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Friday, March 29, 2024 - 08:01 AM

INDEPENDENT CONSERVATIVE VOICE OF UPSTATE SOUTH CAROLINA

First Published in 1994

INDEPENDENT CONSERVATIVE VOICE OF
UPSTATE SOUTH CAROLINA

Education is the answer. We are not advocating more funds for government schools. We are discussing the need to overcome willful ignorance among South Carolina voters that have given us exceptionally bad government and a legal system that reeks with favoritism.

People are asking how Lindsey Graham won the Republican Primary? Could we find ourselves choosing between two Liberal Democrats for Superintendent of Education?

Older South Carolinians trust politicians who do not deserve trust. Younger adults don’t read and because they don’t know history or understand government and human nature, they tend to base their decisions on popular opinion or emotions.

The young and older voters alike need education. They must know something about the candidates before they vote. Every incumbent has a voting record. Every candidate has a reputation of honesty and integrity or the lack thereof.

God fearing, law-abiding citizens have lost control of their government in South Carolina. Political parties have little or no meaning in terms of morals; ethics or policy matters and are of little value in judging candidates for public office.

South Carolina politics gives credibility to the once questionable slogan: “There is not a dimes worth of difference in Democrats and Republicans”. Democrats have the same right to vote in Republican Primaries and select Republican candidates, as do Republicans. It is the law.

Voters, especially in South Carolina, can no longer judge candidates on the basis of the “D” or “R” behind their name. To do so is folly and contributes to bad government and eventually corruption and tyranny.

Lawmakers elected by the people of South Carolina over the past decades created this situation. With the rise of a relatively small group of educated and informed, but disorganized voters known loosely as the “Tea Party,” deception, dishonesty, fraud and blatant corruption have been exposed. As a result, the “power brokers” in the Legislature have passed even more laws to protect their power and shield them from defeat in elections and even criminal prosecution.

We now have a Democrat for Lieutenant Governor because the elected Republican was convicted and removed from office for misuse of campaign funds. The current House Speaker, Bobby Harrell, the most powerful man in the State, has been accused of committing several alleged unlawful acts. The accusations came from private citizens. The Attorney General asked SLED to investigate. Results of the investigation were turned over to a Grand Jury by the Attorney General.

Attorneys for the Speaker went to work to keep him from being prosecuted. A judge ruled that the Attorney General could not turn charges against the Speaker over to a Grand Jury unless the House Ethics Committee ruled on it first.

On Tuesday, June 24, the South Carolina Supreme Court heard arguments for and against the ruling by the judge. Should the Supreme Court uphold the ruling by the judge, members of the legislature will become immune to prosecution on ethics charges.

All South Carolina judges are appointed by the legislature and owe their appointments mostly to Speaker Harrell and Sen. Hugh Leatherman, who control a majority of the appointments to the Judicial Selection Committee that select candidates to be considered by the legislature for appointment.

The only political course of action that can clean up South Carolina government is to force the state to allow Republicans to choose their own primary candidates. Lawmakers who depend on Democrat votes to win over more conservative candidates in party primaries will never allow that to happen. The only viable solution is for voters to become educated and identify those candidates who say they are for issues important to citizens and once elected vote the opposite of their commitment.

Voters who are not able or willing to spend the necessary time to know who their elected representatives are or how they vote can become educated by becoming affiliated with one of the independent groups that monitor and publish voting records, or they could simply subscribe to The Times Examiner.

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