SCGOP Chairman Resigns

Just one month into his second two-year term, S.C. “Republican” Party chairman Chad Connelly has resigned his post. The former Amway salesman – who breezed to reelection as chairman at last month’s SCGOP convention – is giving up his job to take a position with the National Republican Committee (NRC).

“My time as Chairman of the SCGOP has been a rewarding experience and I want to thank all of those who helped our party thrive,” Connelly said in a statement. “We’ve made great strides in South Carolina over the past few years and I’m confident that I leave the party in very capable hands to build on the successes we’ve had.”

Replacing Connelly will be former SCGOP executive director Matt Moore, sources tell FITS.

In fact Moore was named “chairman by acclamation,” one GOP source told us, referring to the succession agreement as a “backroom deal if I’ve ever seen one.”

The implication? That Connelly knew all along that he would be taking a job with the RNC but ran for reelection anyway (drawing only token opposition) as a way of holding of the seat for Moore, who becomes the youngest party chairman in the country.

This website supported Connelly in 2011, however we were dismayed to see him proceed to suckle every establishment “Republican” teat he could find as opposed to upholding the ideals the SCGOP is supposed to stand for. Which is why we’ve come to realize that this position – like the SCGOP itself – is pointless.

“It really doesn’t matter who holds the position of ‘Republican’ chairman in South Carolina, because in order to keep the job you have to do what Connelly has done – which is to run around the state pretending that a bunch of corrupt, fiscally liberal anti-reformers are really good ‘conservatives,'” we wrote earlier this year.

Seriously … this is as predictable (and thus as pointless) as political post as you’re going to find in the Palmetto State, and while Moore is a good guy (and comes from a solid ideological lineage) none of that matters when you have to follow the orders of “reformers in name only” like Nikki Haley and outright “Republicans in Name Only” like S.C. House Speaker Bobby Harrell and S.C. Senate finance chairman Hugh Leatherman.

UPDATE: Confirmed. “In a vote of the South Carolina Republican Party state executive committee held earlier today, Matt Moore was elected State Chairman,” reads a statement from the party. “Moore becomes Chairman immediately and will succeed former Chairman Chad Connelly, who has taken a position at the Republican National Committee.”

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