South Carolina

Bill Kristol has mostly the right idea here:

That's why one has to be careful about what one wishes for. Republicans, newly liberated, need to resist calls to shackle themselves to prematurely announced agendas and already anointed leaders. This is the time for a thousand Republicans to bloom. Congressmen used to looking to the White House for guidance or approval--or fearing disapprobation--should show some healthy ambition and unleash their inner policy entrepreneur. Backbenchers need to come forward with heterodox ideas. There should be vigorous debate. Disharmonious disarray is in the short term much less of a danger than a false and stultifying unity.

When I floated the idea of an "ideas czar" several of my fellow contributors were disapproving, arguing that we needed exactly this sort of freelancing from the backbench. I would add a modifier to this line of thinking: don't look to backbench Congressmen for leadership. Look to sitting Republican governors who are already managing state budgets in the tens of billions of dollars and can actually enact some new ideas. Look to Tim Pawlenty, who wants to cut state business taxes, or to Bobby Jindal, or to Charlie Crist and Republicans in the Florida legislature who are refusing tax increases of any kind, or to Mark Sanford.

Republican governors in 22 states means 22 opportunities to show we can govern better than Obama, prudently cutting back on spending and cutting taxes, rather than massively increasing spending and creating a deficit a third the size of the entire Federal budget.

Today, the South Carolina GOP elected Glenn McCall, the York County Chair and 2nd Vice Chair of the SC GOP, as its Republican National Committeeman. He defeated Drew McKissick the incumbent National Committeeman who was elected in February in a special election. McKissick is a member of the board of the Christian Coalition and had been a staffer for Mitt Romney. Palmetto Scoop reports that McCall was elected by an estimated 420-180. McCall will be the first African-American RNC member from the South, I believe.

A source on the ground told me:

He gave a hell of a speech this AM at the Convention about how compassionate conservatism doesn't mean more spending, it means going into crisis pregnancy centers in the black community, about going to NAACP meetings and explaining why our party best represents the interests of black people. He talked about being willing and able to say things about Barack Obama's vision for America that nobody else can without being called a racist, and that is not that Obama's a bad person but that his vision for America is too radical and too liberal.

McCall had been endorsed by Mike Huckabee. I speculate about a couple of interesting undercurrents. Huckabee versus Christian Coalition. Warren Tompkins versus Richard Quinn. (the two leading consultants. McKissick was a Tompkins/Romney person)