Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 06:06 pm
A bunch of Republican real and presumed presidential primary candidates descended on Greenville, South Carolina, Saturday. The event was the “South Carolina Freedom Summit.” It was held at an auditorium ironically named “The Peace Center.” Ironic because every candidate seemed bent on starting the Third World War.
Citizens United was the primary sponsor. Yes, the “Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission” crew. Only Rand Paul, Jeb Bush, Mike Huckabee, Chris Christie, George Romney and Lindsey Graham had better things to do. Tickets were free and gone in a flash with a 700-ticket backlog for the daylong event.
The stage was festooned in red, white and blue bunting; An anti-Hillary propaganda video that ended with giant lettering “Hillary’s Web of Deception” greeted attendees.
At 9:08AM, Citizens United President, David Bossie, walked to the microphone. “Well, good morning Greenville.”
All speakers followed essentially the same template. Islamic terror, repeal the president’s health care plan, Hillary and Obama-bashing, no taxes, no regulations, no anti-Wall Street, repeated bows to the military from the candidates, a balanced budget, welfare recipient-bashing, candidate humble beginnings, ceaseless damnation of immigrants, the “porous border”, American exceptionalism, Israel as BFF, the constitution and amendments, keep the fed’s nose out of state business, free speech, especially when it comes to state denial of gay rights and the homosexual-hating musings of that old bearded, camouflaged TV guy. Most speeches ended with “God Bless America.” I could stop the story here and you wouldn’t have missed a thing.
Wisconsin Governor and recall survivor, Scott Walker, was the first candidate speaker. He paid homage to the veterans in the audience, as did the other speakers. Nothing wrong with that, though, none of the Republican candidates ever saw actual combat duty. Walker said, “We’re going to talk about freedom today.” He didn’t elaborate. He mentioned that state unemployment is now 4.6%. What he didn’t mention, and the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel did, was that the Wisconsin grew low paying jobs at the fastest rate ever, since 2000.
He also said the state’s bond rating is strong. Really? Wisconsin Public Radio reported that the rating is still among the lowest in the country, and a recent modest upgrade came the same day the state reported a projected $2.2 billion shortfall in the next budget. This, after bragging about lowering the tax burden by 2 billion dollars. He defunded Planned Parenthood and urged repeal of Obamacare.
After the speech, Walker left for Israel to visit with fellow blood-luster, Bibi Netanyahu. The duo will figure out how they can level any home country of ‘radical’ Islam. “I want to take the fight to them, before they take the fight to us.” Third World War, anyone?
Rick Santorum followed. In addition to radical Islam, he added China and Russia to the list of American enemies. As for Islam, “If these folks want to bring back 7th Century Islam, we need to ramp up and bomb them back to the 7th century.” Do I need to bother with anything else Mr. Macho had to say other than he hates immigrants?
He bragged on South Carolina for attracting all those huge companies. Yeah, no unions, lousy wages, unfettered pollution, huge incentives and tax breaks everywhere. According to the Post and Courier newspaper (scroll down to S.C. Hard hit), household wages dropped by 10.9% between 2000 and 2012 when all those great new companies were moving in.
Rick Perry continued the Islamist theme. He accused the president of weakness and vacillation. He wants to attack Islamists. “We must have the same resolve to defeat them that we did with the Soviet Union.” H’mmmm. I guess our attack on the Soviet Union slipped my mind. He wants Washington “out of our lives.” I want Perry out of the campaign.
Egomaniac Donald Trump then addressed the crowd. This cartoonish oaf opened with Tom Brady having all that snow in front of his house. “Tell Tom Brady about Global Warming.” He got progressively dumber after that.
He tacked a bit to the left in telling the religious evangelicals that he didn’t give a s**t about lobbyists. The audience laughed uproariously. I guess ‘cursing’ is OK when an avowed conservative decides to go potty-mouth.
South Carolina Senator Tim Scott admitted he had flunked out of high school. “I think I’m the only Senator who ever flunked civics. Then I went to the Senate and there was a whole lot of competition across the aisle.” Another Scott admission: He used to sing a song to Obamacare. “Hit the road, Jack, and don’t you come back no more.” How about “Hit the road, Tim?”
Florida Senator Marco Rubio was next. He had the requisite poor parents/American dream story, realized when his parents came to America from Cuba in 1956 and found work as a bartender and stock clerk. “They found good jobs.” The line that really defined Rubio was in relation to Jihadists: “We will look for you; we will find you and we will kill you.” The audience cheered wildly. He wants to (ho) repeal Obamacare (hum). Telegenic, but not great on the stump.
Then came arguably the star of the show, Ted Cruz. “God bless the great state of South Carolina. What a blessing to be with so many incredible patriots.” You mean the kind that retain dual citizenship for the first 43 years of their life? Cruz’s birthplace of Calgary might have been a clue. He renounced the Canadian side last year. He wants to “padlock” the IRS building and bring its 90,000 employees to “our southern borders.” Repealing every word of Obamacare and initiating a flat tax (as in flat earth) are on his agenda.
John Bolton was there as a special hit man to dismantle Hillary/Obama foreign policy “failures”, especially Benghazi and Iran’s nuclear facilities (finding nothing doesn’t mean Republicans won’t let go). Is there a more unlikable human on the planet?
We can skip over the Bolton’s continued tedious attacks on Hillary’s foreign policy bona fides and former New York Governor, George who? Pataki’s speech.
That brings us to Bobby Jindal, governor or Louisiana. Covering the template as described earlier in detail, Jindal, nonetheless, identified our “greatest threat” as what Obama is doing to redefine the American dream. That’s because his administration doesn’t give carte blanche to the aforementioned Indiana, Arkansas and “Duck Dynasty” boob, Phil Robertson, calling homosexuality a sin and comparing it to bestiality. Jindal ended with three “God-blesses.”
Ben Carson told of his mother in the end-stages of Alzheimers. I’m not going to pick apart someone who is going through that incredibly difficult time with a loved one.
But Carly Fiorina faces no such challenge. She just needs to make excuses about why she was unceremoniously booted out as CEO of Hewlett-Packard. In truth, she approved the purchase of Compaq for $25 billion and promptly laid off 15,000 Hewlett-Packard employees. Over the next few years, profits lagged, and HW was losing out to competitors. Bye bye!.
Moving on…
We’re done. People are filing out. They started just after lunch. Nothing really bombastic came out of the event. Iowa and New Hampshire held similar shindigs and there will be more around the country in the future.
The three candidates to be taken seriously from this group are Cruz, Walker and, possibly, Jindal. The others can pack their bags.
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