He's a Bauer, but he don't know jack

CNN never gets credit for all the conservatives they stack on their panels to give balance and texture to the great issues of the day.

This morning, the star was former SC Lt. Governor Andre Bauer, who says school beatings, gun-laden cars in Sundays, and watching The Andy Griffith world of all-white Mayberry will cure our ills:




Bauer, an aging boy-wonder pol, spent six years in the legislature and eight asking after the governor's health before his career flamed out at 42 with failed bids for governor and Congress.  He peddled the usual hard-right lines, failing to get an "I Believe" license plate for Republican Jesus drivers.

Another time, In January 2010, Bauer came under fire for comparing public school children who receive free lunches to stray animals who should not be fed. "My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals," Bauer said during a town hall meeting. "You know why? Because they breed. You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don't... think too much further than that. And so what you've got to do is you've got to curtail that type of behavior. They don't know any better." Bauer made the comment as part of an argument that people should lose government benefits if they fail drug tests or don't attend parent-teacher conferences or Parent-Teacher Association meetings.The Associated Press reported that Bauer was a child of divorce who benefited from free lunches himself.

Bauer has always positioned himself as a panderer to, and champion of, the old. They are after all the most regular to vote, and to be angry conservatives.

The Andy Griffith Show went off the air the year before Andre Bauer was born.