Carolina Politics Online

What’s the matter with South Carolina?  That’s the question asked by Politico columnist Alexander Burns.  Indeed, South Carolina has been a focal point of hot bed politics and political scandal recently, but as former State Republican Chairman Katon Dawson points out, it’s really nothing new.

Dawson agreed, citing the state’s long and tempestuous political history as a mark of pride: “South Carolina’s been yelling from the top of our lungs on national politics since this nation was formed and entered the union.”

Consider the attention, sometimes unwanted, that we’ve received over the past year.  You could write a whole book on Mark Sanford.  The Governor went from being the favorite son of conservatives and economic libertarians to rumored presidential candidate only to then fall from grace as his scandalous extra-marital affair became headline news around the nation.  Sanford’s status rose quickly when he was the only governor to fight the wasteful stimulus package thrust on us by the Federal government.  He received endless and thunderous applause at the Greenville Tea Party earlier this year, yet in a flash all of that respect and fame soured to notoriety and disappointment as details of his Argentine “soul mate” Maria Chapur pierced the airwaves.

Look at conservative rising star Senator Jim DeMint who has made it his career to call out waste and corruption in Washington D.C. and be the general in the battle against the unconstitutional overreaching grip of the Federal government.  DeMint took flak earlier this year when referring to health care as Obama’s “Waterloo”, but was he necessarily wrong?

On the flip side is Republican Congressman Bob Inglis who hasn’t wavered in ruffling the feathers of the conservative base of his Congressional district.  He has taken an onslaught of criticism for his changing opinion towards accepting the fraudulent theory of man made climate change.  Even more recently he riled the far right at a town hall meeting when he told them to turn off Glenn Beck.  Inglis has earned himself several primary challengers in next year’s election.

Let’s also not forget former State Treasurer Tom Ravenel who was sent up the river for the distribution of cocaine.  Then of course, Joe Wilson has become the most well known Congressman in America over the past couple of days for his outburst during Obama’s Congressional address accusing the President of lying.

Is this bad for South Carolina?  Are we embarrassing or are we emboldened?  We did fire the first shot in the Civil War, after all.  I guess the impression of our state is in the eye of the beholder.  We certainly aren’t perfect, but we definitely could be worse.  We aren’t in a full fledged melt down like California.  We aren’t chasing every business and hard working American out of the state like New York.  Our own scandals really aren’t any less comparative than those of Illinois, Michigan, and Ohio.

Personally, it gives me a lot to write about and opine on.  I’d probably be pretty bored with writing if I lived in Vermont.

The Club for Growth has released their annual RePORK card that gauges how responsible our Congressional representatives have been with our tax dollars.  The result is usually pretty atrocious and this year is no different, but we do have a few responsible representatives in our states’ delegations.  The ratings are based on 68 amendments introduced in the House that would have stripped wasteful earmarks out of 12 annual spending bills.  Representatives who voted for all of the amendments received a score of 100%.  Those that voted for none received a zero.  So how did our guys and girls stack up?

Virginia Foxx (R-NC-05) was the only member to receive a perfect score of 100%.  However, there were a few others who weren’t far behind her.  Patrick McHenry (R-NC-10) received a 99%, voting against only one of the amendments.  Gresham Barrett (R-SC-03) and Sue Myrick (R-NC-09) both received a 97%.  Bob Inglis (R-SC-04) a 96%.  All others were below 90% which means the rest have some work to do, some a little and some are completely worthless.

Two more Congressmen that stood out to me were our two Blue Dog Democrats in North Carolina:  Heath Shuler (NC-11) and Mike McIntyre (NC-07).  Bear in mind that the Blue Dogs are supposed to be fiscal conservatives.  Apparently, these two didn’t get the memo.  Shuler supported only one amendment out of the 68 and McIntyre found the only way to top his poor showing by voting for none of them.

Also on the wall of shame for frivolously throwing your tax dollars away are the following pigs who received a zero score:

• G.K. Butterfield (D-NC-01)
• Jim Clyburn (D-SC-06)
• Bob Etheridge (D-NC-02)
• Larry Kissell (D-NC-08)
• Brad Miller (D-NC-13)
• David Price (D-NC-04)
• Jack Spratt (D-SC-05)
• Mel Watt (D-NC-11)

It’s interesting to note that all the high scoring members of Congress are Republicans and all the ones with the shitty scores are Democrats.  That really illustrates the differing views the two parties have on the role of the Federal Government.

Courtesy of The 9/12 Project

Bob Inglis (R-SC-04)

Sue Cleveland Elementary School
Piedmont, SC 29673
Monday, August 17, 2009
Start Time: 7:00 PM

Travelers Rest Library
Travelers Rest, SC 29390
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Start Time: 7:00 PM

R.D. Anderson Applied Tech. Ctr.
Moore, SC 29369
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Start Time: 7:00 PM

New Prospect Elem. School
Inman, SC 29349
Monday, August 24, 2009
Start Time: 7:00 PM

Lake Forest Elementary
Greenville, SC 29615
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Start Time: 7:00 PM

Senator DeMint (R-SC)
Town Hall Breakfast on Daniel Island in Charleston at 8 a.m. on Monday August 17.
Town Hall Lunch at Sea Captain’s House in Myrtle Beach at noon on Wed. August 19.
Town Hall Breakfast at Tommy’s Ham House in Greenville at 8 a.m. on Thurs. August 20.
Town Hall Lunch at Wade’s Restaurant in Spartanburg at noon on Thurs. August 20
Town Hall Lunch in Sun City at noon on Friday August 21.

Joe Wilson (R-SC-02)
Town Hall at Midland’s Tech NE Campus, 1151 Powell Rd. Columbia 6-7 p.m. on Aug.17.
Town Hall at Lexington Town Hall 6-7 p.m. on August 20.
Town Hall at 10 a.m. on August 22 at USC Beaufort North Campus, Performing Arts Center, 801 Carteret Street, Beaufort.
Town Hall meeting at 2:30 p.m. on August 22 at Hilton Head High School, Visual and Performing Arts Center, 70 Wilborn Rd. Hilton Head.

Just the other day Congressman Bob Inglis (R-SC-04) told his constituents at a town hall meeting that there was no reason for them to be afraid of ObamaCare.  I guess Inglis hasn’t met Ezekiel Emanuel, one of the President’s health advisers and what he thinks health care “reform” should entail.

Start with Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. He has already been appointed to two key positions: health-policy adviser at the Office of Management and Budget and a member of Federal Council on Comparative Effectiveness Research.

Emanuel bluntly admits that the cuts will not be pain-free. “Vague promises of savings from cutting waste, enhancing prevention and wellness, installing electronic medical records and improving quality are merely ‘lipstick’ cost control, more for show and public relations than for true change,” he wrote last year (Health Affairs Feb. 27, 2008).

Savings, he writes, will require changing how doctors think about their patients: Doctors take the Hippocratic Oath too seriously, “as an imperative to do everything for the patient regardless of the cost or effects on others” (Journal of the American Medical Association, June 18, 2008).

Yes, that’s what patients want their doctors to do. But Emanuel wants doctors to look beyond the needs of their patients and consider social justice, such as whether the money could be better spent on somebody else.

Many doctors are horrified by this notion; they’ll tell you that a doctor’s job is to achieve social justice one patient at a time.

Emanuel, however, believes that “communitarianism” should guide decisions on who gets care. He says medical care should be reserved for the non-disabled, not given to those “who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens . . . An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia” (Hastings Center Report, Nov.-Dec. ‘96).

Translation: Don’t give much care to a grandmother with Parkinson’s or a child with cerebral palsy.

He explicitly defends discrimination against older patients: “Unlike allocation by sex or race, allocation by age is not invidious discrimination; every person lives through different life stages rather than being a single age. Even if 25-year-olds receive priority over 65-year-olds, everyone who is 65 years now was previously 25 years” (Lancet, Jan. 31).

New York Post

And then there is David Blumenthal who thinks we should slow down the medical innovations in order to keep costs under control:

But Emanuel criticizes Americans for being too “enamored with technology” and is determined to reduce access to it.

Dr. David Blumenthal, another key Obama adviser, agrees. He recommends slowing medical innovation to control health spending.

Blumenthal has long advocated government health-spending controls, though he concedes they’re “associated with longer waits” and “reduced availability of new and expensive treatments and devices” (New England Journal of Medicine, March 8, 2001). But he calls it “debatable” whether the timely care Americans get is worth the cost. (Ask a cancer patient, and you’ll get a different answer. Delay lowers your chances of survival.)

Obama appointed Blumenthal as national coordinator of health-information technology, a job that involves making sure doctors obey electronically deivered guidelines about what care the government deems appropriate and cost effective.

In the April 9 New England Journal of Medicine, Blumenthal predicted that many doctors would resist “embedded clinical decision support” — a euphemism for computers telling doctors what to do.

Americans need to know what the president’s health advisers have in mind for them. Emanuel sees even basic amenities as luxuries and says Americans expect too much: “Hospital rooms in the United States offer more privacy . . . physicians’ offices are typically more conveniently located and have parking nearby and more attractive waiting rooms” (JAMA, June 18, 2008).

Apparently Congressman Bob Inglis (R-SC-04) is leaning towards supporting ObamaCare and that did not go over well in his very Republican district.  According to The Palmetto Scoop people began walking out and that pretty much ended the meeting.

There are two videos available for this:

Uh-oh.  This is going to put the Bible thumpers in a tizzy.

South Carolina Rep. Bob Inglis made a name for himself in the late 1990s as one of Bill Clinton’s most zealous pursuers, an impeachment “manager” who attacked the moral failings of the president with a gusto that earned him a devoted following in the staunchly conservative “Upstate” of conservative South Carolina.

But with his governor now felled by similar temptations, Inglis sees an opening for the Republican Party, a chance to “lose the stinking rot of self-righteousness” and “to understand we are all in need of some grace.”

The Wall Street Journal

I don’t disagree with Inglis’s comment.  The Republican Party throughout the Bush years allowed social conservatism to define them.  They threw fiscal responsibility right out the window, which makes it all the more amusing to watch them preach about it as Obamination spends us into oblivion.   Instead they railed and hollared about morality and that is why they get slammed so hard by the media when one of them don’t live up to the moral pedestal they have put themselves on.  Sure, there is a leftward bias in the mainstream media.  I don’t deny that, but Republicans have branded their party as the party of traditional family values so when they screw up, like Mark Sanford and Diaper Dave Vitter and Mark Foley, etc they get thrown into the frying pan.

The GOP should put the social cons on the backburner for now and get back to their fiscally conservative roots if they are to win over the trust of the American people to put them back in control of Congress.  That’s not to say that social conservatives can’t have a home within the Republican Party, but they can’t have 90% of the seats at the table anymore.  That shift is what drove away people like me who used to support Republican candidates that truly believed in the idea of personal freedom, responsibility, and limited government, not the ones who falsely preach morality and then try to use their power in government to force it down our throats.  I think that is what Inglis is getting at.

By a vote of 219 to 212, the House narrowly passed the Cap and Trade bill that will cost us millions of jobs and devastate the American economy even more as it starts going into affect. Just ask Spain how well it went for them?

This still has to pass the U.S. Senate of course and that is nowhere near certain. They need 60 ayes just to be able to vote for it and I imagine there will be Democrat defectors there just as there were in the House.

Those who voted to raise your energy bills by about $1500 a year to “save the planet” are as follows:

• G.K. Butterfield (D-NC-01)
• Bob Etheridge (D-NC-02)
• David Price (D-NC-04)
• Heath Shuler (D-NC-11)
• Mel Watt (D-NC-12)
• Brad Miller (D-NC-13)
• Jack Spratt (D-SC-05)
• Jim Clyburn (D-SC-06)

Those who voted to protect your liberty, labor, and livelihood were:

• Walter Jones (R-NC-03)
• Virginia Foxx (R-NC-05)
• Howard Coble (R-NC-06)
• Mike McIntyre (D-NC-07)
• Larry Kissell (D-NC-08)
• Sue Myrick (R-NC-09)
• Patrick McHenry (R-NC-10)
• Henry Brown (R-SC-01)
• Joe Wilson (R-SC-02)
• Gresham Barrett (R-SC-03)
• Bob Inglis (R-SC-04)

State Senator David Thomas (R-Greenville) has thrown his hat into the ring joining four other candidates in challenging Congressman Bob Inglis (R-SC-04) in next year’s Republican primary.  I have no qualms with anyone trying to take out Inglis because he needs to go, but the more people that jump into this race, the more likely it is that Inglis will prevail because the anti-Inglis vote will be split between too many challengers.  It is possible, however, with so many challengers that Inglis could be held under 50% requiring a run off.

My biggest beef with Inglis, aside from his vote to bail out Wall Street, is his recent slobbering over the climate change fraud that’s been perpetuated by the left.  Inglis has become fully assimilated into the  climate “Borg” and is backing carbon taxes and other such nonsense that will only hurt our nation’s economy and accomplish absolutely nothing positive.  Inglis needs to spend more time listening to his constituents rather than his brainwashed children.

Duke Sandwich Company CEO Andrew Smart has announced that he intends to run against Bob Inglis in the Republican Primary next year for the Fourth Congressional District. I am glad to hear that Inglis has a challenger because he sucks. He has moved increasingly leftward since he was first elected and his recent voting in support of the Wall Street bailout with our tax dollars and his appetite for pork spending shows that he has chucked his fiscal conservatism out the door.

A lot of hay has been made about the $160 million AIG handed out in bonus money to its employees after they were given near $100 billion in taxpayer dollars to keep them afloat.  If that is what makes your blood boil, so be it.  Of course, the real outrage should be over the $75 billion of taxpayer money that AIG used the vast majority of to pay debt it held with several foreign banks.  If you didn’t already know that, which isn’t surprising because the media has only been harping over “Bonusgate,” yes, the Federal government gave AIG tens of billions of dollars to send right out of our economy while it is in the crapper.  Brilliant, huh?

Anyway, this is just a reminder to you to not forget which of our Carolina representatives voted to make all of this possible:

Voting for the bill:

• Bob Etheridge (D-NC-02)
• David Price (D-NC-04)
• Howard Coble (R-NC-06)
• Sue Myrick (R-NC-09)
• Mel Watt (D-NC-12)
• Brad Miller (D-NC-13)
• Henry Brown (R-SC-01)
• Joe Wilson (R-SC-02)
• Gresham Barrett (R-SC-03)
• Bob Inglis (R-SC-04)
• John Spratt (D-SC-05)
• Jim Clyburn (D-SC-06)

Greenville businessman Andrew Smart said Tuesday he may challenge U.S. Rep. Bob Inglis in next year’s Republican primary for the 4th District.

“We’re evaluating our options,” said Smart, president of Duke Sandwich Co. “We haven’t officially announced at this point.”

Smart, 30, said he hopes to make an official announcement in the near future. If he runs, he’d be the second challenger to Inglis, a Greenville lawyer who was elected in November to his sixth term representing Greenville, Spartanburg and Union counties and part of Laurens.

Christina Jeffrey, who teaches political science at Wofford College in Spartanburg, announced a challenge to Inglis on Jan. 23.

Jeffery on Tuesday faulted Inglis for voting in October to make $700 billion available to prop up the teetering U.S. financial system.

The Greenville News

I can see the yard signs now.  “On June 10th Get Smart!”

Inglis has been receiving the ire of many conservatives in his district for his political moderation since he was first elected to the House. He easily fought back a primary challenge last year and I suspect will do so again next year unless we suddenly find out that he wears slippers made from kittens.  He should lose, though, as should every other politician in D.C. who felt they had the right and obligation to give a trillion dollars of our money to their corporate friends on Wall Street.

“Eliminate the payroll tax and replace it with a carbon tax. By eliminating the 12.4% cost of the payroll tax and implementing carbon taxes, the cost to the government would be net neutral. “

The Conservativist

It’s an interesting proposal, even though we don’t need to have a carbon tax because man made global warming isn’t real.  I would have to know a lot more about the intricacies of such an idea before I could say where I stand on it.  Would such a shift be revenue neutral in order to maintain or increase the necessary contributions to Social Security to keep it sustainable?  What would be the effect on business overall, better or worse than the payroll taxes they current pay?

At any rate Inglis’s idea is nothing more than a dream.  The minute anyone even suggests changing anything involving Social Security whether positive or not the panic alarm is sounded.  Ted Kennedy blows enough hot air from his mouth to power a blimp, the AARP starts catapulting 90 years olds into the side of the Canon Building in protest and the fear mongering manifests from the status quo in Washington.

It should come to no surprise that the House of Representatives have furthered the nationalization of American industry by wasting another $15 billion of tax money that doesn’t exist to bailout the gross mismanagement of the Big Three automakers and their blood sucking unions. Here is a list of how our Carolina representatives voted:

In Favor of Socialism:

• Bob Etheridge – D-NC-02
• David Price – D-NC-04
• Mel Watt – D-NC-12
• Brad Miller – D-NC-13
• Jack Spratt – D-SC-05
• Jim Clyburn – D-SC-06

Against Socialism:

• G.K. Butterfield – D-NC-01
• Walter Jones – R-NC-03
• Virginia Foxx – R-NC-05
• Howard Coble – R-NC-06
• Mike McIntyre – D-NC-07
• Robin Hayes – R-NC-08
• Sue Myrick – R-NC-09
• Patrick McHenry – R-NC-10
• Heath Shuler – D-NC-11
• Henry Brown – R-SC-01
• Joe Wilson – R-SC-02
• Gresham Barrett – R-SC-03
• Bob Inglis – R-SC-04

The Senate as you are well aware by now passed a sweetened version of the bailout Tuesday evening.  The House voted again today and complied, as I suspected they would.  So the dirty deed is now done.  Bear in mind that this bill was rife with waist added by the Senate on Tuesday night that had nothing to do with the economical turmoil.

• $2 million tax benefit for makers of wooden arrows for children
• $100 million tax break to benefit auto racetrack owners
• $192 million in rebates on excise taxes for the Puerto Rican and Virgin Islands rum industry
• $148 million in tax relief for U.S. wool fabric producers
• $49 million tax benefit for fishermen and other plaintiffs who sued over the 1989 tanker Exxon Valdez spill.

People, are you not outraged?  If so, ask yourself why you might be going to the voting booth in November to return the same people to office who just voted for one of the largest Federal power grabs in American history and threw almost a trillion dollars of money we don’t have down the toilet.  Are those of you in South Carolina prepared to give Lindsey Graham another six years?  Think twice.  He’s one of the culprits.  Richard Burr also voted for it on behalf of North Carolina.  Senators Jim DeMint (R-SC) and Elizabeth Dole (R-NC) opposed the measure.  Additionally, both Presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama voted for the bailout as did VP candidate Joe Biden.

I can’t get the vote information from the House yet.  The Web site must be getting swamped with traffic because it’s timing out on me, but I’ll post it as soon as I have it available.

Update: I now have the House roll. Sue Myrick and Gresham Barrett flipped on this, voting for the bailout today, whereas they voted against it before.

Voting for the bill:

• Bob Etheridge (D-NC-02)
• David Price (D-NC-04)
• Howard Coble (R-NC-06)
• Sue Myrick (R-NC-09)
• Mel Watt (D-NC-12)
• Brad Miller (D-NC-13)
• Henry Brown (R-SC-01)
• Joe Wilson (R-SC-02)
• Gresham Barrett (R-SC-03)
• Bob Inglis (R-SC-04)
• John Spratt (D-SC-05)
• Jim Clyburn (D-SC-06)

Voting against the bill:

• G.K. Butterfield (D-NC-01)
• Walter Jones (R-NC-03)
• Virginia Foxx (R-NC-05)
• Mike McIntyre (D-NC-07)
• Robin Hayes (R-NC-08)
• Patrick McHenry (R-NC-10)
• Heath Shuler (D-NC-11)

As I’m sure you have heard by now, the $700 billion bailout failed to pass the House of Representatives today by a mere 13 votes.  I was opposed to this bailout, so I am rather pleased, for now.  They’ll try something again.  I just have a huge issue with this theory that corporations can privatize all of their gains but socialize their losses.  That just doesn’t seem quite right to me.

This video pretty much sums up my thoughts.

So how did your representative vote?  Did they vote to use your tax dollars to bail out Wall Street fat cats or did they vote to save your tax dollars?

Voting for the bailout were:

• Bob Etheridge (D-NC-02)
• David Price (D-NC-04)
• Mel Watt (D-NC-12)
• Brad Miller (D-NC-13)
• Henry Brown (R-SC-01)
• Joe Wilson (R-SC-02)
• Bob Inglis (R-SC-04)
• John Spratt (D-SC-05)
• Jim Clyburn (D-SC-06)

Voting against the heinous bailout were:

• G.K. Butterfield (D-NC-01)
• Walter Jones (R-NC-03)
• Virginia Foxx (R-NC-05)
• Howard Coble (R-NC-06)
• Mike McIntyre (D-NC-07)
• Robin Hayes (R-NC-08)
• Sue Myrick (R-NC-09)
• Patrick McHenry (R-NC-10)
• Heath Shuler (D-NC-11)
• Gresham Barrett (R-SC-03)

Boy, the South Carolina delegation sure sucks a nut. David Price is no surprise.  He loves using your money to give special favors to all of his corporate friends.  Same with Henry Brown.  I expected Watt to be on the yea list as well because he is a Socialist.  Overall it looks to be just about split down the middle.  Now you know who is on your side and who is pining for the Rockefellers.

The U.S. Senate today overwhelmingly sent President Bush a spending bill of $634 billion to keep the government “operating beyond the current budget year.”  If only that were the case.  This budget passage, as every other, consisted of a hogfest of a Congressional pen of pigs in starched white shirts feeding from the trough that you and I provided.  This thing is stuffed with thousands of earmarks in addition to $25 billion of taxpayer funded loans to help bailout the automakers.  The bill was presented in its final form from the House to the Senate as H.R. 2638, Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2008, sponsored by none other than our very own Representative David Price (D-NC-04).

How did our representatives vote?  As usual, in the Senate Jim DeMint stood up and vocally opposed the legislation.  Lindsey Graham joined him in voting against it.  Richard Burr made a rare and unusual move, voting Present, Giving Live Pair.  What this means is that somebody else who not present at the vote and knew they wouldn’t be who planned on voting the opposite way Burr was made a deal with him to vote present so that the outcome wouldn’t be altered by their absence.  In other words, for the sake of argument, let’s say Burr was hypothetically going to vote No, but John McCain was absent and was planning to vote Yes which would cancel out Burr’s vote anyway.  McCain would ask Burr to vote Present then so that the same result is produced.  As I said, this is just a hypothetical.  Burr may have intended to vote Yes and made a deal with an absent Senator who wanted to vote against it.  And we can’t forget Liddy Dole who as usual voted for her pork.

In the House we had the following voting for the waste:

• G.K. Butterfield (D-NC-01)
• Bob Etheridge (D-NC-01)
• David Price (D-NC-04)
• Howard Coble (R-NC-06)
• Mike McIntyre (D-NC-07)
• Robin Hayes (R-NC-08)
• Sue Myrick (R-NC-09)
• Patrick McHenry (R-NC-10)
• Mel Watt (D-NC-12)
• Brad Miller (D-NC-13)
• Henry Brown (R-SC-01)
• Joe Wilson (R-SC-02)
• John Spratt (D-SC-05)
• Jim Clyburn (D-SC-06)

Voting against the waste were:

• Walter Jones (R-NC-03)
• Virginia Foxx (R-NC-05)
• Gresham Barrett (R-SC-03)
• Bob Inglis (R-SC-04)

Heath Shuler did not vote.

The House passed H.R. 6899 last night, otherwise known as the Comprehensive American Energy Security and Consumer Protection Act.  As I touched on yesterday, this is the House version of Lindsey Graham’s “Gang of 10″ bill that will do absolutely nothing to open up oil reserves off of our shores and lower gas prices.  This bill is nothing more than political cover so that politicians can go into the November election lying to their constituents that they voted for offshore drilling, when they didn’t.  Most of the coastal oil reserves will remain untapped under this bill and will have no effect.  Furthermore, the states will get no royalties from the drilling, so which state is going to okay this and take the slight risk of an oil spill without any revenue from it?  None of them will and Nancy Pelosi knows that.  Let’s not forget the tax increase the oil companies will receive as well which will get passed on to you and me when we’re buying our gas.

So who in the Carolinas voted for this hoax?  Who will lie to you between now and Election Day and claim they voted to lower your prices at the pump?  A lot of them.

Voting aye were:

• G.K. Butterfield (D-NC-01)
• Bob Etheridge (D-NC-02)
• Walter Jones (R-NC-03)
• David Price (D-NC-04)
• Mike McIntyre (D-NC-07)
• Robin Hayes (R-NC-08)
• Heath Shuler (D-NC-11)
• Mel Watt (D-NC-12)
• Brad Miller (D-NC-13)
• Bob Inglis (R-SC-04)
• John Spratt (D-SC-05)
• Jim Clyburn (D-SC-06)

While all six of the state’s congressmen face challengers, none of the races will be repeats as the all the major party losers in the general election of 2006 did not file to run for Congress again.

Fifth District Congressman John Spratt went the longest without a challenger. Republican Albert F. Spencer didn’t file to run against the 13-term Democrat until Saturday.

Spencer and Spratt have met before. In 2004, Spencer got 37 percent of the vote. A much better financed and supported Republican challenger in 2006, Ralph Norman, received about 43 percent of the vote against Spratt.

The 5th District stretches along the state’s northern border and rural Pee Dee areas – from Newberry and Cherokee counties more than 130 miles east to Dillon County.

The most crowded race is in the 1st District, which stretches from the Grand Strand to Charleston. Four-term incumbent Henry Brown will face Katherine Jenerette and Paul V. Norris in the Republican primary, while Linda Ketner and Ben Frasier compete for the Democratic nomination.

In the 2nd District, incumbent Joe Wilson will go for his fourth full term. He faces Phil Black in the Republican primary, while Rob Miller and Blaine Lotz are running for the Democratic nomination. That district runs from Beaufort County north into the northern and western suburbs of Columbia.

Gresham Barrett is seeking a fourth term in the 3rd District in the northwest part of the state. He will face Democrat Jane Dyer in the general election.

Fourth District incumbent Bob Inglis is trying for a third term since returning to Congress in 2004. He will face Charles Jeter in the Republican primary, while Bryan McCanless, Paul H. Corden and Ted Christian face off in the Democratic primary.

House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn will run for a ninth term in the majority-black 6th District. He will take on Republican Nancy Harrelson in the general election.

The State

Because of gerrymandering, don’t expect any of these to flip.

U.S. Rep. Bob Inglis plans to vote for legislation mandating a one-year moratorium on congressional earmarks, you know, those little spending add-ons that helped Republicans go from the majority to the minority in 2006, forcibly retiring a bunch of them along the way.

But, the Travelers Rest Republican says if the bill fails, he won’t be joining fellow Republican Joe Wilson of Lexington in swearing off earmarks for a year anyway.

“I’m very supportive of the earmark moratorium and will vote for it,” Inglis says, describing the plan as a needed reform on the road to abolishing the practice.

But in the meantime, there will be some requests this year from South Carolina that need to be addressed if they meet his criteria of economic development, local matching funds and serving the national interest.

The Greenville News

What I read here is political posturing in an election year. How can Inglis expect anyone to take him seriously as a fiscal reformer when he says he’ll still stick his hand in the cookie jar if the rules don’t change? Yeah, we hear you, Bob. Earmarks are bad and all, but you’re going to make sure you still get your share of slop from the community trough. Apparently some Republicans are adapting to life in the Minority rather well.

Cross Posted at SaveTheGOP

U.S. Rep. Bob Inglis is spearheading support among senior Republican lawmakers for congressional hearings to pressure the Iraqi government to make progress on benchmarks set by Congress.

The move by the Upstate Republican likely could draw opposition from President Bush and his staunchest Iraq war allies in Congress.

The drive for “accountability hearings” reflects mounting frustration in GOP ranks over the failure of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s fractured central government in achieving 18 benchmarks set by Congress. They include narrowing sectarian divides and sharing oil reserves.

“It gets to a point where we have spent enough time and enough lives and enough money in this one particular spot,” said Inglis, one of 17 GOP House members to vote against the U.S. military surge in February.

The State

I agree with Inglis. The Iraqi Government can’t continue to lean on the U.S. as their crutch. They have been given enough time and money to get their act together and what they did with their time was take a one month vacation in August while our soldiers are over their risking their lives and sweating their asses off in 120 degree weather.