South Carolina

If you want to be a prominent member of Congress in this day and age, the surest path is to become a hype machine for the ideological extremes of your party. Yet Nancy Mace gives no signs of responding to these tabloid incentives in conversation with her constituents. It’s an odd thing to say about a politician in 2023, but you might even find yourself taking her seriously. In a Washington where the House of Representatives is dominated by GOP would-be pundits, including bomb-throwers such as Matt Gaetz and Lauren Boebert, the second-term Republican from South Carolina’s 1st district sounds like a politician from a different era.

The murder trial of prominent South Carolina patriarch Alex Murdaugh has it all: two deaths, a lethal drunken boat accident, a suicide-for-hire plot, the mysterious death of the family's housekeeper and a suspicious hit-and-run. That's why the case has caught the attention of true crime fanatics and the national media — ABC News, Discovery, HBO, CNN and Netflix have all taken a stab at various documentaries and podcasts. Others still might find themselves lost in the schadenfreude of watching a powerful and wealthy family descend into tragedy. The Murdaugh family has long exercised a significant amount of legal influence in the Low Country region of South Carolina.

Manchester, New Hampshire Sorry fellas: GOP girlboss Nikki Haley is going to be the next president. At least according to former New Hampshire candidate for Senate Don Bolduc, who knows a thing or two about calling elections. Bolduc introduced Haley at two New Hampshire town halls in the week she entered the 2024 Republican primary. The second was held Friday at Saint Anselm College in Goffstown, a regular stop for candidates visiting the early primary state. The packed room was treated to a soundtrack of late-boomer classics from Blondie, Tom Petty and the Detroit Spinners. On her way in, Haley stopped by the overspill area in the foyer to thank the surplus guests for coming. "Next time we'll have a bigger room," the candidate promised.

It was a beautiful moment of bipartisan unity when, left and right, American and European, young and old, united to call Lindsey Graham a moron. The South Carolina senator made headlines Thursday night after appearing on Sean Hannity’s show on Fox. He openly called for Vladimir Putin to be assassinated: How does this end? Somebody in Russia has to step up to the plate. Is there a Brutus in Russia? Is there more successful Col. Stauffenberg in the Russian military? The only way this ends, my friend, is for somebody in Russia to take this guy out! You would be doing your country a great service and the world a great service. Graham doubled down on his insanely dangerous comments on Twitter right after. Best to put this kind of stupidity in writing, in case there was any confusion.

The latest target for online mobs is South Carolina’s Republican senator Tim Scott. His 'crime' is apparently being a black conservative who gave a thoughtful televised response to President Biden’s address to a joint session of Congress. The mob responded by calling him 'Uncle Tim', a none-too-clever play on the old racial epithet, 'Uncle Tom'. Twitter allowed that hashtag to trend. Scott has endured such insults before. So have all black conservatives.  They shouldn’t have to stand alone in their response. Good people, including those who disagree sharply with conservatives, should stand with them. Slanders like these, left unanswered, degrade us all. Sen. Scott spoke because Republicans chose him to give the party’s official response to President Biden’s address.

Raleigh, North CarolinaNorth and South Carolina are home to some of the most important contests of this usually contentious election year. Closely divided North Carolina could go either way for president, US Senate, and a host of other races, while South Carolina’s highly competitive — and highly expensive — matchup between incumbent Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham and former South Carolina Democratic party chairman Jaime Harrison has been one of the biggest surprises of the political season.I grew up in the most-populous city in the Carolinas, Charlotte, which is right on the border between the two states. I have family roots in both.

Last night, as expected, Bernie Sanders’s status as the front-runner invited a pile-on of attacks from the other candidates for the Democratic nomination. The South Carolina debate showed Bernie’s opponents are desperate to stop the anti-establishment juggernaut, which is splitting the party into a #NeverBernie moderate base and a progressivist camp that is increasingly comfortable with embracing the socialist label as a badge of honor. They don’t know how to stop him. The moderators kicked matters off by asking Bernie how a democratic socialist could do better than the incumbent given the strong current economy and record low unemployment.