{"id":8073,"date":"2006-07-31T10:40:31","date_gmt":"2006-07-31T14:40:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/8073.html"},"modified":"2006-07-31T10:40:31","modified_gmt":"2006-07-31T14:40:31","slug":"it-has-a-hollow-ring-to-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/it-has-a-hollow-ring-to-it\/","title":{"rendered":"‘It has a hollow ring to it’"},"content":{"rendered":"

[tag]Lee Bandy[\/tag], South Carolina’s legendary political reporter, had an interesting item<\/a> today about how [tag]Republicans[\/tag] have used the “[tag]tax-and-spend[\/tag] [tag]liberal[\/tag]” label so often, it’s reached the point that it no longer has any real meaning — or salience.<\/p>\n

“They’ve used it so often that they’ve milked all the meaning out of the phrase,” says Francis Marion University political scientist Neal Thigpen, a GOP activist. “I don’t think the liberal thing has got any merit.” […]<\/p>\n

“It has a hollow ring to it,” says University of South Carolina professor Blease Graham, a Democrat.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Bandy notes that in South Carolina, Republicans just reflexively use the phrase whenever they talk about any [tag]Democrat[\/tag], no matter how fiscally responsible they are. He noted that state Treasurer Grady Patterson (D) is “one of the most fiscally conservative elected officials in the state,” but Republicans are trying to brand him a tax-and-spend liberal. The same goes for state Sen. Tommy Moore, the Dems’ gubernatorial nominee, whom the South Carolina Chamber of Commerce described as “a good, pro-business senator,” but whom the GOP insists is, of course, a tax-and-spend liberal.<\/p>\n

Why bother peddling this nonsense? Because Republicans don’t have anything else.<\/p>\n

“Republicans have absolutely nothing to run on,” says Lachlan McIntosh, a Democratic consultant. “They’re getting desperate, and it shows.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Two questions: 1) is it me, or do we hear the “tax-and-spend liberal” line a little less frequently than we used to”? And 2) why didn’t “[tag]borrow-and-spend[\/tag] Republican” ever catch on?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[tag]Lee Bandy[\/tag], South Carolina’s legendary political reporter, had an interesting item today about how [tag]Republicans[\/tag] have used the “[tag]tax-and-spend[\/tag] [tag]liberal[\/tag]” label so often, it’s reached the point that it no longer has any real meaning — or salience. “They’ve used it so often that they’ve milked all the meaning out of the phrase,” says Francis […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8073"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8073\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}