By @BGinKC
The Senator who famously said he would rather have 30 true conservatives and lose every time than win sometimes with 60 republicans that included moderates who refused to drink his Kool-Ade is staying a step ahead and departing the body that saw the GOP lose seats they should have won running noobs who scared the hell out of normal people whose conservative bona fides DeMint found acceptable. He is getting out while the getting is good, as my Grandma used to say, and getting himself ensconced in a safe, secure, good-paying, wingnut-welfare sinecure…he will be the President of the Heritage Foundation.
He will get to go on the Sunday shows just like he does now. He will get to trash liberals and impure republicans, just like he does now. He will get to write unrealistic policy proposals that don’t have a prayer of becoming reality. Just like he does now.
And while he likes to brag about his Senate Conservatives Fund being behind the elections of Florida’s Marco Rubio, Kentucky’s Rand Paul, and Utah’s Mike Lee, he doesn’t have much to say about the losers he’s picked, like Delaware’s Christine O’Donnell, Colorado’s Ken Buck, Nevada’s Sharron Angle, Alaska’s Joe Miller, Missouri’s Todd Akin…The list isn’t endless, but it’s long enough to make reasonable republicans say “Hey! Wait a minute! If we had those seats, we would have a sizable majority!”
“I’m leaving the Senate now, but I’m not leaving the fight. I’ve decided to join The Heritage Foundation at a time when the conservative movement needs strong leadership in the battle of ideas. No organization is better equipped to lead this fight and I believe my experience in public office as well as in the private sector as a business owner will help Heritage become even more effective in the years to come,” read the statement that his office issued.
Of course he’s leaving. His party was supposed to take the Senate in last month’s elections and instead they lost seats – and his fingerprints are all over the scene of the crime. There is going to be filibuster reform in the next session, and gosh-darnit, being in the minority never was all that much fun, but being in a faction of the minority that the general public has a profoundly negative opinion of, and then losing some of the ability to throw sand in the gears of the Senate…well, he’s just not having a good time.
And with the gig at Heritage, he gets to go on with his bad self, pretending to be a red-to-the-bone South Carolinian and railing against the gubmint; while living in the blue state of Virginia that is not a hell-hole like his home state, but is prosperous because of that very government.
to plummet. It should have absolutely zero credibility from now on (if you didn’t already believe that was the case).
I wonder if McConnell was going to do to DeMint what Boehner is now doing to some of the worst Tea Partiers in the House.
I celebrate DeMint’s move. He is no longer any constraints to support more people who will attract support from the demented (soon to be deminted?) wing of the GOP.
He will be much more dangerous for the “leaders” of the GOP outside than inside and that is good for those of us who want to see the GOP implode.