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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Nov 2010
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    Summerville, SC
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    Default SC House Repubs, "...sign it or else."

    https://www.fitsnews.com/2023/01/31/...lled-from-gop/


    Sixteen members of the South Carolina Freedom Caucus were expelled from the “Republican” party in the state House of Representatives this week, according to the group’s leadership.

    What did they do? They refused to sign a “loyalty oath” vowing to abstain from campaigning against any other “Republican” House member.

    “Over the past few weeks there has been a push by a faction of extreme moderates within the Republican Caucus to purge the most conservative members of the caucus,” state representative Adam Morgan, chairman of the Freedom Caucus, said during a press conference in Columbia, S.C. on Tuesday. “This was accomplished by weaponizing caucus rules, specifically instituting a loyalty pledge.”

    Here is a video of the press conference …

    (Click to view)


    In case you’ve missed our coverage of this issue, GOP majority leader Davey Hiott of Pickens County and S.C. speaker pro tempore Tommy Pope of Rock Hill have been attempting for weeks to force an incumbent protection racket on twenty conservative members of the caucus. Specifically, they have been pushing a rule (.pdf) which states that no GOP lawmaker “shall engage in campaign activities of any kind against any other caucus member in good standing.”

    The impetus for this proposed rule? The recent defeat of several influential “moderate” GOP leaders during the 2022 GOP primary elections last June.

    As I noted in my prior coverage of this issue, the loyalty oath is “a clear effort on the part of GOP leaders to insulate left-of-center establishment ‘Republicans’ from credible conservative challengers next year.” It is also a brazenly transparent bid “to prevent those on the right from gaining additional seats within the caucus.”

    The “weaponization” referenced by Morgan is the alleged adoption of excessively broad interpretations of the term “campaign activities.” Among purportedly verboten “campaign activities?” Posting images of the House’s electronic voting board on members’ social media pages – and publicly criticizing other members over the “internal processes” behind House votes.

    House leaders – including Pope and Hiott – have vigorously pushed back against the Freedom Caucus’ characterization of their rules (see here and here).

    According to Pope, “the portrayal by FITSNews and others (of the rules) as a loyalty oath, or that members cannot take pictures of the (voting) board or that Davey Hiott and I are the ring leaders working to drive members of the Freedom Caucus out is inaccurate and disingenuous.”

    “Republicans” occupy 88 out of 124 seats in the House – or 70.9 percent of the of the chamber. The S.C. Senate – which is on the cusp of a GOP supermajority – was not on the ballot in 2022. Its members face voters again in 2024.

    Unfortunately, GOP rule has not resulted in the adoption of fiscally conservative policies in South Carolina. If anything, the opposite has been the case – one reason the SCGOP-controlled General Assembly has ranked as the most liberal “Republican-controlled” state legislature in America three years running.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Nov 2010
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    Default

    https://www.fitsnews.com/2022/05/30/...wmakers-again/

    It didn’t attract a lot of attention in the South Carolina mainstream press, but for the third year in a row the Palmetto State’s ostensibly “Republican-controlled” General Assembly fared poorly on a national conservative scorecard.

    Very poorly …

    “South Carolina lawmakers have once again missed the mark in upholding conservative principles in their voting,” a release from the American Conservative Union Foundation (ACUF) noted.

    ACUF is the group which hosts the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).

    According to its rankings, the South Carolina state legislature earned a conservative rating of only 54 percent in 2021. That was only slightly above the national average of 49 percent, the release noted.

    “South Carolina also significantly underperformed when compared to its neighbors North Carolina and Georgia, which both earned conservative ratings of 66 percent,” the release continued.

    Yeah … so were these the results GOP voters were expecting when they installed near-supermajorities in both chambers of the General Assembly in 2020?

    Doubtful …

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    Only two GOP lawmakers – state representatives RJ May III and Ryan McCabe (both of Lexington County) – scored 90 percent or higher on the scorecards.

    As bad as these ratings are, I suspect 2022 will be much worse … although you never know what motivates these organizations to pick specific votes to include in their rankings.

    My advice? Stay focused on measurable outcomes … and hold politicians (of all parties) accountable when those outcomes fail to measure up.

    “If I have said it once, I have said it a million times: The sooner citizens stop looking at political labels – and start looking at votes their ‘leaders’ cast (and the outcomes produced by those tallies) – the sooner they might start getting the sort of government they deserve,” I noted the last time these scorecards were released.

    Still, the ACUF rankings (and the votes on which they are based) are probably worth examining as partisan voters head to the polls next month to cast their ballots in the GOP and Democratic primary elections.

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Aug 2021
    Location
    NC
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    3,374

    Default

    The good old boy network don’t care about conservatism. No matter which side of the ball they line up on they all the same.

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