xfinity news (AP): Sen. DeMint resigning to head conservative group

[Jumbo]

While a typical occurrence, I think this goes along with a current context of the conservative/right shuffling around trying to reorganize and define who's going where, and holding what positions, as the foundation of the GOP.

Sen. DeMint resigning to head conservative group

http://xfinity.comcast.net/articles/...eMint.Resigns/

COLUMBIA, S.C. — Republican U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint, a tea party favorite who has bucked party leaders to back challenges to centrist veterans he didn't view as conservative enough, said Thursday he was resigning to take the helm of a conservative think tank.

The South Carolina lawmaker said in a statement he was stepping down to become president of the Heritage Foundation. His office said his resignation is effective Jan. 1.

DeMint was first elected to the Senate in 2004 and easily re-elected six years later. He previously served in the U.S. House of Representatives for three terms.

"I'm leaving the Senate now, but I'm not leaving the fight. I've decided to join The Heritage Foundation at a time when the conservative movement needs strong leadership in the battle of ideas," DeMint, 61, said in a statement. DeMint was unavailable for comment, his office said.

<more at link>


Yes. The Heritage Foundation. Sometimes, in my less thoughtful moments, I think the term "heritage" for some such folk in these matters harkens back to some of our often over-worshiped "founding fathers" and their comfort zones, which included things like blacks and women knowing their place, and having to be worth some money to have a say in guiding the government. You know. The good old days when family values were born---where you could actually get some money back for trading off your 14 year old daughter to the local gentry three times her age. Nothing says "sanctity of marriage" like a nice dowry score and nailing some adolescent with the approval of the church and your community. But I digress.

[Predicto]

While a typical occurrence, I think this goes along with a current context of the conservative/right shuffling around trying to reorganize and define who's going where, and holding what positions, as the foundation of the GOP.

Sen. DeMint resigning to head conservative group

http://xfinity.comcast.net/articles/...eMint.Resigns/



<more at link>


Yes. The Heritage Foundation. Sometimes, in my less thoughtful moments, I think the term "heritage" for some such folk in these matters harkens back to some of our often over-worshiped "founding fathers" and their comfort zones, which included things like blacks and women knowing their place, and having to be worth some money to have a say in guiding the government. You know. The good old days when family values were born---where you could actually get some money back for trading off your 14 year old daughter to the local gentry three times her age. Nothing says "sanctity of marriage" like a nice dowry score and nailing some adolescent with the approval of the church and your community. But I digress.

Sounds like you have been visiting Charleston again.

Anyhow, DeMint and the Heritage Foundation deserve each other. The Senate will be a better place without him, IMO. Nikki Haley will appoint a staunch conservative to the seat, but maybe one who is a bit less dogmatic.

[SKINS@THEGOALLINE]

Jim DeMint Is Resigning: Here Are His 7 Craziest Moments

—By Dana Liebelson

| Thu Dec. 6, 2012 9:04 AM PST

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012...-and-his-crazy

[alexey]

When this kind of stuff happens I get so dang curious about what goes on behind the scenes.

[visionary]

Sounds like you have been visiting Charleston again.

Anyhow, DeMint and the Heritage Foundation deserve each other. The Senate will be a better place without him, IMO. Nikki Haley will appoint a staunch conservative to the seat, but maybe one who is a bit less dogmatic.

I like Charleston. Just visited there a week ago. Nice city. Lot's of hot women too.
Only thing I didn't like was it's a bit too easy to trip on the pavement there. lol



I wonder who Demint's replacement will be.
I saw one political analyst suggest Sanford's ex-wife, but I think he might have been joking.

[Jumbo]

Sounds like you have been visiting Charleston again. .

The digression came from seeing the article not long after being involved this morning in a seminar where both the Heritage Foundation and "family values" come up in a discussion on family structures and roles, and the variety of cultural framings of marriage in U.S. History.

Some of the material used was from one of my favorite former professors, Stephanie Coontz who is a NY Times best selling author, historian, and national-level expert on such things (and a serious kick in the ass). She was something of a "wild lefty" (still a brilliant one) in her youth, but moderated it in later years.

One of the few things I ever brag about is getting the highest score in her class (she had a system) she had ever given a student. She thought it was particularly miraculous (she told me) because she didn't think it was a possible a 40-something male could be that open to that much "new-to-them" and "different" information (said with a wicked grin, but I think she was only half-kidding ).

[Predicto]

When this kind of stuff happens I get so dang curious about what goes on behind the scenes.

What is going on behind the scenes is that DeMint has very little money, and the Heritage Foundation offered him a lot of money to keep doing what he basically is doing already.

And for your amusement: "Jim DeMint Is Resigning: Here Are His 7 Craziest Moments"

1. DeMint says gay people and unmarried women having sex shouldn't teach your children.

According to the Spartanburg Herald-Journal, DeMint said this at a South Carolina rally: "If someone is openly homosexual, they shouldn't be teaching in the classroom and he holds the same position on an unmarried woman who's sleeping with her boyfriend—she shouldn't be in the classroom."

2. DeMint says God doesn't like big government.

On a radio show in 2011, DeMint said: "I've said it often and I believe it—the bigger government gets, the smaller God gets. As people become more dependent on government, less dependent on God."

3. Jim DeMint doesn't want women talking about abortion on the internet.

In 2011, DeMint put an amendment into a totally unrelated spending bill that attempted to ban discussion of abortion via satellite, video-conferencing, and the internet (in other words, fully preventing women from speaking with their doctors remotely).

4. DeMint says America turning into Iran after President Obama's election (or maybe Germany?).

"Probably the most heart-wrenching experiences I've had over the last several days is when naturalized American citizens who have immigrated here from Germany, Iran, and other countries, they come up to me and they say why are we doing what so many have fled from?" DeMint told a conservative radio host in 2009 "Why don’t Americans see what we're doing?"

5. DeMint puts a hold on National Women's History Museum.

In 2010, a proposed bill would have allowed a private group to buy property on Independence Avenue to build a women's history museum (without costing taxpayers any money). DeMint was one of the bill's chief opponents, and put a hold on it.

6. DeMint confuses Chicago teacher strike with violence in the Middle East.

"On my way over, I was reading another story about a distant place where thugs had put 400,000 children out in the streets. And then I realized that was a story about the Chicago teachers strike," DeMint said at the 2012 Values Voters summit in September. "But we've got to think of good things.”

7. DeMint falsely accuses President Obama of taxing Christmas.

On Fox News in 2011, DeMint said the government was "going to charge taxes on Christmas trees so they can start another government agency to promote Christmas trees. We don't need to do that at the federal level. We can't even afford to do what we're already doing. And to add another tax to something and say we're going to create a promotion agency, it just makes you want to pull your hair out."

This statement was in response to a division of the Department of Agriculture proposing that tree importers and producers pay 15 cents per tree, to fund a promotional campaign for Christmas. (The tax was tabled.)

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012...-and-his-crazy

[FanboyOf91]

What is going on behind the scenes is that DeMint has very little money, and the Heritage Foundation offered him a lot of money to keep doing what he basically is doing already.

He couldn't make money as a United States senator? Shameful display, Jim. The august Senate is better without your kind.

[Predicto]

He couldn't make money as a United States senator? Shameful display, Jim. The august Senate is better without your kind.

Senators make $174,000, and have to keep two homes and have a ton of travel expenses. He will make over a million a year at Heritage.

Since he rarely actually worked on any substantive legislation in the Senate, and spent all his time building conservative activist organizations, he might as well get paid for it.

[visionary]

http://www.politico.com/story/2012/1...ate-85169.html

Tim Scott to succeed Jim DeMint in Senate

Rep. Tim Scott will succeed Jim DeMint as South Carolina’s junior senator, two Republican sources confirmed, making him the the first African American Republican to serve in the U.S. Senate in more than three decades.

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley will announce at noon Monday she is appointing Scott to replace DeMint, who is stepping down in January to become president of the conservative think tank, The Heritage Foundation. Scott, who was elected to the House in the tea-party wave of 2010, had been the frontrunner to get the job.

Haley’s pick is historic. Scott, 47, will become the first African American senator from the South since Reconstruction, as well as the only African American in the upper chamber. Illinois Democrat Roland Burris, who was appointed to replace Barack Obama in the Senate, last served in the chamber in November 2010.

[JMS]

While a typical occurrence,

Yeah I don't think it's a typical occurrence for a senator to resign his seat a third of the way into his second term to head up a think tank. A congressman to head up a lobbying group is rare, but happens... but not a senator, Never seen it before... They always go to the lobiests or think tanks after they were are defeated, not before.

Yes. The Heritage Foundation. Sometimes, in my less thoughtful moments, I think the term "heritage" for some such folk in these matters harkens back to some of our often over-worshiped "founding fathers" and their comfort zones, which included things like blacks and women knowing their place, and having to be worth some money to have a say in guiding the government. You know. The good old days when family values were born---where you could actually get some money back for trading off your 14 year old daughter to the local gentry three times her age. Nothing says "sanctity of marriage" like a nice dowry score and nailing some adolescent with the approval of the church and your community. But I digress.

The Heritage Foundation is another conservative think tank which has become a vehicle for the Koch Brothers to insert/ replace their views with what we used to think of as Libertarian or Conservative.. Other right wing organizations controlled by the Koch brothers.

• Heritage Foundation
• Cato Institute, and
• Americans for Prosperity.
• FreedomWorks

more broadly the entire Tea Party..

---------- Post added December-17th-2012 at 03:06 PM ----------

What is going on behind the scenes is that DeMint has very little money, and the Heritage Foundation offered him a lot of money to keep doing what he basically is doing already.

And for your amusement: "Jim DeMint Is Resigning: Here Are His 7 Craziest Moments"

Yes I think DeMint is the Koch brothers kind of guy ( read whackadoodle)... and DeMint is cashing in.. Likewise the Koch's are getting a high profile Senator to chair their Heritage foundation, which raised the profile of organization... I mean seriously who can name a former chairman of the Heritage foundation?