Free Republic

(snip) Jim DeMint certainly fits that category. While campaigning for the Senate in South Carolina, he called for replacing the federal income tax with a flat tax or a sales tax, proclaimed gays and unwed pregnant women unfit to teach in public schools, and has advocated for effectively overturning Roe v. Wade with a "right-to-life" amendment to the U.S. Constitution. As a senator, DeMint opposed the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002, President George W. Bush's signature domestic policy initiative, as well as Bush's internationally acclaimed PEPFAR initiative for combating the global spread of AIDS, and the 2008 government...

Washington can be a heady place for a freshman, especially when you share a home state with a tea party kingpin who can make or break a conservative rookie. The South Carolina freshmen — Tim Scott, Mick Mulvaney, Trey Gowdy and Jeff Duncan — have leaned on one another as they navigate Congress, but they’ve also gotten some help from one of the most well-known and iconoclastic members of the Senate: Jim DeMint. The freshmen give DeMint’s guidance positive reviews, but they don’t deny that the senator’s an outsize figure in South Carolina. The unspoken reality is that no South...