Carolina Politics Online

Sen. Jim DeMint, South Carolina Republican, was asked Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” whether he would vote to raise the debt ceiling, and said, “No, I won’t.”

“Not unless this debt ceiling is combined with some path to balancing our budget, returning to 2008 spending levels, repealing Obamacare. We have got to demonstrate that we have the resolve to cut spending … we cannot allow that to go through the Congress without showing the American people that we are going to balance the budget, and we’re not going to continue to raise the debt in America,” he said.

The Washington Times

We’re going to find out very quickly how serious the Republican Party is when it comes to controlling spending.  Will they force the government to stay within it’s current limit?  What is the point, after all, of having a debt ceiling if they can just vote to raise it every time they hit it?

Inhofe will argue for new Senate rules to make the earmarking process more transparent, without an outright ban.

But he will face a challenge from fellow conservative DeMint, who will be seeking an unqualified ban next week from his peers.

The South Carolina senator counts support from several newly elected colleagues — including Rand Paul in Kentucky, Marco Rubio in Florida and Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania — and other tea-party-backed candidates he supported in the election.

“Many Republicans are still addicted to earmarks and won’t give them up without a fight,” DeMint wrote in a letter to supporters Tuesday. “I know it’s difficult to quit this habit.”

He should know. DeMint confided to supporters, “I used to request earmarks too.”

Los Angeles Times

As I’ve noted before, earmarks are a small portion of the federal budget, but you have to start somewhere.  It’s not even so much spending the money that I’m opposed to, but rather the corruption they yield.  I don’t see earmarks as being any different than a bribe, politicians using our money to buy our votes for their reelection.

Furthermore, the argument that they are necessary to get projects done back home that otherwise couldn’t if it weren’t for federal earmarks is a circular problem.  If the government was living within its means and its Constitutional limitations then less money would be leaving the states in the first place, thus negating the need for politicians to bring home the bacon to fund these project back home.

Yeah, right. I’ll believe it when I see it. Unfortunately, that decision isn’t up to DeMint alone.

With their sweeping electoral victory in hand, Republicans are committed to ending earmarks – the local-project riders to legislation – and focusing on the big national issues, a top Senate Republican said Wednesday.

“We can’t have 500 congressmen and senators who think it’s their job to bring home the bacon – and that’s what’s going to change,” South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint told CBS’ “The Early Show. “One of the first thing we’ll do in the House and Senate is ban earmarks as Republicans – that’ll get our eyes back on fixing our tax code, fixing social security and Medicare, getting America back to work.”

DeMint called earmarks “that parochial interest I think gets that the focus of interest off national interests onto paving local parking lots.” He said in an editorial Tuesday that the dozens of GOP congressional newcomers “can’t be bribed if they’re not for sale.”

CBS

Poor Bubba Gump can’t even break 11% in the latest U.S. Senate poll conducted by Winthrop University. Senator Jim DeMint is up big with58% of the vote while Greene is at 11%.  I wouldn’t be surprised if DeMint ends up breaking 70% on Election Day.  It’s still mystifying as to how Democrats managed to choose Bubba Gump over Vic Rawl.

In the same poll the gubernatorial race between Nikki Haley and Vincent Sheheen has tightened up a bit, which is to be expected as we get closer to Election Day.  Haley leads with 46% over 37% for Sheheen.

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“People are beginning to see that there’s no way we can pay the interest on our debt and every week, we’re borrowing money to pay the debt we have and are creating new programs that are costing more money,” he said. “Hopefully in 2012, we’ll make headway to repeal some of the things we’ve done, because politics only works when we’re realigned with our Savior.”

The U.S. Constitution, he said, puts the people in charge, and crowds are becoming involved because they want spending stopped.

DeMint said if someone is openly homosexual, they shouldn’t be teaching in the classroom and he holds the same position on an unmarried woman who’s sleeping with her boyfriend — she shouldn’t be in the classroom.

The Herald-Journal

Oh brother……

OK, I can kind of see where DeMint is coming from on the unwed mother point.  Statistically speaking, out of wedlock births are by far the primary reason for a child growing up in “poverty” in the US and for being on the welfare rolls.  An unwed mother teaching a class of children, particularly high school age, does send mixed signals to kids about responsible sex.  I’m guessing most people in South Carolina probably feel that way so I don’t really fault him for that one, I guess.

As far as gays teaching, who cares?  Being around homosexuals is not going to make somebody gay.  People’s kids are not going to turn gay because they have a gay teacher.  The idea that a homosexual man or woman shouldn’t be teaching kids in school is absurd.  I don’t know what the reasoning for this could possibly be other than plain ignorance, but it’s a sentiment echoed by many social conservatives, I suppose.

“(When I said those things,) no one came to my defense,” he said. “But everyone would come to me and whisper that I shouldn’t back down. They don’t want government purging their rights and their freedom to religion.”

I’m not sure what any of this has to do with freedom of religious.  Whose religious freedom is being harmed by a pregnant woman or gay man being a teacher?

But here is the icing on the cake.

The Greater Freedom Rally was sponsored by the CEO Roundtable of South Carolina — a political action committee with the goal to close the chasm between “economic and social conservatives.”

Sen. Jim DeMint argued for a “devolution of power out of Washington,” saying Sunday that “the fact is, education probably would work a lot better without the Department of Education.”

Roll Call

The U.S. Department of Education was created by President Jimmy Carter in May of 1980.  Since that time the Republican Party has sought to dismantle it several times without success in order to scale back the size of the Federal government and save taxpayer dollars.  It was attempted by President Reagan multiple times as well as the Gingrich Congress of 1996.  It was thwarted each and every time by a Democratic majority in at least one chamber of the Congress or a president in the White House.  When Republicans finally did gain control of Congress and the White House under George W Bush, like so many other ways, they embraced big government under his administration and actually imposed more Federal education mandates like No Child Left Behind.

There has been a direct correlation with the founding of the ED and the decline of public education around the country, but of course, correlation doesn’t equal causation.  Decentralizing public education out from under D.C. just makes sense though.  For one, that would leave the curriculum and shaping of education up to the individual states.  Instead of one failing Federal formula, we’d have 50  formulas for public schooling that could constantly innovate and adjust to what works and what doesn’t.  Secondly, there is the Constitutional argument.  The Constitution doesn’t grant the Federal government to even be involved in education.  In my opinion, this clearly falls under a Tenth Amendment role.

I’ve discussed the education system in Belgium before and have advocated it for South Carolina.  There is no central monopolization and the money allocated to each student follows the student to which ever school he chooses to go to, rather than the one based strictly on where he lives.

American schools don’t teach as well as schools in other countries because they are government monopolies, and monopolies don’t have much incentive to compete. In Belgium, by contrast, the money is attached to the kids — it’s a kind of voucher system. Government funds education — at many different kinds of schools — but if a school can’t attract students, it goes out of business.

Belgian school principal Kaat Vandensavel told us she works hard to impress parents.

She told us, “If we don’t offer them what they want for their child, they won’t come to our school.” She constantly improves the teaching, saying, “You can’t afford 10 teachers out of 160 that don’t do their work, because the clients will know, and won’t come to you again.”

“That’s normal in Western Europe,” Harvard economist Caroline Hoxby told me. “If schools don’t perform well, a parent would never be trapped in that school in the same way you could be trapped in the U.S.”

ABC News 20/20

It will be difficult to ever get this kind of system in place anywhere in the U.S., though, for a number of reasons.  One, the teachers’ unions are opposed to any action against the status quo that would actually hold their members accountable.  After all, it was Albert Shanker, former president of the American Federation of Teachers who said, ““When school children start paying union dues, that’s when I’ll start representing the interests of school children.” Then there are the politicians beholden to the teachers’ unions who will do what ever they want to keep the campaign donations coming in. 

You also have the school district bureaucrats who flush our tax dollars down the toilet on useless administrators and programs that don’t add anything to the educational value of our children.  But most importantly, there are also parents.  There are parents out there who oppose school choice, particularly in more affluent areas, who don’t want “those kids” from the other side of the tracks in school with their kids, but more so they oppose it out of shear ignorance as to how the school system is run.  School choice referendums have been on the ballot before, just a few years ago in Utah, a very conservative state, and defeated because the school districts, the politicians, and the unions supporting the status quo go out and lie and parents believe them because they don’t take the time to do their own research.

It’s going to be a long road to walk down to change the way we educate in this country, if we ever succeed, but starting at the top and breaking the chains of the Federal government would be the first big step ahead.

I can’t argue with that intuition.

Basically, everything I said Monday.

Adding Ms. O’Donnell to the list was an easy call. It has been years since she had a steady job, and instead has been embezzling funds to finance her personal expenses. Ms. O’Donnell has been living at her campaign headquarters and having her campaign cover the rent, a practice prohibited by the Federal Election Commission.

“Why get a job when you can run for office and illegally have others finance your lifestyle?,” said Melanie Sloan, CREW Executive Director. “It is astonishing that as a candidate for federal office, Ms. O’Donnell appears to be stealing brazenly from her campaign contributors.”

Ms. O’Donnell also has a tenuous relationship with the truth. For years, she routinely claimed to have a college degree from Fairleigh Dickinson University; in reality she finally received her diploma a scant two weeks ago. Further, she has claimed to have won two counties in her race against Joe Biden in 2008; in reality, she won none.

“Ms. O’Donnell has no qualms about lying whenever it suits her purposes,” said Sloan. “Americans have a right to expect elected officials to act with honesty and integrity. Sadly, Ms. O’Donnell epitomizes the antithesis of those values.”

Citizens for Reform and Ethics in Washington

If you’ve been active with national politics then you’ve likely heard the name Christine O’Donnell surface, particularly in the past week.  She is a candidate seeking the Republican nomination in Delaware to run for the U.S. Senate.  She is challenging Republican Congressman Michael Castle who is also seeking the seat.  Tomorrow is Delaware’s primary and while Castle has been the favorite, it’s looking increasingly likely that O’Donnell could pull off an upset with the help of Sarah Palin, the tea party movement, and an endorsement by our own Senator DeMint.  An O’Donnell victory tomorrow would be a mistake for the Republican Party.

First of all, Delaware is a fairly left leaning state.  Michael Castle has a moderate voting record that is right in line with the state electorate.  Consequently, he is leading the Democrat candidate in the general election polls and would likely win the seat.  O’Donnell, on the other hand, is far, far to the right and much too conservative to be able to win a statewide contest in Delaware.  Hence, it’s not too surprising that she trails Democrat Chris Coons by double digits in polling.  Putting all of this aside, though, her inability to win isn’t the crux of the matter.  The woman carries a lot of baggage.  She has embellished her credentials and has made some questionable accusations in the past.  John McCormack who writes for the Weekly Standard has done an excellent job vetting O’Donnell and the results aren’t pretty.

First there are claims O’Donnell has made about pursuing a Master’s Degree that she apparently never pursued.

I contacted the O’Donnell campaign Saturday afternoon and published the report just before noon on Sunday. The only response came from O’Donnell campaign manager Matt Moran, who wrote that O’Donnell “was not admitted to a Masters Degree program at Princeton. She took an undergraduate non-matriculated class at PU on constitutional government.” Moran did not reply to my subsequent email asking why O’Donnell claimed “ISI violated its promise to allow Miss ODonnell time to take Master’s degree classes at Princeton,” thereby costing her $150,000 in earning power.

So here are the facts: O’Donnell repeatedly referred to taking master’s degree classes at Princeton; in fact, she did not, and her campaign has refused to issue a statement trying to explain this apparent falsehood.

The Weekly Standard

She also appears to have filed what I consider to be a possible frivolous lawsuit in 2005 against the Intercollegiate Studies Institute.

For at least six months after being fired, Miss O’Donnell suffered enormous pain, cried frequently at the sense of personal loss and failure caused by ISI, and at the sense of injustice, and could not sleep at night, often wide-awake, replaying the whole scene in her mind, until 5:30 am, and has suffered from understandable and resulting depression. [...]

Miss O’Donnell’s mother and sister both noticed and spontaneously told her at the time, prior to litigation, that she was differently [sic], and urged her to seek medical evaluation…

Then there is the paranoia:

O’Donnell tells THE WEEKLY STANDARD that while she does pay rent on what is technically her legal residence with campaign funds, she also has a separate permanent residence, the location of which she won’t disclose “for security reasons.” O’Donnell said that her campaign office and home were vandalized in 2008, and she’s fearful that her opponents will do the same this year. Says O’Donnell:

They’re following me. They follow me home at night. I make sure that I come back to the townhouse and then we have our team come out and check all the bushes and check all the cars to make sure that—they follow me.

Weekly Standard

Additionally, O’Donnell has some pretty extreme social views.  This a comment she once made in an MTV interview.

The Bible says that lust in your heart is committing adultery. So you can’t masturbate without lust.

Sex In the Nineties

Then there is the issue of her finances.  O’Donnell has used campaign funds to pay for part of the rent on her townhouse, which she claims is acceptable since it doubles as her campaign headquarters.  She has had a home foreclosed on in Wilmington and has had a tax lien filed against her by the IRS.

It’s very clear to me that O’Donnell is an oddball, to put it politely.  The woman has issues managing her own life so how could any reasonably intelligent voter expect her to be able to help manage the Federal government?

Jim DeMint does not hand out endorsements like candy, so I am a bit surprised that he did not do his due diligence on Ms O’Donnell before giving his blessing.  It might backfire on him.  She’ll be the Republicans’ Alvin Greene.

The Council for Citizens Against Government Waste is a taxpayer watchdog group that for years has been tracking and monitoring the wasteful spending being undertaken by our members of Congress. When I say waste I mean real waste, things that most all of us regardless of political ideology and views could likely agree on. Wasted spending like $1,454,000 for mosquito trapping research or $2,573,000 for potato research. Better yet, right here in our own backyard, UNC Charlotte received $762,000 for interactive dance software.

CAGW has a searchable database containing the 9,129 pork-barrel projects in the 2010 Congressional Pig Book. They also do a ranking of every member of Congress with a score of 100 indicating a taxpayer superhero and a score of 0 being a wasteful taxpayer abuser. Unfortunately, here in the Carolinas we have several big fat zeros. That list is below:

By a vote of 63 – 37 the U.S. Senate has confirmed Elena Kagan as the next Supreme Court Justice.  Kay Hagan and Lindsey Graham voted in favor of the nomination.  Richard Burr and Jim DeMint voted against confirmation.

The latest poll of South Carolina’s U.S Senate race shows Senator Jim DeMint receiving 62% of the vote compared to a paltry 20% for Alvin Greene.  My first thought was, who in the hell are these 20%?  It is a shame, however, that we can’t have a real race here.  I’m supporting DeMint for reelection so I’m glad he’s going to win, but no representative should ever just walk back into office.  Competitive races are good for government and that’s good for the American people.

Predictably, two amendments of Senator DeMint’s voted on in the U.S. Senate yesterday were rejected.  One would have barred the Obama administration’s ability to sue the State of Arizona over their illegal immigration crackdown law and the other would have permanently repealed the Estate Tax.

The illegal immigration amendment was defeated 55 to 43.  It would have barred funding for the Federal government to prosecute the law.  Democrat Kay Hagan voted against the amendment, while Republicans Lindsey Graham and Richard Burr, along with DeMint, voted for it.  A few Democrats from other states crossed over to support DeMint’s efforts, but not nearly enough and that was expected.  The left has been particularly outspoken against Arizona’s efforts to protect their state from the harm caused by mass illegal immigration.

Permanent repeal of the Estate Tax was nothing but a pipe dream and only 39 Senators voted in favor of it, about what I would expect.

The repeal movement has lost some steam in recent years as former enthusiasts in the business community have sought compromise with the Democratic majority on a plan that would lower the tax, not eliminate it.

But a core of groups representing small businesses and conservatives continue to push repeal, arguing that the tax is an unfair government intrusion and that it serves as a disincentive for individuals to build family businesses.

“What right does a government have to take someone’s property because they die?” DeMint said on the Senate floor.

NASDAQ

Great question, huh?  That is the one that has always rankled me.  Why is the government entitled to anybody’s property simply because they die?  It’s absurd.  The property should stay in the family where it rightfully belongs.  Family business owners and family farms get clobbered by this.  Just because one’s estate is valued at a few million dollars does not mean they are millionaires bathing in golden bathtub of 100 dollar bills.  Pieces of farm equipment can cost a few hundred grand alone and that is all added into the value of the estate.  It’s not uncommon for the children of a family farmer to have to sell off the farm in order to pay the inheritance taxes on the estate.

The Estate Tax is nothing more than another weapon used in the Marxist tactic of class warfare.  It was established by politicians seething with envy, jealousy, and greed.

Naturally, the financial “reform” bill passed the Senate this afternoon.  There was no expectation for it not to once they had enough votes for cloture.  As I wrote earlier today, it’s a bad bill overall and contained many provisions that have absolutely nothing to do with protecting the financial markets, but promoting a leftist social agenda.

Kay Hagan (D) of North Carolina voted for the bill.  The three Republican Senators in the Carolinas:  Richard Burr, Lindsey Graham, and Jim DeMint voted against it.

Speaking from Afghanistan, GOP Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina lambasted Michael Steele for the comments, which McCain called “wildly inaccurate” and Graham characterized as “uninformed, unnecessary, unwise, untimely,” while follow Republican Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina said Steele should apologize to the military.

Both McCain and Graham questioned Steele’s ability to keep his job, but said it was up to Steele and the RNC to make that decision.

“I think that Mr. Steele is going to have to assess whether he can still lead the Republican Party as chairman of the Republican National Committee,” McCain said on the ABC program “This Week.” Graham said in a separate interview on the CBS program “Face the Nation” that Steele’s comments did not represent mainstream GOP thinking.

“It’s not the Republican Party’s position, my Republican Party’s position,” Graham said.

At the same time, Graham joked that “the good news is Michael Steele is backtracking so fast he’s going to be in Kabul fighting here pretty soon.”

DeMint, in an interview on “FOX News Sunday,” called Steele’s comments unacceptable.

Steele “needs to apologize to our military, all the men and women who’ve been fighting in Afghanistan,” DeMint said, adding: “This is a war we can win and we must win.”

CNN

If you haven’t seen the video yet, here it is. Steele was speaking at a fund raiser in Connecticut and while there referred to the war in Afghanistan as a “war of Obama’s choosing” and suggested that it is not winnable.

I think anyone with an ounce of common sense agrees that claiming that Afghanistan was Obama’s war of choice is utterly asinine. Being that this is one of many gaffes Steele has made since his election as RNC Chairman, several prominent Republicans are calling for his resignation, though DeMint and Graham have stopped short of that. Steele has since backtracked on his remarks. He is becoming the Republicans’ Joe Biden.

I don’t believe Afghanistan was a war of choice, but I don’t find it unacceptable to question exactly how effective we are being over there these days. We’re going on nine years now that we’ve been spending billions of dollars and losing American lives trying to stabilize that country. I am certainly no military strategist, but is nine years not enough to form a stable government and an effective law enforcement for the Afghan people to keep the Taliban and other terrorists at bay without so much investment from us?

Charleston businesswoman Linda Ketner is trying for an independent bid for South Carolina’s Senate seat that is currently held by Senator Jim DeMint.  Ketner ran for Congress in 2008 against Henry Brown in the First Congressional District and gave him quite a scare.  Brown won by a small margin of 52-48, the closest Brown has ever come to being defeated.  I imagine her campaign is fueled by the angst many Democrats have over their less than polished nominee, Alvin Greene.

I envision two scenarios here.  One, Ketner and Greene end up splitting the Democratic vote and maybe Ketner attracts some more moderate independents who feel DeMint is too conservative, but have no confidence in Greene.  In that case DeMint wins just as easily as he would just facing Greene.  On the hand, something could happen to Greene’s candidacy between now and November.  The man is facing felony charges and there is talk of investigating where his $10,000 filing fee came from.  If for some reason Greene is found unable to legally be a candidate prior to the election then I can see the Democratic Party rallying around Linda Ketner, in which case Jim DeMint will have a much tougher race on his hands.

I am all for having as many candidates on the ballot as possible because the voters deserve more than just one or two choices.  Ketner is currently collecting the signatures required to get on the ballot.  You can visit her Web site at http://www.ketnerforsenate.com/ if interested in assisting.