Ranting On...the South Carolina Special Election

You don't get a much less interesting time for followers of American electoral politics than April of an odd-numbered year.  One party (in this year's case, the Democrats) is still high off their most recent November victory, while the other party (in this case, the Republicans) is licking their wounds and trying to figure out what went wrong.  If you're looking for an interesting election, about the best you can do is starting to speculate on what the upcoming retirements (which are announced at this time of year) mean for next year's elections, but there's nothing tangible, nothing where you'll get to see the results of your obsessing and guessing.

That is, unless there's a special election of some note, and that's what we happen to have in South Carolina.  After the retirement of conservative favorite Jim DeMint from the Senate (he is now running the Heritage Foundation), Republican Rep. Tim Scott was appointed to his seat, which left his House seat up-for-grabs.  On-the-surface, this should have been an open-and-shut case.  Scott's district, South Carolina's first, is heavily Republican, one where Mitt Romney got almost 60% of the vote, and the election should have been done by the end of the primary.

But special elections don't always work that way, and lately that's especially true when heated Republican primaries are involved.  While there was no Tea Party movement like there has been in some seats that brought out Democratic dreams like Christine O'Donnell and Sharron Angle, what the Republicans did instead was nominate Mark Sanford for the seat.

On paper, Sanford seems like the perfect candidate-a former member of Congress (he served three terms in the House) and a two-term governor, he was once a strong candidate for national office, and was thought of as a possible 2012 presidential contender.  Sounds great, right?  Wrong-no one gets that high and ends up running for a random special election to a House seat.  Sanford destroyed his political career in 2009, when, after disappearing for several days, he claimed that he was hiking on the Appalachian Trail, when in reality he was in Argentina, visiting a woman and having an affair.  The married father of four came clean, and eventually it was proven that he had spent public money to carry on the affair.  While he wasn't impeached, his wife left him and the South Carolina House of Representatives voted to censure him by an overwhelming bipartisan majority.  By all accounts, his career in electoral politics should have been done.

But lately, that's not how Republican primaries work, and Sanford, four years later and hoping the public's memory is a bit lapsed, is now the nominee for the GOP in this, perhaps the first half of the year's most important election (the Massachusetts Special Senate election would also like your attention, but it's really a race that's going to be decided in the primary, and it's looking like a lopsided win for Ed Markey, so I think the Palmetto State takes this one).  Now, this is a Republican seat, and for all intents and purposes, Sanford should be able to win, but the Democrats have a shot.
Part of the reason that the Democrats have some game to play is that they have recruited a top notch candidate (see her picture above), Elizabeth Colbert Busch.  Busch has ties to the shipping community and Clemson University, both of which are huge in this particular district, but what is likely sticking out to you is that "Colbert" in her name-she is indeed the older sister of Comedy Central host Stephen Colbert, an icon amongst liberals and younger voters.  With that name comes some detriments (though she hails from South Carolina, the "Hollywood liberal" tag is easier to attach to her as a result), but it also means cash, connections, and a boost in name recognition, all of which have positioned Colbert Busch with an outside shot of winning the race.

That said, Sanford is still the favorite, but it opens up a larger question-where does the GOP head in the upcoming four years?  In 2010 and 2012, they nominated unelectable candidates like O'Donnell, Angle, Ken Buck, Todd Akin, and Richard Mourdouck to incredibly winnable Senate races, and that number doubles when you look at House seats.  But the larger point was that even their more electable candidates (people like Reps. Denny Rehberg and Rick Berg) lost while Mitt Romney carried the states.  The Republican brand is at its nadir, and while a discussion on some of their beliefs that are considered more "archaic" by the general populace may be worth discussing (particularly on immigration and gay marriage), a much simpler aspect of the solution is to stop associating yourself with the Mark Sanfords.

As Berg and Rehberg proved in the past cycle, this isn't the entire solution, but it's a start.  The Republican Party needs to figure out some way to fix its primary problem (and no, Tennessee, eliminating primaries is not the way to go).  It starts with Republicans not being afraid of challenging the extremes of their own party-Rand Paul and Jeb Bush have started to do this, but at some point the leadership needs to not only challenge the random politicians that no one has heard of (see Justin Amash), but also the Rushs, the Hannitys, the Becks.  They are doing far more damage than they are gain, and while they might run well in a primary, you cannot expect to return to the White House or the Senate in the near future until you remove this toxic element from your party's image.  Nominating a candidate who is most well-known to the general populace for leaving his (beloved by the public) wife and his four children to run off and have an affair, all the while lying about it to his staff and the media.

One shouldn't use this race as a microcasm of the overall state of the GOP-this is not a swing district, these are not traditional candidates, but it is a portrait of the problems the GOP will continue to face if they cannot get their house in order.  If Sanford wins, it will be because he was dragged to the finish line, not because he's an excellent campaigner.  And if Colbert Busch wins, it will be because the GOP couldn't find a suitable candidate in a district with a wide, excellent bench.  We shall see in a few weeks whether or not they have gotten a pass or whether we're in for the greatest installment of "Better Know a District" ever.