Thread: SC Senator Jim DeMint resigning Senate in Jan.

Jim DeMint resigns from Senate

By Alexander Bolton - 12/06/12 10:32 AM ET

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), a leading Senate conservative and founding member of the Senate Tea Party Caucus, will resign from office in January to become president of The Heritage Foundation.
DeMint, who frequently clashed with the Senate Republican leadership during his career over taxes, spending and political tactics, said he will continue to push his conservative vision from outside Congress.








“I’m leaving the Senate now, but I’m not leaving the fight. I’ve decided to join The Heritage Foundation at a time when the conservative movement needs strong leadership in the battle of ideas,” DeMint said in a statement. DeMint's decision to leave the Senate after only eight years shocked Washington. DeMint had been seen as a future Senate leader for his party and was already a leader to a growing number of conservatives in the House and Senate.
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• S.C. GOP chairman: DeMint exit 'a shocker'

At the Heritage Foundation, the senator will take over from Ed Feulner, who will become the group's chancellor.
South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R), who praised DeMint as a leader of the national conservative movement, will select a replacement to fill DeMint’s seat until a special election in 2014.
Haley said DeMint's voice "for freedom and limited government has been a true inspiration."
"On a personal level, I value Jim’s leadership and friendship," she said. "Our state’s loss is the Heritage Foundation’s gain."

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DeMint had previously announced that he would retire from the Senate when his second term expired at the end of 2016.
DeMint stepped down as chairman of the Senate Republican Steering Committee, a conservative policy discussion group, earlier this year, turning the reins over to Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.). DeMint left that post in September after holding it since 2006.
"Congratulations to @JimDemint. Your departure will be a huge loss for U.S. Senate & conservative movement," Toomey wrote on Twitter.
During his Senate career, DeMint has repeatedly clashed with Democrats and also the leaders of his own party in his quest to reduce taxes and government spending.
DeMint has been a vocal advocate for passing a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution and holding repeated votes on repealing the 2010 Affordable Care Act.
He has also competed with the Republican leadership over political strategy. DeMint split with the leaders in 2010 to support Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky) over the establishment-favored candidates in Republican primaries.
DeMint also raised millions of dollars through the Senate Conservatives Fund, which he founded, to support candidates such as Sens.-elect Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.).
He famously said that he would rather serve in the minority in a small, ideologically conservative Senate Republican caucus than in the majority with a large group of centrist Republicans.
“I'd rather have 30 Marco Rubios in the Senate than 60 Arlen Specters, “he said in 2010, making reference to the late Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.), who in 2009 left the Republican Party to become a Democrat.
DeMint had been in line to become the ranking member of the powerful Energy and Commerce Committee in the next Senate, leading to speculation that he would adopt a more conciliatory approach to try and build a reputation as a legislative dealmaker.
DeMint told The Wall Street Journal that he is joining Heritage to expand the conservative movement.
"This is an urgent time," DeMint said. He added that in the 2012 election Republicans "were not able to communicate conservative ideas that win elections."
Daniel Strauss contributed to this story.
This story was posted at 10:32 a.m. and last updated at 11:05 a.m.

Jim DeMint resigns from Senate - The Hill

I don't know how much more effective he will be at HF, but the lefties on Yahoo are slobbering all over themselves with this news in the comment section.

Originally Posted by SicNTiredInSoCal

I don't know how much more effective he will be at HF, but the lefties on Yahoo are slobbering all over themselves with this news in the comment section.

I bet they are (lefties slobbering all over themselves). Sen. DeMint is the stongest conservative in the U.S. Senate and he has always supported the same things we do on immigration. I would have loved to had seen him run for president!

DeMint Will Leave Senate to Run the Heritage Foundation

By JENNIFER STEINHAUER

Published: December 6, 2012

WASHINGTON — With a disappointing election in his rear view mirror and a budget compromise he could never swallow on the horizon, Senator Jim DeMint, the conservative Republican from South Carolina who helped ignite the Tea Party movement, is leaving the Senate to become president of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research group.



Senator Jim DeMint, speaking at a Tea Party convention in his home state of South Carolina last year, has announced that he will leave the Senate to lead a conservative group.

Just two years into his second term, Mr. DeMint, 61, whom many in his own party partly blame for Republicans failing to win Senate control two elections in a row, announced on Thursday that he has opted for a platform and a payday that the United States Senate could never provide him.

His resignation also comes as Tea Party followers in Congress face new pressure to pull back from their uncompromising views in the election’s aftermath. He will depart with the start of the new Congress in January.
Come January, the occasional kingmaker, conservative hero and filibuster lover — he once forced the Senate to stay in town for a Saturday vote that he then chose to skip — will find himself with a space to continue his efforts to push the Republican Party to the right from the outside rather than the inside.

His imminent departure to head a well-financed organization with significant heft in conservative circles will allow him to oppose even more loudly a big budget deal that includes higher tax revenues sought by President Obama. Mr. DeMint has been a loud Republican critic of a deal proffered by House Speaker John A. Boehner to address the impending fiscal crisis by generating at least $800 billion in new tax revenue.

“I’m leaving the Senate now, but I’m not leaving the fight,” Mr. DeMint said in a statement. “I’ve decided to join the Heritage Foundation at a time when the conservative movement needs strong leadership in the battle of ideas.”
In a parting shot — or perhaps warning flare — Mr. DeMint on Thursday suggested to Rush Limbaugh that Mr. Boehner might need to watch his back. When asked if Mr. Boehner was forcing him out, Mr. DeMint replied, “It might work a little bit the other way, Rush.”

The job switch should have substantial financial benefits for Mr. DeMint, whose 2010 net worth, $65,000, was among the lowest in the Senate. Edwin J. Feulner, the current head of the foundation, in 2010 earned $1,098,612 in total compensation.

A hero to many Republicans for his campaign fund-raising abilities, Mr. DeMint frustrated Senate colleagues by eagerly backing Republican candidates like Sharron Angle of Nevada, Ken Buck of Colorado and Christine O’Donnell of Delaware in 2010, and Richard Mourdock of Indiana and Todd Akin of Missouri this year, contenders who proved too conservative to be elected statewide. Those losses set back Mr. DeMint’s effort to bring the fiery conservatism of the House to the Senate, though he did have a hand in electing Senators Mike Lee of Utah, Marco Rubio of Florida, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ted Cruz of Texas, who takes office next month.

“The truth is that Jim DeMint’s philosophy on everything from Medicare to women’s reproductive rights, as embodied by his handpicked candidates for Congress, has been rejected by voters,” said Senator Patty Murray of Washington, who headed the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee this year. Privately, so as not to inflame him, several Republicans also said Mr. DeMint’s departure would produce few tears among them.

Mr. DeMint’s leadership PAC, the Senate Conservatives Fund, spent $5.48 million in the 2010 and 2012 elections, and out of 27 races that it stepped into, his preferred candidate won either the primary or general election 8 times.
The costly Senate defeats, as well as Mr. DeMint’s proclivity for gumming up legislation on the floor, and his virtually nonexistent legislative productivity, stunted his chances for leadership in the Senate.

Gov. Nikki R. Haley of South Carolina, a Republican, will now be compelled to appoint a successor who would then run to maintain the seat in a special election in 2014, when Senator Lindsey Graham, the senior senator from the state and a fellow Republican, will also be up for re-election. Aides said that Ms. Haley was surprised by Mr. DeMint’s announcement.

South Carolina is a small state, politically speaking, and almost every Republican member of the House delegation, many of them close to Mr. DeMint politically and personally, are possible fill-ins.

Representative Tim Scott is a popular freshman from Charleston who is well known around the state from having served on Charleston County Council for 13 years and in the State House of Representatives for two years. The first black Republican to serve his state in Congress since Reconstruction, Mr. Scott could give Republicans a high-profile black member of the Senate, which has no black members from either party. Mr. Scott, who shares a political consultant with Ms. Haley, is believed to have other ambitions, including a possible run for governor.

While a fellow Republican freshman, Mick Mulvaney, might also like the job, he does not have a close relationship to Ms. Haley in a job and state where such ties matter, and the delegation is expected to coalesce around Mr. Scott. What’s more, there are many Republicans in the state who would love to have a run at Mr. Scott’s seat.

Ms. Haley, who said that she would not appoint herself, is most likely to frame her choice around her own re-election efforts. She is a ripe target for a conservative primary challenge.

“Our state’s loss is the Heritage Foundation’s gain,” Ms. Haley said in a statement. “I wish Jim and Heritage all the best in continuing our shared commitment to America’s greatness.”

The distraction of a new seat may well benefit Mr. Graham, who has taken some positions on immigration and climate change that have drawn fire in his very conservative state. On the Senate floor Thursday, Mr. Graham said that his state was losing “a great strong conservative voice,” and that “on a personal level I’ve lost a colleague and friend.” Their relationship, he said, at times was “playing the good cop, the bad cop, but we were always trying to work together.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/07/us/politics/jim-demint-to-leave-senate-to-run-heritage-foundation.html

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

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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

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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