By Dan Kennedy • The press, politics, technology, culture and other passions

How do you say ‘conservative’ in South Carolinese?

NPR’s Ailsa Chang reported earlier this week on the re-election struggles of U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who is being challenged by right-wingers who think he’s not conservative enough. I nearly drove off the road when I heard this nugget:

Leading the pack of four Republican challengers is Lee Bright, a state senator who’s pushed legislation to ban abortion funding for victims of rape and incest. He also wants to make enforcement of the Affordable Care Act punishable by one year in jail.

“I would put my conservative record against any legislator in the country. I don’t think there’s anybody more conservative than I am,” Bright says.

Fortunately, Chang found that Graham probably doesn’t have much to worry about. Which means that even South Carolina Republicans have their limits.

Update: In other news from the far right, the Arizona Republican Party has censured Sen. John McCain for being too liberal.

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4 Comments

  1. Mike Benedict

    “Yeah, they’re hicks, Rita.”

  2. cynthiastead

    DK – on a more serious note, I wish that media in general would stop asserting that these uber-libertarian/social conservative types are necessarily representative on mainstream REPUBLICAN stances. When Cynthia McKinney came up with something goofy, you didn’t hear her described as an influential party authority. I am a proud RINO (which infuriates me, as I have been a registered Republican since before some of those calling me that were born!) and we can’t buy a call from a reporter, mainly because we aren’t going to say anything insane or offensive which will sell papers or bytes.

    • Dan Kennedy

      @Cynthia: Hmmm, I don’t know. Sounds like the far right is the mainstream in Arizona. And Cynthia McKinney was regularly thrown in the faces of liberals as emblematic of what they stood for. But my favorite example of that is Ward Churchill, who I am convinced does not actually exist except on Fox News.

  3. Mike Rice

    “The more you observe politics, the more you’ve got to admit that each party is worse than the other.” Will Rogers
    BINGO!

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