Marie Antoinette joins the SCGOP

W.J. Hamilton:

This is South Carolina’s third Republican sexual blowup involving a statewide office in less than a year. As a South Carolina Democrat, I admit we feel outclassed. It’s been a long time since a Democratic sex scandal here and nothing the party of the left ever managed matches these three for scale.

The conservative Republicans involved, who proudly maintain rigid control over state government in the name of conservative family values, seem unconcerned about the state’s high unemployment, sagging industrial investment and horrific foreclosure rates.

In their world view, government has no role in helping people survive hard times. They’ve slashed budgets for schools, health care and social services. Years ago, they committed the state to a tax structure which assured a decline in discretionary spending would cause a collapse in government revenues. They’ve fought expenditures for unemployment. They’ve ignored the alarming long-term trends which sent this state into the recession early and make it likely that it will exit late.

Yesterday evening Frank Holleman, the Democratic Candidate for State Superintendent of Education, described the end of the textile industry in the upstate and how secure, long term employment was becoming unobtainable for an increasing portion of the population there. Turning that problem around involves education and development policy. Textile jobs sustained a large part of the working middle class in South Carolina for almost a century. For many people, nothing has replaced it. The work, pay, benefits and secure pensions are all gone. The value of real estate, tax base and viability of local government may likewise vanish.

Elsewhere the problems are a decline in agriculture, an alarming boom and bust cycle in the coastal tourism and retirement industry and new evidence that the socially competent working class is abandoning the state to raise families elsewhere. The promise of the 1970s “New South” seems to have slipped away.

What this scandal shows us is how badly the small, insular world of professionally managed Republican politics serves the state of South Carolina. I see nothing in this gaggle of consultants and Republican operatives which reveals a profound dedication to the state. They seem disconnected from the suffering which is apparent everywhere and which is an acute attack on top of a chronic condition. They also text dirty words to each other on Sunday mornings, when they are supposed to be in Church.

They want to privatize the school system, cut taxes, slash budgets and promise that prosperity will rush into South Carolina to fill a government free vacuum. They don’t expect to do anything hard. They won’t be accepting responsibility for anything. They do government as badly as they manage an alleged sex scandal because they don’t care about the people of this state very much. It’s all about power and fun. They thrive on the out of state political contributions which pour into this state from the people who want to turn our lives into those of white mice in a right wing social and economic experiment. This is about the future they’re planning for America.

It’s boring and as plain as a trip to Walmart. At least Marie Antoinette brought a sense of style to sexual politics and a disinterest in the welfare of the working class.