On An Ethnic Slur

When it comes to cluelessness, a characteristic demonstrated repeatedly in rightwing politics, the world record always seems to be harder to reach, always seems to be harder to match. The goal posts just seem to move further and further away. And now we have two South Carolina GOP County Chairman entering the South Carolina division of the clueless sweeps to defend Jim DeMint (R-SC) by invoking an antisemitic stereotype in print, in an guest editorial.

How's that for stepping up to the competition? A breathtaking feat.

Writing a guest editorial for the South Carolina Times and Democrat, Edwin O. Merwin Jr., Chairman, Bamberg County Republican Party, and James S. Ulmer Jr., Chairman, Orangeburg County Republican Party, give us these pithy bon mots:

There is a saying that the Jews who are wealthy got that way not by watching dollars, but instead by taking care of the pennies and the dollars taking care of themselves. By not using earmarks to fund projects for South Carolina and instead using actual bills, DeMint is watching our nation’s pennies and trying to preserve our country’s wealth and our economy’s viability to give all an opportunity to succeed.

Nice. Real nice. No, they are not saying Jim DeMint is a Jew. That's not their point.

And I don't know who might be taking credit for being the source of this "saying," or who might have said it when he wasn't wearing white sheets and a pointed hood and standing before a flaming cross.

But you do have to admit that this writing shows a remarkable degree of cluelessness. These guys actually wrote this down, and then they had it printed in a newspaper with their names on it.

Predictably, this flourish of profound cluelessness was lambasted in the editorial of the conservative Palmetto Scoop:

Umm… who in mainstream America thinks it’s a good idea to write something like that in a guest editorial? Especially in light of the racially-motivated attention garnered by South Carolina Republican activists over the past few months.

It’s people like Ulmer and Merwin that make many folks fear for the future of the once Grand Ole Party.

Lest you forgot, the "racially-motivated attention," referred to, had to do with the remarks of one Rusty Depass that an escaped gorilla was an ancestor of Michele Obama.

That, I thought, had set the previous South Carolina mark for cluelessness. And I expected that remark to keep the title for decades. What an error on my part. Evidently Ulmer and Merwin want to contest the record.

Can we expect the powers that be in the GOP to condemn this remark? More when I stop laughing.