South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint, one of the most outspoken and outlandish of the far-righters, is abruptly dumping his Senate seat to become — what — head of the Heritage Foundation.
That’s the Senate’s gain and the Heritage Foundation’s loss, considering how enormous a salary they’re forking over to Mr. Delirious DeMint to head one of Washington’s most prominent conservative think tanks. What a waste of money — $2 million. Guess the Tea Party’s demented DeMint wasn’t satisfied with a measly $40,000 stipend to be a senator from S.C.
DeMint’s announcement that he’s busting out of the Senate come January stunned the pants off pretty much everyone, including his co-South Carolinian senator colleague in crime, Republican Lindsay Graham. Graham, upon finding out his best buddy was deserting him burbled out that he was “stunned” and “I nearly fell off the couch!” (Pray tell, Grahammy, what were you doing on the couch?)
I thought about getting out my knitting needles and scrabbling away a la Madame Defarge, hearing the news another unhappy Republican is escaping the confines of Capitol Hill, but that might have been a bit over the top.
A little background: Madame Defarge, although a fictional character from Charles Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities,” was into secretly knitting the names of the victims of the French Revolution. She was a very colorful character, wild-eyed, garbed in peasant rags, full of vengeance and madness.
That she was as much a victim of the revolution and ultimately met death — a bullet from her own gun that went off in a scuffle with another of the book’s characters — goes to show how much our present-day Tea Party’s hoped-for revolution backfired on themselves.
While I might enjoy the occasional everyday revolution, I’m not vengeful by any matter of means because DeMint is turning in his Senate papers. But his leaving does beg the question of why him, why so suddenly? He has yet to offer any explanation.
That leaves the rest of us to speculate as to the reasons behind DeMint’s early departure from the marble halls of the Senate chamber. I have a few hunches of my own and here they are:
1. DeMint recognized it’s time to jump ship after the landslide reelection of President Barack Obama and a record number of liberal/moderate women are filling Senate seats this time around. If DeMint was a traditional Southern gentleman, he may have felt a tad uncomfortable with all those powerful women telling him what to do.
2. Could have been the money angle. There’s a big gap between earning a paltry $40,000 and $2 million (plus car and driver). I’d be sorely tempted myself.
3. Maybe he’s planning a presidential run in 2016, but at the very least he won’t get Newt Gingrich’s support. Not only has self-styled president-maker Gingrich said it’s unlikely a Republican can win, but he’s on record saying the Republicans are permanent toast if Hillary Rodham Clinton decides to campaign for the presidency again.
4. DeMint is depressed. I mean, look at that picture of Mitt Romney pumping his own gas for one of his expensive cars. Poor Romney, his usually styled hair blowing every which way in the wind, his shirt collar was unbuttoned, sleeves rolled up and the ultimate social faux pas, no tie! So maybe DeMint has been sobbing into his beer over the GOP debacle of Nov. 6, just like Romney. (Romney wouldn’t be shedding tears over beer, but maybe a glass of milk.)
5. He might be pulling a Sarah Palin of sorts. DeMint was only two years into his second term. Remember, Mrs. “I Can See Russia from My House” Palin dropped the Alaska governorship after only two years. I’ll bet Alaskans were delighted to see the last of her. Could be South Carolina may be happy to see DeMint leave, too (no, you can’t see Russia from South Carolina.)
6. DeMint loves his filibusters. In fact, he once forced the Senate to stay in D.C., for a Saturday vote that he skipped. But since the Senate is pushing through reform to end the Republicans filibustering everything that comes down the pike in the Senate, DeMint was just plain sore over that. “You can’t take away my filibuster!” he wailed like a 2-year-old. At least he won’t have to filibuster his own bill, like Minority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell did recently.
7. Well, maybe DeMint finally saw the light, and he didn’t like it. Since Republicans are not usually the brightest bulbs on the block in recognizing when it’s over (it’s over), DeMint’s bulb finally flickered and sputtered and faded out. Does that mean if you shake him you can hear his bulb’s death rattle?
American writer Eric Hoffer once long, long ago — like a century or more ago — noted political mass movements follow a predictable trend. It seems, Hoffer noted, that movements start out as glorious movements, become big business and then a racket.
DeMint recognized the conservative movement in America is over. Many of his fellow conservatives, inside or outside the Senate, are recognizing this simple truth, too.
So why bother to waste your efforts on a movement that has been diminished to being nothing more than a racket, a scam? Why risk becoming irrelevant along with the Tea Party? Why continue making a political fool of yourself?
Good luck, Jim DeMint. Hope you set a trend.
Jodeane Albright is an award-winning blogger and the community editor for the Idaho State Journal.
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