The four teabaggers looking to oust Lindsey Graham in the Republican primary are all trying to out-conservative each other. So in that environment, unhinged statements are to be expected. But perhaps the looniest so far comes from Lee Bright, who represents parts of Spartanburg and Greenville in the state senate. He just showed just how unhinged he was at a fundraiser in Tulsa yesterday.
For instance, in Bright's view, caring for the poor isn't the business of government--it's the business of the church. People for the American Way got a clip.
Bright also spewed the usual right-wing shibboleth about welfare queens (though he didn't use those exact words). Not entirely surprising considering that this is a state whose former lieutenant governor, Andre Bauer, thinks government shouldn't help the poor "because they breed."
But this wasn't Bright's only unhinged moment. As you might expect, he isn't too pleased that Graham helped write the Senate's bipartisan immigration reform proposal. But Bright thinks the only reason Graham was involved was because deep down, he wants to become a Democrat and ride the wave of votes from illegal immigrants to another term. No, this isn't snark--PFAW got this one too.
We know that most teabaggers are delusional by definition. But if Bright seriously thinks Democrats would embrace a guy with a lifetime American Conservative Union rating of 89 and a guy who was a House manager in the Clinton impeachment (OK, he wasn't as pompous as most of his colleagues, but still), he really has lost it.
ThinkProgress did some more digging on Bright, and what it turned up should scare the daylights out of anyone. He thinks that anyone who enforces Obamacare should go to jail, thinks South Carolina should get its own currency, and even joked that the state should secede again. In other words, he makes Jim DeMint and Tim Scott sound like raving socialists. And yet, this is a guy who has a very real chance of winning should he dump Graham in the primary.
We do have a dog in this race in businessman and nonprofit executive Jay Stamper. One major handicap, though--he's only lived in South Carolina since 2013. Otherwise, he seems to be a cut above Some Dude status. It's not too late for someone with deeper roots to get in the field, though--we have to be in position to take advantage in case Graham does get bounced in the primary.