South Carolina Deserves Help-- Despite Lindsey Graham, Trey Gowdy And The Rest Of The Political Yahoos

When you hear someone mentioning Lindsey Graham's hypocrisy, you immediately think it's about his sordid existence as a furtive, dishonest closet case. After all, even the local papers have been laughing at his pretense for years. And even though Graham is, in essence, one thing above all else-- a self-loathing, closeted homosexual whose fear of exposure motivates everything else in his miserable life-- it's different kind of hypocrisy we're looking at in Graham this week, a more typically Republican type of hypocrisy.

Although Hurricane Joaquin missed South Carolina, it spawned a tropical storm that gave the state a week of devastating rainfall that killed over a dozen people and left tens of thousands of South Carolinians without clean water or power. With dams bursting and others in danger of failing, Governor Nikki Haley told media that "South Carolina has gone through a storm of historic proportions. Just because the rain the stops, does not mean that we are out of the woods." President Obama has already declared a state of emergency and deployed federal aid for the state.

Lindsey Graham, the state's senior senator, requested much more federal aid for his state, of course. Uninsured economic losses will be well over a billion dollars. But when he was asked about his opposition to federal aid to Northeastern states in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy he claimed he doesn't remember voting against it. Here's a reminder, the Senate roll call on January 28, 2013. The bill passed 62-36, every Democrat and 9 Republicans voted for it-- and Graham and 35 other Republicans voting against it, including Tim Scott, South Carolina's other senator. Basically, on Monday, Graham told Wolf Blitzer that South Carolina needed to be fixed and that "whatever it costs, it costs." He also said he couldn't remember opposing aid to Hurricane Sandy victims. "I'm all for helping the people in New Jersey. I don't really remember me voting that way... but I'd be glad to look and tell you why I did vote no, if I did." And yesterday it did-- it cost "whatever it cost" and that was too much for ole Lindsey... in the northeast.

And it doesn't stop there-- or start there. Two weeks earlier, on January 15, the House voted on the identical aid package. It passed 241-180, only 49 Republicans joining 192 Democrats (all but grotesque Blue Dog Jim Cooper of Nashville). The only South Carolinian to vote for aid was Jim Clyburn who is also the state's only congressional Democrat. The entire GOP South Carolina House delegation voted against aid: despicable bigots and hypocrites Trey Gowdy, Joe Wilson, Jeff Duncan, Mick Mulvaney, and the now-devastated Pee Dee region congressman, Tom Rice.

The mealy-mouthed Graham said he tends to "try to be there for friends and neighbors, so hope they'll be there for us." But his no vote against aid for Sandy victims is something he could have lied his ass off about a couple decades ago... but not in the age of the internet, where the facts, just do not disappear.

My immediate reaction has been that the people of the state shouldn't be made to suffer just because they were too stupid and bigoted to elect a halfway decent congressional delegation. After all, collective punishment is never right and it looks to me that many of the areas most effected are in Clyburn's 6th CD, especially around Lake Marion, Lake Moultrie, North Charleston, Cypress Bay, Dogwood Pond, Cooper River and Black River. Well, because of the way the state has been gerrymandered, the folks in this district gave Obama a 73-26% victory over Romney. In other words, don't think about the assholes who elected people like Mulvaney, Rice, Gowdy and Lindsey Graham. The damages are from flooding and of the 2.2 million homes in the state, not even 200,000 have flood insurance. These folks are going to need help getting back on their feet.

Meanwhile, the brand new GOP survey from PPP shows Lindsey with the worst favorable/unfavorable rating among Republican voters among any of the "deep base" running for the Republican nomination. Overall, he's even more disliked by Republican voters than Jeb Bush! Is there any wonder?