At the Republican National Convention in San Diego in 1984, UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick memorably labeled the Democratic Party, which was meeting that year in San Francisco. “And now, the American people, proud of our country, proud of our freedom, proud of ourselves, will reject the San Francisco Democrats and send Ronald Reagan back to the White House,” she said. Pleased with herself, she soon applied the label again. “When Marxist dictators shoot their way into power in Central America, the San Francisco Democrats don’t blame the guerrillas and their Soviet allies. They blame United States policies of 100 years ago. But then they always blame America first.”
Ouch! The insult was effective because it drew a little blood. San Francisco, home of Haight Ashbury and hippies and the Grateful Dead, of Harvey Milk and the gay rights movement, of Berkeley and the Free Speech Movement and multi-culturalism and Sly and the Family Stone, so close to Big Sur and Marin County and hot tubs, was a kind of a knee jerk liberal place, a place that seemed to bring out a bit of the inner crewcut in liberals from other parts of the country. It was a sharp caricature. It stung. It was thought-provoking.
But if the country is now wary of the excesses of San Francisco Democrats, why are they not just as hip to the far-out excesses of South Carolina Conservatives? Just look at the record, starting with the Nullification Crisis and John Calhoun; Senator James “Cotton is King” Hammond; ultra-secessionists like Robert Barnwell Rhett, Congressman Preston Brooks (who caned Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts), Francis Pickens, The Gist brothers William and States Rights, and loudmouth Congressman Lawrence Keitt; postbellum, the racist Gov. Ben Tillman and recently, the defender of segregation, Senator Strom Thurmond. Though born in Atlanta, Lee Atwater made his bones in South Carolina. And don’t forget the ugly smear campaigns leveled at John McCain when he was running for president in 2000.
Lo and behold, it turns out that five of the mainstays of the group holding the country’s economy hostage are congressmen from South Carolina. One, Joe “You lie!” Wilson, is already well known, but four of these terrorists are freshman Republicans: Jeff Duncan, Mick Mulvaney, Tim Scott and Trey Gowdy.
When will the country learn to treat with extreme suspicion the radical ideas authored by South Carolina conservatives?