Tricky Nikki's Appointment as UN Ambassador

President-Elect Trump with South Carolina Lt. Governor Henry McMaster - A team to make America and South Carolina great again!

For my friends outside of South Carolina who may not understand the appointment of Nikki Haley as United States UN Ambassador -- a woman to whom the President-Elect owes NOTHING -- this is more a maneuver to reward South Carolina Lt. Governor Henry McMaster, a popular leader to whom the President-Elect owes a great deal.

Nikki Haley is a powerless and disliked Governor who has attempted to achieve national recognition by betraying the people of her own state and conservative principles. She is an opportunist and has no future in South Carolina whatsoever, and her success to date has depended on the same factor which helps elect Lindsey Graham to the United States Senate. Democrat voters have known that they are unlikely to obtain anything closer to one of their own and have therefore cast their votes for the RINO candidate.

Lt. Governor Henry McMaster, on the other hand, is a popular figure who will be a well-respected, popular Governor. He was also the most prominent elected official in South Carolina to support the President-Elect in South Carolina's "first in the South" Republican primary. Trump's win here was the first in what became an unbroken and unprecedented string of victories throughout Dixie.

Haley's role at the UN will be that of a TV news anchorwoman; she will read statements prepared by others in the White House and State Department and take the slings and arrows of a world community hostile to the United States. She will have no policy role and will be a place-filler until someone qualified can take the job, unless the Trump administration can extract the US from that enormous waste of money. Many of us will be grateful for an ingenious way to get Haley out of the state.

Now South Carolina will have a superb, new Governor who reflects conservative South Carolina values and will be an important ally to the Trump Administration in making America great again.

"The State" Newspaper Endorses McMaster

Record, optimism make McMaster best choice

THREE TRUTHS about our state: South Carolina has tremendous challenges that we can no longer afford to ignore or to nibble away at, and only a governor has the stature and portfolio to lead us to sweeping changes.

The Legislature can stop a governor from making things happen.

Chances are better than even that our next governor will be a Republican.

Unfortunately, we do not see among the GOP gubernatorial candidates a bold plan for putting our state on the right track. But we do see a candidate who has a record of bringing people together to work collaboratively toward creative solutions to difficult problems, who has shown admirable political courage and on occasion come up with bold initiatives, who exudes an infectious optimism about our state’s potential, and who has demonstrated the ability to work well with the Legislature.

When he ran for attorney general eight years ago, Henry McMaster impressed us mainly by being devoid of big ideas. But he turned out to be a very good attorney general.

He restored credility to an office that had been badly damaged by eight years of the provocative antics of Charlie Condon, putting out opinions based on law rather than politics and opening up the secretive process that had allowed private attorneys to reap windfalls by bringing lawsuits on behalf of the state.

Working closely with women’s advocates, he recruited attorneys to donate their time to prosecute batterers who had been getting away with their crimes because solicitors didn’t have the staff to handle those cases; he since has teamed with partners from beauticians to Wal-Mart in a successful effort to encourage more women to report abuse.

He helped break the Legislature’s dangerous and unconstitutional practice of stringing unrelated matters together in a single bill, not only refusing to defend the practice in court but even putting forth the argument that the Supreme Court adopted to rein in a practice that encourages corruption and undermines majority rule.

He laid out the legal roadmap that allowed the Legislature to bypass Gov. Mark Sanford on federal stimulus funds, even though he personally opposed the federal law and knew his position could hurt him in this election.

Although the details are different, his efforts to pair tougher sentencing laws for the most violent criminals with aggressive and expansive alternative sentences for non-violent offenders clearly laid the groundwork for legislative action this year on a crime-fighting and budget-saving initiative that lawmakers have refused heretofore even to discuss seriously.

Today, Mr. McMaster’s plans for our state are underwhelming. His centerpiece idea — to make South Carolina “the most business-friendly state in the nation” — relies too heavily on the blind faith that even lower taxes and even less regulation will attract the sort of businesses that will make our state a better place to live.

But he is committed to harnessing our research universities to help grow the sort of knowledge jobs that can be transformative; and he does understand and accept — like many Republican leaders in the Legislature but unlike his opponents in this race — that the only way we are ever going to make dramatic and lasting improvements is by providing programs to challenge, teach and encourage underprivileged children from a very young age.

Some of the reasons for supporting Mr. McMaster are negative — his opponents either wouldn’t be able to get along with the Legislature or would bring too much baggage and too little depth or are just too indistinguishable.

But Mr. McMaster is inspirational in his enthusiasm for our state’s possibilities, and if he has demonstrated anything in the past eight years, it’s that he can rise to the challenges and opportunities of his office. He is clearly the Republican most capable of leading our state forward as governor; voters would do well to choose him in the June 8 primary.

Huntsman Slammed for Embracing Civil Unions

Governor Jon Huntsman, RINO-Utah, who earlier this year was introduced to South Carolina Republican leaders at a dinner hosted by Attorney General Henry McMaster, has won praise from the leading homosexual advocacy group, Human Rights Campaign, for his support of civil unions. The liberal, Mormon Governor, who is expected to be a leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, is a close associate of John McCain and Lindsey Graham.

As the following story from The Hill indicates, Republican organizations in other states are taking a more principled stand when it comes to the ambitions of Governor Jon Huntsman.

From The Hill
By Reid Wilson

Utah Gov. John Huntsman (R), seen by many as a potential top-tier presidential candidate in 2012, has been uninvited from a local Michigan Republican club after announcing his support for civil unions between gay couples.

Huntsman is touring Michigan this week and stopping at several county party events as he slowly raises his national profile. But the Kent County Republican Party this week canceled Huntsman's appearance, with the county party chairwoman saying his appearance would amount to an abandonment of party principles.

Joanne Voorhees, chairwoman of the party in the Grand Rapids-based county, emailed party members to announce the cancellation of the Saturday fundraiser.

“The voters want and expect us to stand on principle and return to our roots,” Voorhees wrote in an email. “Unfortunately, by holding an event with Gov. Huntsman, we would be doing the exact opposite.”

The move won praise from the Campaign for Michigan Families, one of the main groups behind Michigan's 2004 passage of a ban on same-sex marriages. Campaign chairman Gary Glenn called on Kalamazoo and Oakland County Republican Parties to cancel their own planned events with the two-term Utah governor.

In place of the canceled Kent County fundraiser, Huntsman will be hosted by Dick DeVos, the GOP gubernatorial nominee in 2006 and a major Republican fundraiser in the state, and wife Betsy DeVos for a fundraiser in Grand Rapids that benefits the state party.

Huntsman will also stop by the Muskegon County GOP.

Huntsman won praise in February from the Human Rights Campaign, one of the leading gay rights organizations in the country, when he announced he would back civil unions as contractual agreements between what he called non-traditional couples.

Huntsman has emerged as a leading voice urging national Republicans to moderate their positions and has signaled that, were he to run for president, he would do so as a centrist with business credentials. He has said that he doesn't plan to run for president, though he has well-known consultants guiding him as he visits several states crucial to winning the GOP primary.

Earlier this year, Huntsman visited several state party events in South Carolina, site of the first-in-the-South primary. He has also stopped in North Carolina and will give a speech at a conference later this week in Chicago.

In South Carolina, Huntsman met a number of party chairmen and activists with Attorney General Henry McMaster (R) at his side. In Michigan, political consultant John Yob has been setting up meetings for Huntsman around the state.

Needed Reforms for South Carolina's Criminal Justice System

What a great advocate and agent for common-sense reform South Carolina has in Attorney General Henry McMaster. The following editorial, supporting his proposed reforms for our criminal justice system, appeared recently in the Spartanburg Herald Journal. Let's make sure our local Representative and Senator support this important initiative.

Sensible Sentencing

From the Spartanburg Herald Journal
December 30, 2008

Lawmakers rejected a plan last year that would restore more sense to the criminal justice system by sending violent criminals to prison for longer terms while punishing nonviolent offenders outside the prison system.

They will have a chance to reconsider that idea this year. Attorney General Henry McMaster is pushing the plan again, and legislation implementing it has been pre-filed for the legislative session that begins next month.

McMaster's proposals make a great deal of sense for the state budget, for its economy and for the state's families.

The attorney general is proposing to do away with parole so that violent offenders spend more time behind bars and victims of violent crimes will know how long their attackers will be behind bars when they are sentenced.

It is unreasonable for victims to have to relive their ordeals each year when they have to appear before a parole board and argue against the release of their offender. Abolishing parole would relieve them of this burden.

But McMaster is also trying to limit the number of people who are sent to prison. He wants to establish a "middle court" system for nonviolent offenders. This system would be modeled on the successful drug courts. It would use intensive probation, restitution, drug and alcohol treatment and house arrest. Such a system would relieve an overcrowded and under funded prison system. It would cost the state to fund the middle court system, but in the long run, it should save money by reducing the prison population.

Money is not all that would be saved. When a nonviolent offender is sentenced to prison, he loses his job and much of his ability to regain employment once he is released from prison. His family loses his income and his presence.

Allowing nonviolent offenders to make restitution and maintain employment while under intense probation supervision will hold families together and ameliorate the tremendous social costs of incarceration.

Together these proposals would save the state significant social and economic costs. They would reserve prison space for those who genuinely should be removed from society, and they would keep them there longer.

The danger is that a General Assembly that loves to appear tough on crime will abolish parole without establishing the middle court system. That would be a disaster that would heap more inmates on an already overtaxed prison system. Lawmakers have an abysmal record of inadequately funding the Department of Corrections and probably wouldn't allocate enough money to take care of the extra inmates.

Lawmakers should realize the benefits of McMaster's entire plan and adopt it.