Haley Watch: Why won't Democrats attack the governor?

South Carolina's progressives continue to twist slowly, slowly, in the wind. The official state Democratic Party seems to be ... well, where are they?

There are plenty of actual rank-and-file Democratic voters, but the state party leadership seems to be too timid to actually present these voters with any real options. (It might, you know, appear RUDE or something.)

It is therefore up to conservative libertarians like Will Folks, to attack Governor Nikki Haley for being corrupt. The conservatives are left to do the work of criticizing Republicans?!?

Yesterday, FITSNews reported:

S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley says she will openly defy a two-decade-old state law which prohibits elected officials from using taxpayer resources to conduct political campaigning.

Haley has been busted violating this law on numerous occasions in the past – most notably during the aftermath of a previously undisclosed car crash that followed a campaign event in North Carolina (news of this crash was reported exclusively by FITS).

Prior to that Haley has come under fire for racking up exorbitant security costs on political trips – including fundraising trips. The governor reimbursed some (but not all) of those costs.

Now she won’t have to pay any of them.

Check out the whole thing. Read it and weep.

And while you're at it, weep over the fact that Will is 100% correct. His CONSERVATIVE blog, FITSNews, exclusively reported Haley's North Carolina car crash that occurred on our dime. No Democrats have used this incident to go after Haley hammer and tongs, as they should. Instead, we get the usual tepid, perfunctory and meek "response" quotes; the sort of half-baked, apologetic political bullshit always offered for standard publication.

In the above post, for example, we read the following boring-ass quote from SC Democratic Party spokeswoman Kristin Sosanie:

Rather than following South Carolina’s laws and behaving ethically, Nikki Haley just writes herself a new set of rules so she can continue to campaign on the taxpayer dime.

Wow, ya think?!?

Will's post has more chutzpah in one sentence, than THE REAL DEMOCRATS can muster in all of their silly, inconsequential canned-media mewling.

How about something like this: "This irresponsible, lazy, narcissistic and inexperienced LIAR is thieving from the people of South Carolina to fund her pricey, designer-clothes wardrobe; her trips to France and Germany; crashes of unauthorized cars in North Carolina; and now... she is going to use our money to keep her job for another four years. Meanwhile, the Department of Revenue is hacked, while she takes another vacation. She needs to GO. She is destroying the state."

THAT is how it's done, people.

Hey Dems, if you need me to help you out, contact my radio show. I'll be glad to write you some applause lines. Or maybe you can call Will?

Apparently, the Republicans and Green Party people are more effective at being Democrats than the Democrats are.

~*~

The Democrats have launched no genuine, full-throttle, hard-hitting ATTACKS on this ethically-challenged, opportunistic political-nightmare, who is spending our money like it is going out of style, all while advertising herself as a fiscal conservative. Voters on both sides of the political spectrum are thoroughly FED UP with her.

Where are the Democrats and why are they not taking full advantage of this sordid situation? Same place they've always been: asleep at the switch. As always. As usual.

In this state, Democrats are too defeatist to even BEGIN. They are too cowed to realize when they actually have the upper hand, as they do with corrupt Governor Haley. They are so accustomed to losing, they practically announce their losses before election season. They expect the worst, and therefore try to behave and blend in, basically apologizing for existing.

Democratic slogan in South Carolina: "We're sorry for being the opposition! It's a dirty job, but someone has to do it!"

But see, they DON'T do it, is the problem. They are a collection of empty suits.

This is the party that nominated an unelectable man with a prison record to run for the 3rd District congressional seat, rather than dynamic Jeanne van den Hurk, who would have run a vital, energetic and very capable campaign against awful Tea Partier Jeff Duncan. This is the party repeatedly presenting us with the well-behaved snoozefest known as Vincent Sheheen (no offense, Vince, but facts are facts) to run against Governor Haley, an up-and-coming, razzle-dazzle neocon star (and Vogue model) with oodles of Tea Party money at her disposal. This is the party that gave us the disaster known as Alvin Greene to run against the formidable Jim DeMint. This is the party that did VERY LITTLE to help my friend Deb Morrow, in her congressional run against the 4th District's terrible Trey Gowdy.

Why are they so incompetent? WHAT ARE THEY DOING?

Why are they so comatose and complacent in the face of total disaster?

(((Daisy goes off to gnash teeth, pull out hair, and howl at the moon.)))

Jeanne van den Hurk for 3rd Congressional District

Jeanne van den Hurk for Congress! GOOD LUCK, JEANNE!



~*~

Also see New York Times piece: Occupy Movement Regroups, Preparing for Its Next Phase

And our podcast is up. Yall have a listen.

Al Jazeera: The challenges of Occupying South Carolina

Al Jazeera ran an article about South Carolina Occupy!!! Woot!

How interesting that it's up to foreign journalists to understand what's going on around here. You sure can't find this kind of insightful analysis in the New York Times, or even the Greenville News.

Excerpt:

With about ten per cent of South Carolinians unemployed, economic woes might make South Carolina seem like a receptive setting for the Occupy movement - which reserves some of its harshest rhetoric for banks and corporations they deem largely responsible for income inequality.

But compared with other states, there aren't many Occupiers in South Carolina: in Charleston, the state's second-largest city, there are some 20 to 40 active participants, says Anjana Joshi, a research analyst at a Charleston law firm.

South Carolina tends to be a conservative state: its governor and all but one congressman are affiliated with the right-wing Tea Party movement. Deb Morrow of Occupy Spartanburg says dislike of President Obama is so strong in parts of the state that it's "difficult to get people to engage" with issues such as unemployment and income inequality.

Although about 75 Occupiers held a demonstration at the capitol last Saturday in Columbia - near a statue of segregationist senator Strom Thurmond - about ten times as many people had gathered on the other side of the state house earlier that day as part of an anti-abortion rally.

Laura Olson, a political science professor at Clemson University, doesn't think the Occupiers' small numbers are necessarily problematic for the movement. "The political context here makes it tough for any kind of progressive movement to get much traction. But that can be an advantage in a way too," she explained. "Even though you're not going to attract huge numbers of people, you might get folks who are more deeply committed than you otherwise might" in a more liberal state.

The many faces of Occupy

The stereotypical Occupier is often portrayed as a young, unemployed, college student. That may be one demographic - but far from the only one.

South Carolina, with its many military bases and academies, has a lot of veterans - and a disproportionate number of Occupiers seem to be veterans. Of the 11 people arrested when Occupy Charleston set up a short-lived encampment in the city's Marion Square, five were veterans, including Ramon Caraballo of Charleston.

Caraballo, who served in Iraq for 15 months during the surge, links his participation in Occupy with his military service. He says he became involved with Occupy after seeing police in Oakland fire beanbag guns and tear gas canisters at demonstrators close-range - which he says the US Army isn't allowed to do to Iraqi protesters. "We ourselves are dead wrong for what we impose in other countries - and we can't even follow those rules here," says Caraballo.

And in the seaside city of Myrtle Beach - which has a large number of senior citizens - many people active in the Occupy group there are retirees, says Brian Noyes Pulling, himself a retired social worker.

Although Occupiers in South Carolina say the reception they've gotten hasn't been overwhelmingly negative, it hasn't been altogether welcoming, either. Cliff Berardo, a driver from Columbia who's involved with Occupy, says people in the state often see participants as "dirty, filthy hippies" who "want a free ride". For example, Ronald Moulder, who's active with the Tea Party, described Occupy participants demonstrating at a Tea Party convention in Myrtle Beach as looking "like they just got out from under the bridge".

Olson believes that many South Carolinians "see the movement as sort of distant from here, as something that is going on in big cities in the North ... It feels too '60s-ish, I think, for a lot of folks".

Increasing activism

"There are whole communities of people that our local government just doesn't care about."

- Anjana Joshi of Occupy Charleston

Some Occupy groups in the state are trying to overcome the perception that they are, in the words of Occupy Spartanburg's Deb Morrow, "just standing out there and doing nothing". Every Sunday, for instance, Occupy Charleston holds a free potluck dinner in the city's low-income East Side neighbourhood. "We try to get into our actual communities and help people and fill the void that the government has left," says Joshi. "There are whole communities of people that our local government just doesn't care about."

A handful of Occupiers are becoming active in electoral politics as well. Although Occupy groups do not endorse political candidates, at least two Occupy participants are running for congress in South Carolina, both against Tea Party incumbents elected in 2010. Deb Morrow is running in the Democratic primary in the state's 4th District for the chance to take on Trey Gowdy. And Jeanne van den Hurk of Greenville will challenge 3rd District congressman Jeff Duncan if she becomes the Democratic nominee.

Both say one of the main reasons they're running is the role money plays in politics. "There's becoming an awareness that corporations are holding us hostage," van den Hurk told me at an Occupy event in Columbia.

Occupy participants largely reject comparisons with the conservative Tea Party movement - and vice versa. "They want government," said Charleston Tea Party chairman Mike Murphree. "I don't want nothing to do with government."

Comparing movements on the US Left and Right

But although their politics are quite different, there are nevertheless some similarities. "Both movements are coming from the same place," argues Olson, "and that is anger, dissatisfaction, alienation, lack of trust in government."

Both movements say they've changed the national political dialogue: Tea Partiers claim that more Republican politicians are talking about federal spending and taxes; Occupiers point out that income inequality and corporate misdeeds are becoming part of the public discourse - even in the Republican primary.

There's no way to prove causality, but some Occupiers here note that Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry's attacks on Mitt Romney for his tenure at private equity firm Bain Capital sound very similar to what Occupy Wall Street has been saying all along (Perry went so far as to call Romney a "vulture capitalist" - not a charge often made by Republicans today). Archconservative pundit Rush Limbaugh took notice, averring that Gingrich is "singing from the same hymnal" as the Occupy movement.

Candidates' talking points come and go. Perhaps a longer-lasting political effect of the state's Occupy movement is the forging of a network of left-leaning activists "who didn't know each other a year ago", in the words of South Carolina Green Party co-chair Scott West. "We all know one another now."

We sure do! I now count both Deb Morrow and Jeanne van den Hurk among my friends.

Nice article, and thanks to the ever-intrepid Joni LeCompte for putting me onto it.