Lacy K. Ford Jr: The Curse of One-Party Domination
[Lacy K. Ford Jr.is professor of history and chair of the department at the University of South Carolina. His most recent book, “Deliver Us From Evil: The Slavery Question in the Old South,” was published by Oxford University Press this month.]
Many South Carolinians of both parties have suffered unexpected embarrassment from two of the state’s most prominent Republicans — Governor Mark Sanford, who admitted an affair with an Argentinian woman, and Congressman Joe Wilson, who broke all the rules of Congressional decorum by shouting “you lie” at President Obama during his speech.
There is certainly no shortage of historical precedents for bold and outlandish, and even uncivil behavior by prominent South Carolina political figures.
Perhaps the most famous of such precedents occurred in 1856 when South Carolina Congressman Preston Brooks, a nationalist, entered the Senate chamber and caned Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner after the latter had given a speech attacking slavery and insulting South Carolina politicians. Sumner was temporarily disabled by the beating and missed many months of senate duty; Brooks resigned his seat but received a hero’s welcome in South Carolina for defending the honor of the state.
During the 1890s, Ben Tillman, an avowed racist who worked to disfranchise all African Americans in the state, drew national attention by declaring that, if elected to the U.S. Senate, he would stick his pitchfork in the fleshy ribs of the rotund Grover Cleveland, who was of Tillman’s own party.
But as a historian, I would suggest that the explanations for South Carolina’s more recent round of bad political behavior lie as much in the nature of the state’s newly-crafted political culture of one-party domination as in its older lineage of provincial defiance.
In recent years, South Carolina has emerged as one of the reddest of the red states, meaning that in statewide races and in a healthy majority of congressional and legislative districts, Republican candidates cannot lose unless a significant number of loyal voters defect...
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Many South Carolinians of both parties have suffered unexpected embarrassment from two of the state’s most prominent Republicans — Governor Mark Sanford, who admitted an affair with an Argentinian woman, and Congressman Joe Wilson, who broke all the rules of Congressional decorum by shouting “you lie” at President Obama during his speech.
There is certainly no shortage of historical precedents for bold and outlandish, and even uncivil behavior by prominent South Carolina political figures.
Perhaps the most famous of such precedents occurred in 1856 when South Carolina Congressman Preston Brooks, a nationalist, entered the Senate chamber and caned Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner after the latter had given a speech attacking slavery and insulting South Carolina politicians. Sumner was temporarily disabled by the beating and missed many months of senate duty; Brooks resigned his seat but received a hero’s welcome in South Carolina for defending the honor of the state.
During the 1890s, Ben Tillman, an avowed racist who worked to disfranchise all African Americans in the state, drew national attention by declaring that, if elected to the U.S. Senate, he would stick his pitchfork in the fleshy ribs of the rotund Grover Cleveland, who was of Tillman’s own party.
But as a historian, I would suggest that the explanations for South Carolina’s more recent round of bad political behavior lie as much in the nature of the state’s newly-crafted political culture of one-party domination as in its older lineage of provincial defiance.
In recent years, South Carolina has emerged as one of the reddest of the red states, meaning that in statewide races and in a healthy majority of congressional and legislative districts, Republican candidates cannot lose unless a significant number of loyal voters defect...