Tag Archives: South Carolina

Commentary

How hard work and business ownership makes people conservative

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Well, here’s the story of one from the Washington Times.

Excerpt:

High school freshman Tim Scott could not afford Chick-fil-A sandwiches back in 1981, but the French fries were good and inexpensive. Eating those fries made him a success, a conservative and an odds-on favorite to be the next congressman from Charleston, S.C.

Mr. Scott has been garnering attention because he is a black Republican who won a primary over the son of the late one-time segregationist Sen. Strom Thurmond. South Carolina acquaintances, though, are coming out of the woodwork to say Mr. Scott bears watching not because he is black but because he’s the real deal: industrious, principled, consistent, thoughtful. In a word, authentic.

But to hear him tell it, it all began with the fries.

Mr. Scott’s parents were split – his father was in the Air Force in Colorado – and his mother, he said, worked two eight-hour shifts daily. “She was a nurse’s assistant cleaning up other people’s feces,” he said. “That’s nobody’s definition of fun.” Despite her example of hard work, though, his own schoolwork showed no signs of similar dedication. “I literally failed four subjects at once: world geography, civics, Spanish and English. Those last two subjects showed I wasn’t bilingual, I was bi-ignorant.”

Young Mr. Scott did, however, hold down a part-time job taking tickets at a movie theater. The Chick-fil-A was next door. He bought fries there regularly. The restaurant’s proprietor, a guy named John Moniz – a “Christian conservative white Republican, although I didn’t know it at the time,” Mr. Scott said – “just started recognizing me, and one day he came up and sat down next to me and started talking.”

I love this story. I’m a colored evangelical Protestant man. I was the only evangelical Christian and the only political conservative in my entire family. My Dad used to bring me to work ALL the time, even on weekends – and I would meet all his co-workers, drink coffee and play with his office supplies. My conversion started when I got my first paying job – programming UNIX shell scripts for a high-tech corporation while I was still a teenager – and that was my lowest paying job ever. One look at my pay check and I was through with the government and their lousy payroll taxes. I didn’t see them in my office helping me to debug and test –  so why did they deserve any of my money? I let my grades slide to keep working right through college (until grad school). I always valued working and saving and investing more than education. It’s the pattern you learn from watching your father work – the dignity of labor – the joy of independence – the ability to share with those in need. Work makes you a conservative.

You can friend Tim here on Facebook.

BONUS:

Marco Rubio responds to Democrat Harry Reid’s comments that no Hispanic person can be a Republican.

Marco Rubio is a Hispanic Republican who is about to win a federal Senate seat. I have been following him since his election announcement.

News

Obama administration threatens South Carolina for saving prisoner’s lives

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Story here in the Washington Examiner.

Excerpt:

Two unpleasant topics of conversation most of us avoid are the epidemic of HIV/AIDS among prison inmates and a variety of sometimes violent events resulting in transmission of the disease. Some states long ago implemented policies to protect the uninfected part of the prison population while providing exceptional medical treatment and counseling to the infected population.

In South Carolina, it has worked so well since 1998 that there has only been a single transmission of HIV/AIDS to a noninfected prisoner. All that may change, however, thanks to a threat from Eric Holder’s Justice Department.

South Carolina received a letter from the now-infamous Civil Rights Division that the policy of keeping infected inmates at a designated facility, instead of scattered across the state in the general prison population, may unfairly stigmatize infected prisoners. To the Obama political appointees in the Civil Rights Division, this constitutes discrimination under the Americans With Disabilities Act.

The Justice Department objects to separate living facilities and specialized medical treatment for the HIV/AIDS prison population. Naturally, DOJ has threatened a lawsuit.

[…]South Carolina spends more than $2 million a year helping infected inmates in the very program the DOJ is challenging. “We couldn’t ever hire specialists at all of the facilities spread across the state like we can in the single Columbia facility,” Ozmint told me.

The DOJ is in a lose-lose situation. Even if DOJ wins a lawsuit, sources tell me South Carolina is simply going to cancel all of the special testing, treatment and counseling, thereby saving the state $2 million a year.

This reminds me of the activists who shut down Catholic adoption agencies because they refuse to place children with same-sex couples. They don’t care about helping people, they care about punishing people who disagree with their politically correct biases.

This is the same DOJ that declined to prosecute the Blank Panthers for voter intimidation, remember.

News

Indian-American Nikki Haley wins South Carolina governor primary

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Nikki Haley and her husband Michael Haley

Story here from the Wall Street Journal.

Excerpt:

South Carolina State Rep. Nikki Haley, a favorite of tea party activists, survived a turbulent primary campaign Tuesday to advance in her bid to become her state’s first woman governor, on a night that results nationally reaffirmed this year’s anti-establishment tide.

In early returns, Ms. Haley held a double-digit lead in a four-person race for the GOP nomination. She will head into a runoff with the second-place finisher, Rep. Gresham Barrett, the Associated Press reported.

Ms. Haley had trailed badly early in the campaign, but won support from the tea party movement and an endorsement from former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. Her competitors included top officials in the GOP establishment, including the state’s attorney general and lieutenant governor.

[…]In South Carolina, Ms. Haley surged in recent weeks from long-shot to leader. After that, the race became rocky, as two GOP political operatives said they’d had affairs with Ms. Haley.

The attacks only seemed to strengthen the prospects of Ms. Haley, 38, who was born a Sikh but converted to Christianity. If she wins the governorship, she could quickly become a star in a Republican Party eager to reach out to minorities, women and young people.

Nikki is the daughter of first-generation Sikh immigrants from the Punjab, in India. She’s only 38! The only other Indian-American governor is Bobby Jindal, who I really like! Now I might have TWO Indian-Americans to blog about! If she wins! By the way, she is a Protestant, which is really rarity for India. Most Christians in India are Roman Catholic. Jindal is a Roman Catholic, and a solid one.

Oh, and a couple of businesswomen won the Republican nominations for governor (Meg Whitman) and senator (Carly Fiorina) in California. Ho hum. That’s commonplace in the world of conservatism. The Republican party is the party of conservative women who succeed on their own steam, without needing the government’s help. After all, we’re the party of Michele Bachmann, Marsha Blackburn and Sarah Palin. We like SMALL government, because we like STRONG families, and fathers who bring home the bacon.