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"  South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint is a loathsome specimen indeed, but he&amp;#039;s not stupid. In fact, he&amp;#039;s one of the most accomplished opportunists in a party full to its gunwales with them. For much of his career, which began with a senatorial campaign in which DeMint opposed the right of both gay people, and unmarried mothers, to teach in the public schools, DeMint was a fairly run-of-the-mill conservative Republican of the post-Reconstruction South Carolinian type. However, once the Tea Party was launched, DeMint found himself an ass on which he could ride into Jerusalem. He became the face of the &amp;quot;movement&amp;quot; in the U.S. Senate and, as such, he became the single most implacable proponent of the GOP&amp;#039;s legislative strategy of making sure the government did as little as possible so President Obama would get blamed for not solving the problems the Republicans had declined to help solve. Needless to say, as amoral and irresponsible as it obviously was, the strategy worked pretty damn well. Now, though, there&amp;#039;s a little dust-up in South Carolina. Yesterday, a story popped that DeMint was considering endorsing Mitt Romney for president. Today, DeMint&amp;#039;s spokesman is all over the news, calling the story &amp;quot;a fabrication.&amp;quot; It is likely that these events will be used to demonstrate the doubts that the Republican base continues to harbor about Willard, and an endorsement by DeMint certainly would go a long way to allaying some of those doubts, particularly in South Carolina. But the contretemps says as much about DeMint as it does about anyone else. After all, DeMint endorsed Romney in 2008 with a minimum of fuss and bother. (See how happy they look above?) However, since then, the Tea Party happened, and DeMint became its face in the Senate, and that makes it incumbent upon him to share (publicly, at least) the concerns of the faithful as regards Mitt&amp;#039;s orthodoxy to the tenets held against the Kenyan Muslim Marxist president by the Fly Like an Eagle crew. Hence, I believe, the outraged disclaimer this morning. However, it is clear that somebody in the South Carolina GOP establishment put out that original story, and it&amp;#039;s hard to believe they did it to force DeMint&amp;#039;s hand, since it wouldn&amp;#039;t be able to do that, DeMint&amp;#039;s new power base being separate from that establishment, at least in its own mind. I think DeMint, who shrewdly sensed the rising power of the Tea Party, now senses just as shrewdly that it is a spent force, and that he can go ahead an endorse the candidate who seems both the most inevitable and the most electable. He might just get around to doing that anyway, I&amp;#039;m thinking. And, yes, Tea Party people, that means you&amp;#039;ve been suckered again. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a11351/jim-demint-endorses-mitt-romney-6518225/>