ASSESSING THE LEGACY OF A “REPUBLICAN” ARCHITECT …
By FITSNEWS || There will be no “First in the South” presidential endorsement from former “Republican” governor James B. Edwards in 2016. That’s because the 87-year-old dentist-turned-politician – who is credited as helping “build the modern Republican Party in South Carolina” – died in Mount Pleasant, S.C. on Friday as a result of complications from a stroke.
Are we sad? No, not really. Don’t get us wrong: We know several of Edwards’ family members and are truly sorry for their loss (especially seeing as it took place during the holiday season). No matter what we think of someone’s politics, we never like to see people hurting.
And we met Edwards once or twice … and found him to be a genuinely likable and engaging person.
But beyond all the fluffy tributes – and the media-driven pomp and circumstance of his funeral – what is Edwards real legacy?
What did he actually accomplish for South Carolina?
Edwards wore many hats during his lengthy career: local GOP chairman, State Senator, governor, U.S. Energy Secretary and later president of the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC).
As governor from 1975-79 – the first “Republican” to hold the office since Reconstruction – Edwards focused on education and “economic development.”
Sound familiar? It should – it’s what every governor of South Carolina focuses on.
Unfortunately, it didn’t work: The state’s workforce shrunk under Edwards’ watch. Standardized test scores declined. Crime expanded. Oh, and South Carolina is still dealing with the ill effects of the 1977 “Education Finance Act,” which created a hyper-convoluted method of dispensing tax dollars to government-run schools in an effort to achieve the “progressive” appropriation of education resources.
Anyway … don’t expect to read about any of that in the bought-and-paid-for Palmetto papers this week.
Then there’s the “Republican” party Edwards helped build – which currently enjoys huge majorities in the S.C. General Assembly and controls all nine statewide constitutional offices. Are these “Republicans” really any different from the Republicans preceding them, though? Hell no.
Liberal party-switcher Hugh Leatherman is the most powerful elected official in the state – hands down. Hell, even “Tea Party” governor Nikki Haley – who mourned Edwards’ passing – has advanced a fiscally liberal agenda on taxes, spending, education and (most notably) government-subsidized health care.
Then there’s the incoming “Republican” superintendent of education …
There is, literally, nothing new under the sun …
This website has been criticized in the past for offering less-than-glowing reviews of Palmetto public officials upon their shuffling off of this mortal coil. We’re told it’s unseemly. Inappropriate. And that if we don’t have anything nice to say, we shouldn’t say anything at all. In fact this week our founding editor received an impassioned plea from a family member who attends church services with Edwards’ family members – urging him to “please say only nice things” about the former governor.
Frankly, the only nice thing we can say about Edwards is that he didn’t screw the state up half as bad as the party he helped build.
Wait … maybe that’s not as nice as it sounds. Hmmm ….
Here’s the thing: Our state’s mainstream media coddles establishment politicians in life … then glorifies them in death. And all the while, it beats the drum for the big government “solutions” these politicians champion – while castigating any effort to slow government’s growth as being cruel, risky and somehow self-serving.
Now … is it bad form to point this out on the occasion of an elder statesman’s passing? Perhaps.
But like it or not, it is the truth …
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34 comments
Oh gee, nothing like waking up in the morning and reading of someone poking a dead tiger in its dead ass
However your line “…shuffling off of this mortal coil….” is quaint but appropriate
Not as direct as another Fucking Cockroach meets the shoe sole of Karma but then you are still maturing
“…but then you are still maturing”
I’m guessing New Years morning is less than pleasant with you. :-O
You’ve got to give him credit, he is telling his version of the truth even if it appears he’s dancing on the man’s grave.
The fact is, 99% of pols have used their power to make someone’s life miserable, so if they get a little back after they are dead they’ve gotten off easily in my book.
Glad to hear you’re unhappy. It means something is going right.
Reading the Sic post above, I’m reminded who the real “RINO’s” are – the Tin Foil Hat wearing Libertarians. Mind you I like some of the Tin Foil Hat wearing Libertarian policies, but certainly not the entire tin foil manifesto.
Anyway, I’m wondering what the remembrances of Trikki Nikki will be when she’s dead an buried (actually, not politically)? She will have served 2 terms instead of the 1 term Edwards was allowed to serve, and as Governor in 70’s, he had virtually zero control over state government, unlike Trikki Nikki. Trikki’s pronouncements regarding Gov. Edwards and how she attempted to attach herself to him was astoundingly funny. He’s a gentleman with many accomplishments, she’s a corrupt, ignorant skank with zero accomplishments, mostly moving the state backwards.
If you are not with us, you are against us. Libertarians and RINO’s are the same-‘liberal’ on social policy even while watching our communities burn and our schools fail.
They never have figured out that it was the cultural and moral foundations that made our communities safe and thriving beacons of hope/opportunity for our children-long ago they bought into the Democrat Party 1960’s fantasy of perversion, legalized drugs and America is the problem.
The Democratic Party, for the majority of the ’60s, was all about the escalation of the Viet Nam War, and was as aggressive as any other administration in the demonization of dissent and the oppressive criminalization of drugs. Perversions? Well, who knows what wierd stuff went on in those cloakrooms between old fat white Tip O’Neal and olf fat white Hubert Humphrey.
Don’t dwell on that image. Satan wants you to stop wanking off. That’s why he gave you GT.
It’s fascinating to watch Republicans throw off the shroud of limited gov’t when it comes to regulating the personal lives of people who have committed no harm.
Just remember champ, “America’ is more than you and the GOP whether you like it or not.
Better for you to stick to limited gov’t principles and stop worry about your neighbor smoking a joint or a couple of fags sucking dick. Few like a busybody.
Hopefully, they will cremate her body on the Ganges since she will have fled to India after she was indicted.
FITS, you just prove you are just as TRITE as those characterizing Edwards career….
You all walk in LOCKSTEP…that is why nothing, other than the championing of the blatant lawlessness and failure of Obama, seems to move you….
You’re stupid, flat-minded and dull people…and you that is why you all articulate the same old cliches, and similar descriptions, regardless of reality…
It’s now them….it’s YOU….
Must agree with fits. It serves satan to get fuzzy over pols. And thankless tho the job may be, the mainstream polite eulogies should be countered.
Yep, credit to Sic. We all hear enough meaningless platitudes from the worthless MSM as it is. Give me the truth, even if it’s “tacky”.
Yeah, it’s true. He bought the farm.
In other news, “Republican” SC Rep Alan Clemmons is catching damn near the same level of heat as did Bobby Harrell from the SCPC, and over similar and related issues, but Will continues his inexplicable near-total black-out of any and all news relating to the Myrtle Beach area. Going on a couple of years now. Shit, if it ain’t about Thad’s chode and a BarBQ heiress babe with big fake gazongas, he ain’t interested. SHEESH!!
Here I go spending YEARS getting peeps down here to tune into this blog/site, and then BAM!, he gonna cut us off like that. I would take my patronage elsewhere, but … well … The Nerve hits all the right notes but generally its tone is flat as my wallet. So I guess I’ll hang in here anyway.
You F*#king idiots HIT one of about a million accusations…and sadly if one guy happens to pan out…it just emboldens the Dumb@$$#$ who are Unfit to get elected…
Beat Clemmons at the ballot box…or STFU…you black-helicopter imbecile…
PS: You suck off FITS, and all he does is use you up…Didn’t Obama do the same to you dolts?…And you’re so stupid, you just keep coming back for more….
They can’t beat Clemmons. Mark Kelley created Clemmons and Buz’s faux buddy, Randal Wallace’s campaigns in the ‘backroom’ at Kelley’s old bar, Shamrock’s. Both of em were nobody’s . Kelley was and IS that powerful-and one of the reasons he owns TSN and a certain reporter at this time. He is a good,decent and fair man that loves his community.
Buz has never been close to any of these people and the closet he ever got to Shamrocks was the former mall across the street-a parking lot.
The people elect Clemmons, and see Boz as a clown. The same is true of FITS…
They rally around a Bust…and ignore the hundreds of mis-fires of their own…
You the top or the bottom?
You the bottom or the top?
Idiot. I went there from time to time, like everyone else. Didn’t pay any attention to any political bullshit or the “backroom.”
You think Kelley “owns” that reporter and TSN now? Are you serious? Do you know the disposition of the case? If you did you’d realize that not a penny was paid, nobody is in any trouble, barristers laugh at the idea that the verdict will ever be counted as case law, and the editor of TSN has tweeted to Wren that he is welcome to come back to work any time if he doesn’t like it in Charleston.
As always, you are hopelessly out of date on your “intel.”
The best thing for Myrtle would be a big dose of Napalm.
No. The neutron bomb. Take out the people and leave the infrastructure. Then, we can go in and tear down the trash properties.
“The state’s workforce shrunk under Edwards’ watch.”
First, I don’t know where you are getting your data. Edwards served from January 1975 – January 1979. The BLS doesn’t have state data before January 1976. Comparing January 1979 with January 1976, Edwards has a good record.
The workforce (employed or seeking employment) grew by 66,218 but the number of actual people employed grew by 94,442. The number of unemployed dropped by 28,224.The unemployment rate dropped 1.4%, from 7.6% to 6.4. Fits is hooked on the labor participation rate as if it is the only stat that matters. It dropped 1.8%, but the employment rate only dropped 0.1%. There could be a number of reasons besides discouraged workers: More retirees or increased births with mothers staying home.
Damn it, FITS don’t give a shit about facts, only predetermined narratives.
You’re really special.
Also happening:
Kate Upton on a Trampoline in a Bikini has now won TWO (2), count ’em 2 (TWO) spots on the “You May Like” (an understatement) section of this page.
Will – You’re a dick. There’s no honor in being a dick. There’s no glory in being a dick. When all is said and done, you’re just a dick.
Veritas Odium Parit
@Fits – your whole freaking family attends church services with Governor Edwards’ family! So come on, cut the shit. Governor Edwards was one in a small percentage of SC Politian’s who was not only politically conservative but a man with untarnished personal behavior.
You’ve got selective memory.
Or, you didn’t live and work through his one – we need that again – term.
I don’t call ‘nepotism’ untarnished personal behavior.
‘The State’ headlines included: Edwards ’embraced everyone’ and ‘remembered for humanity’.
As governor, Edwards showed nothing for contempt for state workers. He might have been great to his appointed hack office staff, but he did not give a rat’s ass about any other state employee.
Of course, after this yet another ‘small government’ type got some federal paychecks for a Reagan cabinet job a dentist would know bull crap about, he surely realized Washington was over his depth. So, lucky us, he came back to SC to get back on the hated state employee dole himself at MUSC for years and years and get hated state employee jobs for his family members. And, he died on state retirement benefits and health insurance.
Oh wait, stupid me. It’s only government workers who earn less than $50,000 a year who are beneath contempt to small government types. And, if they can get themselves and their spawn a job making over $100,000, that’s fine. Edwards as college president was not one bit worse that Glenn McConnell as college president – same exact thing.
Jim Edwards. Like Strom Thurmond, at the front of the SC GOP line of self serving hypocrites.
Amen
De mortuis nihil nisi bonum
The family member should have bitch slapped you instead of pleading with you. Hell, maybe that’s your problem. Maybe you’ve never been bitch slapped.
Edwards arranged the condemnation of Limerick Plantation, to “help” the SC Dept. of Commerce and Amoco’s spur-line railroad, got the family moved out, and then re-routed the railroad tracks, and then bought Limerick himself. I hope he burns in hell, the mother fucker.