Thread: SC Senator Jim DeMint resigning Senate in Jan.

this is truely a sad moment... but he is still a King Maker in the Republican Party

RELATED

http://www.alipac.us/f12/tea-party-g...payoff-268212/

By JORDAN FABIAN
Dec. 6, 2012
abc news

South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint (R) announced Thursday that he would resign from the Senate in January to become president of the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C.

DeMint's unexpected resignation subtracts one of the Senate Republican conference's foremost immigration hawks just before Congress is expected to tackle a comprehensive immigration reform effort next year.

"It's been an honor to serve the people of South Carolina in United States Senate for the past eight years, but now it's time for me to pass the torch to someone else and take on a new role in the fight for America's future," DeMint said in a statement. "I'm leaving the Senate now, but I'm not leaving the fight."

DeMint placed himself at the center of the fight over the last comprehensive immigration reform bill in 2007, leading a conservative Republican faction against the bipartisan effort supported by President George W. Bush and dozens of congressional Republicans and Democrats.

"If [Bush] continues to push this bill in spite of the way the American people feel about it, I think that's more likely to undermine him,'" DeMint told CNN in June 2007.

"In early 2007 DeMint also fought for common-sense immigration reform by leading the effort to defeat the amnesty bill and calling on government to first secure our borders, enforce the laws already passed, and streamline the legal immigration system," reads his official Senate biography.

DeMint continued to advocate for tough immigration enforcement measures in the next Congress. In 2010, he attempted to pass an amendment that would have required the government to complete 700 miles of fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border within one year. During one such effort to attach the amendment to a separate piece of legislation, he compared illegal immigration to an oil leak.

"If any member of the Senate stood up today and said that we should not seal the oil leak in the Gulf until we have a comprehensive plan to clean it up, we would all say that that is absurd. Certainly we need to seal that leak as quickly as possible to minimize the cleanup later," he said. "But that is exactly the kind of logic that the president and my Democratic colleagues are using when it comes to immigration."

Pro-immigration reform advocates cheered DeMint's departure, since he played influential role in rallying conservative opposition to the last immigration overhaul.

"The chances for immigration reform with a pathway to citizenship for 12 million undocumented people just went up," Frank Sharry, executive director of America's Voice, told ABC/Univision. "It's good news for us."

Opponents of immigration reform that provides relief to undocumented immigrants said that DeMint will be missed, but expressed confidence that other senators could fill the leadership void.

"He was obviously a very stong leader for true immigration reform in his time in Congress, and he will be missed," said Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). "There are other strong voices in the Senate, and in terms of blocking amnesty, it's the votes that count."

Mehlman suggested that DeMint could still influence the debate in his new position at Heritage.

"We expect he's going to continue to be a strong voice for immigration reform there, have great or even greater influence there than he had in the Senate," he said.

DeMint was also instrumental in helping elect so-called Tea Party members to the Senate in 2010 who would ostensibly reject compromises on conservative principles.

But coming off an election in which Latino voters largely abandoned the Republican Party, some of the senators DeMint endorsed have spoken about the need to pass some sort of immigration reform, including Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.)

DeMint's resignation is no guarantee that his successor will have different views on immigration, but advocates said that he's unlikely to wield the same influence as DeMint. The timing of the senator's departure carries significant consequences heading into next year.

Jim DeMint Resignation Marks Loss of Major Senate Immigration Hawk - ABC News

RELATED

Two conservative Republicans booted from House budget panel
Representatives Tim Huelskamp of Kansas and Justin Amash of Michigan - both favorites of the anti-tax Tea Party movement

http://www.alipac.us/f19/grover-norquist-losing-his-influence-268155/

Thursday, 06 Dec 2012 08:01 PM
By David A. Patten
newsmax.com

South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint’s surprise announcement that he will leave the U.S. Senate in January to take over leadership of the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank has ignited speculation among grass-roots conservatives that DeMint may use the new post as a launching pad for a presidential bid in 2016.

“Jim DeMint will have a bigger microphone than before,” conservative direct-marketing pioneer Richard Viguerie tells Newsmax. “If he wants to, this opens up a lot more opportunities for him. I think there’s a decent chance that he’ll be a serious presidential candidate in four years.”

Viguerie called the move to Heritage “an intermediate step.”

“It’s going to be a boon to the cause, to Heritage,” he said. “And it gives [DeMint] a major opportunity to run for president in four years. And if so, he would be the instant front-runner among most conservatives.”

DeMint already had effectively term-limited himself by announcing he would not seek another six years in the Senate. When GOP hopes of seizing control of the Senate were dashed in November, he was looking at four more years of life as a back-bencher, with relatively little influence over legislation passed by the upper chamber.

But now, grass-roots sources tell Newsmax, the prospect of a DeMint-for-president campaign is creating significant buzz among movement conservatives.

“I was totally shocked,” Tea Party Express Chairwoman Amy Kremer tells Newsmax. “When I saw the news Thursday morning, tears welled up in my eyes.

“He is our rock in the United States Senate,” she adds. “But at the same time, I know Jim DeMint, and he is not going anywhere. I have always thought he would make a great president, and I have always thought he should make a run. …I think this is probably a step in that direction, and I hope it is. Because he’s not just a senator, he’s a statesman.”

In part, DeMint has at times contributed to that speculation. In November, in an interview with McClatchy Newspapers, he backed off his previous, unequivocal insistence that he had no interest in running for president.

Nor is this the first time DeMint’s name has been linked to Oval Office aspirations. In March 2011, he addressed a conference of conservatives in Iowa. That trip to the first GOP caucus state triggered widespread speculation that he might be considering tossing his hat in the ring. DeMint quickly squelched those rumors, however.

Thursday evening, DeMint was asked by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer if he would have stayed in the Senate had GOP standard-bearer Mitt Romney won the presidency. Had Romney won, any path for DeMint to run in 2016 would likely have vanished.

“I would have thought differently about it,” DeMint confessed. “But I told [outgoing Heritage chief] Ed [Feulner] four years ago, half-jokingly, that when people ask me to run for president, I said, ‘The only president I want to be is president of the Heritage Foundation. Because they’re about ideas, and their ideas are backed up by solid research. And the thing that breaks my heart is [that] as Republicans we’re not doing a good job of convincing Americans that we care about every one of them, and that our policies are going to make their lives better.’”

Shortly after the announcement that he would be taking over the Heritage Foundation, DeMint said that he felt he would be more influential in the national debate at Heritage than in the Senate.

Citing his marketing background and private-sector experience prior to coming to Washington, DeMint said: “A lot of my role in the Senate has been stopping bad things and saying no to bad things. But we need to do more than that, and tell Americans what we’re for.

“One of the mistakes I think the Republican Party made the last two years,” he added, “is trying to make Obama the issue without sharing with America bold reform ideas that get people inspired to get behind us.”

For DeMint, shifting over to Heritage offers him several tactical advantages. The most obvious: He may be able to largely escape the fallout from the looming battle over the fiscal cliff. Many analysts believe elements of that fight will drag on long after DeMint takes over at Heritage, an organization with over 250 employees and an $80 million annual budget.

Viguerie says DeMint’s perch at Heritage would make him “the instant front-runner among most conservatives” if he tosses his hat in the ring in 2016.

“As president of Heritage he will be spending maybe three, four, five days a week on the road, talking to major donors and to the conservative grass-roots,” Viguerie says. “So he will add a whole new dimension to his base of support up there. He will be building relationships with hundreds of thousands of conservative activists and donors.

“Heritage mails millions of letters every month,” says Viguerie, owner of American Target Advertising and chairman of ConservativeHQ .com, “and he will have his name on them now.

“So he’ll be in front of millions of conservative activists on a weekly basis,” said Viguerie, who called DeMint “the gold standard” for grass-roots conservatives in Congress.

The recent addition of fellow ironclad conservatives, such as Marco Rubio of Florida, Rand Paul of Kentucky, Ted Cruz of Texas, Mike Lee of Utah, and Jeff Flake of Arizona may have made it easier for DeMint to leave the Senate.

DeMint deserves substantial credit for that influx of formidable young conservatives in Congress. In May 2010, for example, one day after Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky endorsed fellow establishment Republican Trey Grayson for the Senate, DeMint parted ways with McConnell by endorsing then-upstart Rand Paul, the son of Texas Rep. Ron Paul. The younger Paul, an ophthalmologist by profession, eventually won the election.

“He was one of the few people willing to do so in such a public way in 2010, to endorse candidates that were not the establishment candidates,” Ryan Hecker, the COO of Freedomworks for America, tells Newsmax. “That says a lot about someone that he was willing to put aside his own ambitions within the party, because he might upset some people, for what he saw as fighting for the truth.”

Viguerie calls DeMint “the no. 1 conservative elected official in the entire country.”

He adds that at Heritage, “Jim DeMint will have a bigger microphone than before. If he wants to, this opens up a lot more opportunities for him. I think there’s a decent chance that he’ll be a serious presidential candidate in four years.”

DeMint Move Ignites Talk of 2016 Presidential Run

Added an article from above to the Homepage with slightly amended title:
http://www.alipac.us/content/sen-jim...ion-hawk-1180/

Originally Posted by Jean

Thursday, 06 Dec 2012 08:01 PM
By David A. Patten
newsmax.com

South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint’s surprise announcement that he will leave the U.S. Senate in January to take over leadership of the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank has ignited speculation among grass-roots conservatives that DeMint may use the new post as a launching pad for a presidential bid in 2016.

“Jim DeMint will have a bigger microphone than before,” conservative direct-marketing pioneer Richard Viguerie tells Newsmax. “If he wants to, this opens up a lot more opportunities for him. I think there’s a decent chance that he’ll be a serious presidential candidate in four years.”

Viguerie called the move to Heritage “an intermediate step.”

“It’s going to be a boon to the cause, to Heritage,” he said. “And it gives [DeMint] a major opportunity to run for president in four years. And if so, he would be the instant front-runner among most conservatives.”

DeMint already had effectively term-limited himself by announcing he would not seek another six years in the Senate. When GOP hopes of seizing control of the Senate were dashed in November, he was looking at four more years of life as a back-bencher, with relatively little influence over legislation passed by the upper chamber.

But now, grass-roots sources tell Newsmax, the prospect of a DeMint-for-president campaign is creating significant buzz among movement conservatives.

“I was totally shocked,” Tea Party Express Chairwoman Amy Kremer tells Newsmax. “When I saw the news Thursday morning, tears welled up in my eyes.

“He is our rock in the United States Senate,” she adds. “But at the same time, I know Jim DeMint, and he is not going anywhere. I have always thought he would make a great president, and I have always thought he should make a run. …I think this is probably a step in that direction, and I hope it is. Because he’s not just a senator, he’s a statesman.”

In part, DeMint has at times contributed to that speculation. In November, in an interview with McClatchy Newspapers, he backed off his previous, unequivocal insistence that he had no interest in running for president.

Nor is this the first time DeMint’s name has been linked to Oval Office aspirations. In March 2011, he addressed a conference of conservatives in Iowa. That trip to the first GOP caucus state triggered widespread speculation that he might be considering tossing his hat in the ring. DeMint quickly squelched those rumors, however.

Thursday evening, DeMint was asked by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer if he would have stayed in the Senate had GOP standard-bearer Mitt Romney won the presidency. Had Romney won, any path for DeMint to run in 2016 would likely have vanished.

“I would have thought differently about it,” DeMint confessed. “But I told [outgoing Heritage chief] Ed [Feulner] four years ago, half-jokingly, that when people ask me to run for president, I said, ‘The only president I want to be is president of the Heritage Foundation. Because they’re about ideas, and their ideas are backed up by solid research. And the thing that breaks my heart is [that] as Republicans we’re not doing a good job of convincing Americans that we care about every one of them, and that our policies are going to make their lives better.’”

Shortly after the announcement that he would be taking over the Heritage Foundation, DeMint said that he felt he would be more influential in the national debate at Heritage than in the Senate.

Citing his marketing background and private-sector experience prior to coming to Washington, DeMint said: “A lot of my role in the Senate has been stopping bad things and saying no to bad things. But we need to do more than that, and tell Americans what we’re for.

“One of the mistakes I think the Republican Party made the last two years,” he added, “is trying to make Obama the issue without sharing with America bold reform ideas that get people inspired to get behind us.”

For DeMint, shifting over to Heritage offers him several tactical advantages. The most obvious: He may be able to largely escape the fallout from the looming battle over the fiscal cliff. Many analysts believe elements of that fight will drag on long after DeMint takes over at Heritage, an organization with over 250 employees and an $80 million annual budget.

Viguerie says DeMint’s perch at Heritage would make him “the instant front-runner among most conservatives” if he tosses his hat in the ring in 2016.

“As president of Heritage he will be spending maybe three, four, five days a week on the road, talking to major donors and to the conservative grass-roots,” Viguerie says. “So he will add a whole new dimension to his base of support up there. He will be building relationships with hundreds of thousands of conservative activists and donors.

“Heritage mails millions of letters every month,” says Viguerie, owner of American Target Advertising and chairman of ConservativeHQ .com, “and he will have his name on them now.

“So he’ll be in front of millions of conservative activists on a weekly basis,” said Viguerie, who called DeMint “the gold standard” for grass-roots conservatives in Congress.

The recent addition of fellow ironclad conservatives, such as Marco Rubio of Florida, Rand Paul of Kentucky, Ted Cruz of Texas, Mike Lee of Utah, and Jeff Flake of Arizona may have made it easier for DeMint to leave the Senate.

DeMint deserves substantial credit for that influx of formidable young conservatives in Congress. In May 2010, for example, one day after Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky endorsed fellow establishment Republican Trey Grayson for the Senate, DeMint parted ways with McConnell by endorsing then-upstart Rand Paul, the son of Texas Rep. Ron Paul. The younger Paul, an ophthalmologist by profession, eventually won the election.

“He was one of the few people willing to do so in such a public way in 2010, to endorse candidates that were not the establishment candidates,” Ryan Hecker, the COO of Freedomworks for America, tells Newsmax. “That says a lot about someone that he was willing to put aside his own ambitions within the party, because he might upset some people, for what he saw as fighting for the truth.”

Viguerie calls DeMint “the no. 1 conservative elected official in the entire country.”

He adds that at Heritage, “Jim DeMint will have a bigger microphone than before. If he wants to, this opens up a lot more opportunities for him. I think there’s a decent chance that he’ll be a serious presidential candidate in four years.”

DeMint Move Ignites Talk of 2016 Presidential Run

Now that put cold chills down my spine

Lordy Lordy Go Get'm Jim