Posted on 06/07/2011 4:45:27 PM PDT by rabscuttle385
Washington can be a heady place for a freshman, especially when you share a home state with a tea party kingpin who can make or break a conservative rookie.
The South Carolina freshmen — Tim Scott, Mick Mulvaney, Trey Gowdy and Jeff Duncan — have leaned on one another as they navigate Congress, but they’ve also gotten some help from one of the most well-known and iconoclastic members of the Senate: Jim DeMint.
The freshmen give DeMint’s guidance positive reviews, but they don’t deny that the senator’s an outsize figure in South Carolina.
The unspoken reality is that no South Carolina Republican wants to run against a candidate endorsed byDeMint. He helped deliver a new class of ultraconservatives to office this fall by backing fiercely conservative candidates. The four newcomers want that seal of approval.
“You’d be politically naive if you vote differently from Sen. DeMint and can’t explain why,” said Gowdy, the lone political newcomer in the delegation. “Now, I have, but he gives us the courtesy of [explaining] the other side. Not in a condescending, ‘you guys had better watch out’ kind of way. Sometimes his response is, ‘Either vote is defensible. Do what you think is right.’”
In the delegation, DeMint serves as a sort of movement godfather, consulting House members on vote choices and the finer points of life in Washington — including the role of faith in public office. When Mulvaney challenged incumbent Democrat John Spratt, DeMint donated to his campaign and stumped for him. And when the House was debating whether to kill the second joint strike fighter engine, the freshmen gathered in Mulvaney’s office and called DeMint on speakerphone to seek his advice. It wasn’t the first time they’ve consulted the conservative kingmaker on a vote.
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
Freepers for DeMint in 2012
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ping.
Lots of good SC representative info in the article.
“They’re aggressive in their ways. They’re outdoorsmen, men’s men. And that’s the world I live in. I’m that way. And that attitude, that way about you, helps you when you fight some of these battles. You have to have a certain element of aggressiveness, assertiveness,”
Women love them. Turkeys fear them.
If you would like to manage the DeMint ping list, let me know.
This is the guy I favor for 2012. Any chance he will actually run?
Thanks, upchuck.
DeMint continues to pound away in the background.
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