As if South Carolina did not have enough government officials who are an embarrassment to the Palmetto State, now another person can be added to the list!
We already knew about Governor Mark Sanford, who went off to Argentina without telling his wife or family or even his staff, to pursue an affair outside his marriage. This has led to unsuccessful impeachment moves by the state legislature, and a recent move to censure him, but allow him to finish his term.
His lieutenant governor, Andre Bauer, who would be the successor if he were to leave office before the end of the year 2010, now has managed to get himself into trouble with his comments! Bauer showed lack of sensitivity and pure stupidity this week when he made a public statement in a speech comparing poor children to stray animals! He said that feeding stray animals or poor children both lead only to more reproduction, because you are giving them encouragement! He then apologized to animal lovers for comparing stray animals to poor children, but did not apologize to poor children and poor people in general for comparing them to stray animals! He criticized the giving of free lunches to poor children in school. Is there anything more despicable than this? 🙁
Can you imagine if this jerk, this disgrace of a public official, were to become Governor of South Carolina? Can you actually realize that his accession to the Governorship would be worse than keeping Mark Sanford in office? What is it with South Carolina that they can elect such morons to high positions in state government? And to top it off, Andre Bauer obviously wants to be Governor, and might very well be elected if his state’s population is insensitive enough to do so this November! 🙁
So South Carolina has Mark Sanford and Andre Bauer as their two top state officials! And add to this the embarrassment of Congressman Joe Wilson who yelled “No” at President Obama last fall, and Senator Jim DeMint, considered the most right wing member of the Senate, and who became infamous for pushing the idea of stopping President Obama’s health care plan, in order to create Obama’s “Waterloo”!
One wonders why South Carolina seems incapable of electing mainstream, reasonable, decent political leaders. They seem never to have recovered from John C. Calhoun, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and Strom Thurmond! LOL