammed.  State governments will suffer.  Much more.

And there will be a domino effect.  People without work spend less at the grocery, drug store, theater or shopping mall, so businesses lay off workers.  If people don’t buy, manufacturers don’t manufacture, resulting in more layoffs, resulting in less buying, et cetera ad infinitum.

All so that the very rich among us will get to keep their money in stocks and bonds and offshore banks and wherever else they stash it, while the rest of us, the middle class and poor, will absorb the entire hit.  

Somehow this all makes sense to Tea Partiers, even though virtually every economist in the nation says the only way we are going to get our fiscal house in order is to cut spending and raise taxes -- for now on the rich, but later on the middle class as well. 

In one sense it does make sense.  Most Tea Party congressmen are themselves quite wealthy, and they represent skillfully gerrymandered districts where they are safe from political competition.

But in every other sense, it is nonsense. 

To recap: America is on the verge of facing sharp declines in education, police protection, fire protection, military readiness and job security, all to keep the very rich from paying more taxes, even though there is no other way to fiscal sanity.

If there is a Tea Partier out there who wants to defend this madness, I would love to hear it.

-Skip