Terence Samuel on the bombastic politicians of South Carolina and the state of the Republican Party:
There must be some powerful atmospheric agents shaping the politics of South Carolina. How else can the Palmetto State’s tendency to repeatedly produce odd and bombastic figures be explained? Here, I’m not talking about the increasingly infamous and boorish Rep. Joe Wilson, who interrupted the president’s health-care speech by shouting, “You lie.” Nor am I even talking about the similarly infamous and boorish incumbent Gov. Mark Sanford, whose affair with an Argentine woman fueled a summer spectacle. No, I’m thinking of the reformed segregationists like retired Sen. Ernest Hollings and the late Sen. Strom Thurmond, who turned out to have fathered a black child. These gigantic personalities possessed boundless political skill but ultimately had a difficult time with their aspirations. They were hampered by a political age defined by the debate over civil rights — a debate in which they were compromised.
