Campaign without a candidate

Thursday’s editorial suggests that state Democrats might want to spend more time recruiting a candidate against U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint and less penning vapid criticisms of him.

“Defiant DeMint Needs to Sit Down,” cried the headline last week on a S.C. Democratic Party press statement criticizing U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint’s recent speech to the American Conservative Union, in an example of hyperpartisan political messenging too audacious to overlook.

Certainly, we’ve been as frustrated with DeMint as anyone. While attention to our nation’s fiscal plight is crucially important, DeMint exhibits an addiction to the kind of demagoguery that has made substantive political discourse such a rarity in this country. He seeks national attention with nakedly political opposition to health care reform (“If we’re able to stop Obama on this it will be his Waterloo,” DeMint famously said last year. “It will break him.”), while his own “plan” is a mishmash of conservative-sounding bromides that would do little to correct the very real structural problems with our nation’s health-care delivery service. His insistence on denouncing the Obama White House as “selling socialism” - despite Obama’s tax cuts and budget trims that DeMint would surely have championed if they came from a Republican administration - falls somewhere between posturing and hypocrisy while the country begs Washington for bipartisanship.

That said, there’s undeniable irony in the South Carolina Democratic Party telling DeMint he “needs” to do anything right now. DeMint’s up for re-election this year, and his only two announced Democratic challengers are Gary Stephens, a third-place candidate for North Myrtle Beach mayor (88 votes, no campaign funds reported) and Mike Ruckes, a recent retiree from Detroit to Summerville (first run for office, $2,000 raised to DeMint’s $3 million) - surely good men both, but utter political unknowns. In fact, the S.C. Democratic Party’s apparent challenger was another nearly-unknown, Rock Hill attorney Chad McGowan, but McGowan had at least begun raising some money and making inroads around the state - before abruptly withdrawing last week on the grounds that he wanted to spend more time with his family.

Need we remind state Democrats of their disastrous showing in 2008 against U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, when a Ron Paul/Pat Buchanan Republican won a similarly uninspired Democratic primary, quoted Rush Limbaugh’s talking points in his televised debate against Graham and was generally so far from Democratic ideology that the state party couldn’t even endorse him?

A credible challenge to DeMint would surely attract significant attention from Democrats around the country, based on the vituperative emails against him that the national party sends out. And a Democratic win is not wholly inconceivable - DeMint’s seat, of course, last belonged to a Democrat, Fritz Hollings, before DeMint won it in the not-so-distant 2004. Six years later, state Democrats cannot even muster a credible candidate: The party boasts 19 state senators who won’t be up for re-election until 2012, and not even one was apparently willing to spend the filing fee to face DeMint.

The country faces profound issues, and while elections produce their own distorting effects, they at least offer contrasting ideas an airing. Rote single-paragraph email blasts to the press simply increase the volume of the discord.

We didn’t like DeMint’s pandering to the American Conservative Union either, but at least he was playing his role, promoting the caricature of conservative thought that he has become. DeMint doesn’t need to “sit down.” The S.C. Democratic Party needs to step up.

Certainly, we’ve been as frustrated with DeMint as anyone. While attention to our nation’s fiscal plight is crucially important, DeMint exhibits an addiction to the kind of demagoguery that has made substantive political discourse such a rarity in this country. He seeks national attention with nakedly political opposition to health care reform (“If we’re able to stop Obama on this it will be his Waterloo,” DeMint famously said last year. “It will break him.”), while his own “plan” is a mishmash of conservative-sounding bromides that would do little to correct the very real structural problems with our nation’s health-care delivery service. His insistence on denouncing the Obama White House as “selling socialism” - despite Obama’s tax cuts and budget trims that DeMint would surely have championed if they came from a Republican administration - falls somewhere between posturing and hypocrisy while the country begs Washington for bipartisanship.

That said, there’s undeniable irony in the South Carolina Democratic Party telling DeMint he “needs” to do anything right now. DeMint’s up for re-election this year, and his only two announced Democratic challengers are Gary Stephens, a third-place candidate for North Myrtle Beach mayor (88 votes, no campaign funds reported) and Mike Ruckes, a recent retiree from Detroit to Summerville (first run for office, $2,000 raised to DeMint’s $3 million) - surely good men both, but utter political unknowns. In fact, the S.C. Democratic Party’s apparent challenger was another nearly-unknown, Rock Hill attorney Chad McGowan, but McGowan had at least begun raising some money and making inroads around the state - before abruptly withdrawing last week on the grounds that he wanted to spend more time with his family.

Need we remind state Democrats of their disastrous showing in 2008 against U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, when a Ron Paul/Pat Buchanan Republican won a similarly uninspired Democratic primary, quoted Rush Limbaugh’s talking points in his televised debate against Graham and was generally so far from Democratic ideology that the state party couldn’t even endorse him?

A credible challenge to DeMint would surely attract significant attention from Democrats around the country, based on the vituperative emails against him that the national party sends out. And a Democratic win is not wholly inconceivable - DeMint’s seat, of course, last belonged to a Democrat, Fritz Hollings, before DeMint won it in the not-so-distant 2004. Six years later, state Democrats cannot even muster a credible candidate: The party boasts 19 state senators who won’t be up for re-election until 2012, and not even one was apparently willing to spend the filing fee to face DeMint.

The country faces profound issues, and while elections produce their own distorting effects, they at least offer contrasting ideas an airing. Rote single-paragraph email blasts to the press simply increase the volume of the discord.

We didn’t like DeMint’s pandering to the American Conservative Union either, but at least he was playing his role, promoting the caricature of conservative thought that he has become. DeMint doesn’t need to “sit down.” The S.C. Democratic Party needs to step up.