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Thread: SC Senator Jim DeMint resigning Senate in Jan.

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  1. #11
    Administrator Jean's Avatar
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    Added an article from above to the Homepage with slightly amended title:
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    Senior Member AirborneSapper7's Avatar
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    Sen. DeMint resigning to head Heritage Foundation

    By Seanna Adcox December 6, 2012 12:10 pm

    COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) - Republican U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint, a tea party favorite who has bucked party leaders to back challenges to centrist veterans he didn't view as conservative enough, said Thursday he was resigning to take the helm of a conservative think tank.

    The South Carolina lawmaker said in a statement he was stepping down to become president of the Heritage Foundation. His office said his resignation is effective Jan. 1.
    DeMint was first elected to the Senate in 2004 and easily re-elected six years later. He previously served in the U.S. House of Representatives for three terms.

    "I'm leaving the Senate now, but I'm not leaving the fight. I've decided to join The Heritage Foundationat a time when the conservative movement needs strong leadership in the battle of ideas," DeMint, 61, said in a statement. DeMint was unavailable for comment, his office said.

    DeMint's job with the foundation starts Jan. 3, but he won't officially become president until April 3, when founder Edwin Feulner retires, said foundation spokesman Jim Weidman.

    DeMint's resignation comes a day after the foundation board voted to make DeMint the next president, he said.

    Republican Gov. Nikki Haley will appoint DeMint's Senate successor. She didn't immediately say whom she might pick, or whether she would appoint herself. Haley spokesman Rob Godfrey said the attention should be on DeMint. State law puts no timeline on her decision.

    "Our state's loss is the Heritage Foundation's gain," Haley said in a statement.
    DeMint's former state director, Luke Byars, said the senator's new role would allow him to effect change outside the U.S. Capitol. In the fall election, Democrats strengthened their hand in the Senate.

    DeMint, who previously ran a marketing firm, thought conservatives didn't do a good job communicating their message in the presidential race, Byars said.

    "He knows how to communicate," said Byars, a political consultant. "This is a vehicle for him to push and pull on conservative issues on a national stage, to get the attention of folks inside Washington. This lets him go back into something he loves. He's always been an idea guy."

    The chairman of the state Republican Party said he's stunned, and said DeMint's resignation will have a ripple effect on the state GOP leadership.

    Whomever Haley appoints would face a special election in 2014 to finish DeMint's term, which expires in 2016. U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham faces re-election in 2014.
    South Carolina GOP Chairman Chad Connelly said DeMint redefined how the U.S. Senate worked, taking principled stands against party leaders.

    "He's been a conservative rock star," Connelly said. "I'm sure the conservatives in South Carolina will be heartbroken. DeMint's been an icon for a lot of us in the conservative movement."

    DeMint mounted his first Senate bid as a conservative with a soft side — he had a memorable commercial where his young adult daughters kept interrupting him to tout his conservative beliefs.

    But when he got to the U.S. Senate, DeMint stayed right. He said plenty of times he would rather stand with a committed minority than a big-tent majority.

    DeMint put his money where his mouth is, using a political action committee to back conservative Senate candidates like Christine O'Donnell in Delaware and, after her primary, Sharron Angle in Nevada, who were ridiculed for their out-of-mainstream beliefs and soundly beaten.

    But DeMint also posted wins. He was one of the first Republicans to back Marco Rubio's successful campaign for the Senate seat in Florida.

    DeMint is associated with, but no longer runs, the Senate Conservatives Fund, which ranked sitting senators. He formally cut ties with the political action committee he founded earlier this year.

    He helped raise more than $25 million for the fund for the 2010 and 2012 elections.

    DeMint has had other successes. He opposed longtime Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, just before the veteran Republican, facing a challenge from the right, switched to become a Democrat. DeMint also broke with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in the Republican leader's backyard to support tea party favorite Rand Paul in the Kentucky Senate primary. Both Paul and Pat Toomey, the conservative who won the GOP nomination in Pennsylvania, were elected in 2010.

    In other cases, DeMint's silence has been telling. He pointedly refused to aid once-popular Republican Bob Bennett, a three-term senator who was defeated by conservative voters in Utah's GOP convention.

    DeMint's positions have earned him rankings as one of the most conservative senators. He supported partially privatizing Social Security and installing a flat sales tax to replace income taxes. He once suggested that gays and unwed pregnant women should not teach in public schools.

    On Thursday, McConnell thanked DeMint for his uncompromising service in the chamber.

    "Jim helped provide a powerful voice for conservative ideas in a town where those principles are too often hidden beneath business as usual," he said in a statement.

    The Heritage Foundation's spokesman said Feulner told its board three years ago that he wanted to retire on his 35th anniversary, setting into motion the search to replace him. A formal search committee was set up last year, which began talking to DeMint several months ago, Weidman said.

    DeMint easily won re-election in 2010 without almost no in-state campaigning. He defeated Democrat Alvin Greene, an unemployed political unknown, with 61 percent of the vote, as he focused on Senate races outside South Carolina.

    » Sen. DeMint resigning to head Heritage Foundation » News -- GOPUSA
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    Senior Member AirborneSapper7's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jean View Post
    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
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