The culture wars are alive and well in South Carolina. Just look at recent headlines that show how politicians eager to stay in the limelight are again politicizing cultural battles to whip up support and fan the flames of dissent.
On Tuesday, GOP State Treasurer Curtis Loftis announced with great aplomb that he would stop investing state money in the Walt Disney Company. We say with “great aplomb” because he could have stopped without as much of a pip to squeak. But no, he had to draw attention to what should have been a nothing-burger.
Loftis, who manages about $70 billion of the state’s investments per year as the state’s “banker,” announced he was going to let $105 million of past Disney debt investments mature as scheduled and wouldn’t replace them by reinvesting in Disney.
A big stink was not needed. But Loftis had to bring in politics, opining that Disney has joined “far-left activist [sic] in boycotting legal, taxpaying, employment-creating corporations to further Disney’s political agenda.”
Hogwash. But what’s more maddening is this: “Multi-billion-dollar corporations should not engage in boycotts designed to silence legitimate debate. Since America’s founding, freedom of speech has been one of its core principles, and Disney should not engage in nefarious practices aimed at silencing those with less power and money.”
But remember that Disney, as a corporation like others across the country, is considered a person for campaign finance purposes — something that Republicans like Loftis lauded when the U.S. Supreme Court fundamentally reinterpreted election law a few years back. Now he’s criticizing what this corporate “person” is doing, which makes no sense at all.
Speaking of flip-flopping, consider next what came last week from the mouth of U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace, the Isle of Palms Republican who seems to be developing a habit of basing her positions on what’s politically expedient for her party, not people in South Carolina.
In January, she made headlines about being offended by the ethical improprieties of freshman U.S. Rep. George Santos, the New York Republican expelled from the chamber last week. She told Business Insider then that she was not going to “have anything to do with somebody that can’t be trusted, and clearly defrauded the voters of New York. He literally pulled the wool over everybody’s eyes.”
Fast forward to last week when Mace, who has been taking harder right positions in recent months to bolster her conservative credentials in the party, voted against expelling Santos.
Fueling the culture wars, she said, “George Santos is an ass, who, like every other American, deserves the presumption of innocence until proven guilty in a court of law. Charges are not a conviction. Today’s vote was not about accountability, which should have been in the hands of the courts and the people of NY-03. This was about shifting the balance of power in Congress, and I won’t play those games.”
Oh, the games people play.
From Loftis and Mace, they fill more than a day.
Keep a lookout for more to come.
Despite how they make America dumb.
Let’s just hope they somehow soon pay.
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