Posted on 12/09/2006 11:41:02 AM PST by Gondring
Biden tests presidential waters in S.C.
Touts bipartisanship, bond with state's former leading Democrats
Columbia, S.C. | U.S. Sen. Joe Biden heads into his quest for votes in a 2008 presidential primary in South Carolina with a well-exercised sense of what to say and what to leave unsaid to Republicans and Democrats alike.
The Delaware Democrat knows enough to avoid laughing too hard at a Clemson University joke - particularly a few days after the Upstate school lost a nail-biter to its in-state rival, the University of South Carolina.
Biden told a crowd of more than 230 at a Columbia Rotary Club meeting on Monday he learned long ago not to get involved in that rivalry. "You all are crazy," he said.
Biden said he learned to tread carefully from good teachers - former Democratic U.S. Sen. Ernest "Fritz" Hollings and the late Republican U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond.
He's not shy about talking about South Carolina's Confederate history either.
After a club member noted an upcoming event at the state Department of Archives and History included a chance to see the state's original copy of the Articles of Secession, Biden asked: "Where else could I go to a Rotary Club where (for a) Christmas Party the highlight is looking at the Articles?"
Biden noted Delaware was a border state and "a slave state that fought beside the North. That's only because we couldn't figure out how to get to the South - there were a couple of other states in the way."
The crowd roared with laughter.
Well received
Biden has deep and heartfelt ties to Hollings and Thurmond, two of South Carolina's political icons. Biden credits Hollings with helping to persuade him to stay in the Senate after his wife and daughter died in an accident after his first election in 1972. And Biden was close enough to Thurmond that, just before he died in 2003, the 100-year-old legislator asked that Biden deliver his eulogy.
Biden has been putting those Hollings connections to good use as he shores up a 2008 presidential run.
In May, Hollings introduced Biden at the Galivants Ferry Stump, a big Democratic Party gathering.
On Monday, longtime Hollings aide Trip King brought him in front of the mostly Republican Rotary audience. And Kevin Mertens, the volunteer leading his South Carolina campaign efforts for much of the past two years, also is a former Hollings aide who previously helped former U.S. Sen. John Edwards' 2004 campaign.
In his speech in Columbia, Biden's emphasized bipartisanship and the war in Iraq, keeping an attentive crowd in their seats for a half-hour. Only a handful left as he moved into the crowd with a booming voice for an animated half-hour question-and-answer session.
Club member Bruce Rippeteau, who says he's on Genghis Khan wing of the Republican Party, said Biden kept the crowd's attention by being nonpolitical. And his Iraq message resounded because "what we've been doing hasn't worked," he said.
Biden told the crowd he needs the GOP and its supporters to put Nov. 7 behind them. "American needs - I need - the Republican Party to get back up," he said. "Not a single change in direction can be done without a bipartisan consensus in this country."
Biden knew it was a Republican audience, but said he wasn't surprised people listened.
"I don't find a lot of difference between Republicans and Democrats right now," Biden said.
People know the nation is "in a pretty deep hole domestically" and want to know what lawmakers and politicians are going to do about it, Biden said.
But South Carolina holds a partisan primary, notes Don Fowler, former Democratic National Committee co-chairman. "If you're running in a Democratic primary, why give your best shot to Republicans," Fowler said.
The "bi-partisan" crap starts again: I Say NO Way, NOPE, Never, NOT-Gonna-Happen. I hate that now that Democrats have technically "won" The Election 2006, that they expect us to SHUT UP AND SIT DOWN and to "give in-to-their-agenda" through "bipartisanship": I SAY NO WAY, NOT GONNA HAPPE: NEVER! !!!!
The Union was supported mainly by the northern Delaware cities. The agricultural center and southern counties had men who went South in search of CSA units to join up with, so we don't have a true count of how many Delawareans fought for the CSA.
But I'll have to relay your comment to Capt. Washington Vickers, CSA, buried in Georgetown.
"To obtain the largest possible "reasonable Confederate manpower pool," we took the white males between the ages of 15 and 45 from most of the 15 slave states; we took only those between the ages of 18 and 45 from Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, western Virginia and Tennessee; and we ignored Delaware. This selection was made because the younger men from the border states and Tennessee (much of which was occupied early in the conflict) would not have had much practical opportunity to enlist; Delaware is ignored because it contributed almost no one to the Confederate military.
Delaware contributed about 12,000 troops to the union side by the way.
Torie--the link is based on conjecture. I've listed two people I know of that served in the CSA from Georgetown.
There were many more--you would have to search the rosters of the Maryland and Virginia, and other CSA units to see how many there were.
Delaware did not contribute almost no one. We just don't know how many. Many went away and never came back, having died on the field being listed as a casualty from another state.
Biden dosen't stand a chance.
Ok. But Delaware was the least grey of the slave states by a country mile.
Agreed, but let's not burst Biden's bubble, OK? :)
Sussex County has been called the northermost southern county
I can tell you from my relatives over on the Eastern Shore that places like Easton and Denton were CSA right up through the 1960's.
Edwards one would think.
Yeah, it was explained to me - but I always thought of him as the breck girl, so I thought some dem had joined the circus when my back was turned.
MD was really a CSA state, just that Lincoln had their Assembly arrested b/4 they could secede legally.
Old Dixie Ping
I hope someone got this on tape and plays in the black churches where he'll be campaigning later on. What a two face.
"he's certifiably crazy"
I thought McCain held that title.
Hillary doesn't have the "proper" hair to win in the South.
It's not big enough.
And her accent is all wrong.
Hillary will never exude Moonlight and Magnolias and it doesn't come in a bottle.
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