DeMint raises his national profile with staunch conservative issues

Senator courts Republican activists across the county

By JAMES ROSEN - jrosen@mcclatchydc.com

WASHINGTON — Log on to U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint’s Web site for his 2010 re-election campaign, and you won’t see much about South Carolina.

DeMint is “Your Conservative Voice in the Senate,” a lawmaker who with your help “can change the culture of corruption in Washington.”

A snazzy sequence of rolling promos exclaims “Drill Now!” — in green letters, no less — and invites you, under a photo of a pulled-pork sandwich, to ”See How Congress Is Wasting Your Money!”

Click on issues, and you’ll get a list of national causes: Earmark Reform. Illegal Immigration. Social Security. Family Values. Economy.

DeMint’s recent creation of the Senate Conservatives Fund PAC is his latest move to target Republican activists across the country and establish himself as a national leader of right-wing stalwarts.

Michelle Malkin, founder of hotair.com, a heavily trafficked conservative Web site, said DeMint’s vehement opposition to immigration reforms and funding earmarks has built him a national following that he is now expanding.

“As grassroots and hard-right conservatives have been disappointed by the (Washington) Beltway establishment, Jim DeMint has offered us more than a glimmer of hope,” Malkin said.

A BUDDING STAR

Conservative talk radio hosts helped catapult DeMint to national fame during last summer’s Senate immigration debate. Now, he is aggressively using the Internet to blog and post videos of himself speaking on an array of social-networking and conservative Web sites.

Former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich, among the prominent conservatives with whom DeMint regularly consults, said the Greenville Republican has resisted the allure of power and the big-spending habits that ensnared many GOP lawmakers in recent years.

“He’s making a big difference,” Gingrich said. “He’s very hard-working, very smart and very courageous. He has a lot of ideas, and he doesn’t play the normal Senate games. He stands up for what he believes in. He’s prepared to push very hard to change what’s going on.”

DeMint, 56, said he tried for a long time — first in the U.S. House and then, since 2005, in the Senate — to follow the favored Washington path of going along to get along, especially with his Republican elders.

“I spent a number of years as a team player, trying to work with our leadership, only to find that our leadership was taking us in the wrong direction,” DeMint said.

The tipping point, DeMint said, was the 2006 congressional elections: Democrats regained control of Congress after spending had skyrocketed under GOP rule, while sex and lobbying scandals brought down prominent Republican lawmakers.

“There was vastly too much spending, a lot of it in direct earmarks that enriched some of our own members and ended up in scandals and the betrayal of the American people,” DeMint said.

Asked to name which GOP leaders and members he is targeting in his criticism, DeMint demurred, saying, “I’m not going to lay it at the feet of any one person.”

DeMint added: “It’s just time to recognize that we’ve got to reshape the Republican Party if we’re going to win the trust of the American people.”

DOES S.C. BENEFIT?

DeMint doesn’t believe that his national focus and hard-edged ideological agenda are at odds with his primary responsibility to pursue South Carolina’s most pressing needs in Congress.

“I can do a lot more for our state by leading change in Congress than by throwing around taxpayer money,” he said. “The reforms I fight for in Washington have specific benefits for people across South Carolina. Folks in our state are being forced to pay for wasteful spending, high gas prices and rising health-care costs. These are things I hear about all the time at home, and they are the issues I work on the most.”

Blease Graham, a University of South Carolina political scientist, said DeMint and fellow Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, in different ways, follow the path of their legendary predecessors, Strom Thurmond and Fritz Hollings, in tackling national issues.

“It’s almost a South Carolina tradition in many ways to influence national policy with respect to the interests of South Carolinians,” Blease Graham said.

DeMint’s emergence into the national limelight began in late 2006 when he blocked a mega-spending bill and forced Congress to remove 10,000 earmarks worth $17 billion sought by lawmakers from both parties for projects across the country.

In January 2007, after the Republican election debacle, DeMint’s GOP peers elected him head of the Senate Steering Committee, the chamber’s most conservative faction with a dozen hard-right senators among the most active.

In May 2007, DeMint grabbed national headlines by branding a bipartisan immigration-reform bill “amnesty” and leading the Senate opposition to defeat it after weeks of bitter debate.

That battle pitted DeMint against fellow South Carolinian and Republican Lindsey Graham.

DeMint has continued to rail against earmarks and block what he considers bloated spending bills, even those backed by President Bush and large majorities of lawmakers from both parties.

In the last week alone, DeMint and a few allies have tied up a $50 billion expansion of Bush’s hallmark AIDS aid program to African nations and other countries, and they’ve help stall a $300 billion housing-relief bill.

DeMint often angers Democratic and Republican senators alike, whom he and his allies force to take uncomfortable votes on provisions that have no chance of passing.

For example, the Senate voted 70-11 — with Graham joining the opponents — against DeMint’s June 19 amendment to hold hearings on the lending practices of Countrywide, Bank of America and other big mortgage firms that could reap tens of billions from the housing-relief measure.

“It is shameful when 70 senators oppose investigating how much taxpayers’ money will go to a company (Countrywide) that tried to give favors to politicians,” DeMint said, referring to allegations that Countrywide’s leaders gave cut-rate loans to some members of Congress. “This vote is going to make people wonder how many others in Congress have something to hide.”

Such scolding annoys senators unaccustomed to criticism from one of their own, but their irritation doesn’t bother DeMint.

“The folks I talk to around the state are fed up with all the wasteful spending and misguided policies coming out of Washington, and they like having someone up there to stand up to it,” DeMint said.

Just Thursday, DeMint was one of only six senators who voted against a $257.5 billion war spending bill because it extended unemployment payments and created new college benefits for military veterans. Graham voted for the measure.

RAISING A CONSERVATIVE ARMY

DeMint set up the Senate Conservatives Fund PAC to raise money for Senate candidates who pass his ideological litmus test of opposing wasteful government spending, standing strong on national security issues and supporting traditional family values.

Instead of distributing the fund’s money to dozens of his peers in Congress — as most leadership PACs do — DeMint intends to focus on the strongest three or four conservative candidates in a Senate election.

DeMint said he might in the future — though not this year — support a Republican challenger taking on an incumbent U.S. senator. His new fund, he said, won’t spend money on state races, though he caused a stir last week by backing challenger Katrina Shealy in her losing GOP primary runoff race against state Sen. Jake Knotts of Lexington County.

Not everyone thinks DeMint’s efforts will succeed.

House Budget Committee Chairman John Spratt, a York Democrat, said DeMint and other conservative leaders will have to find new ideas and move beyond their decades-old haranguing of big government in order to draw new followers.

“We’re got big problems in this country,” Spratt said “Their rhetoric was trained on a different time and a different set of problems. I think their rhetoric needs to be updated.”

DeMint rejects the notion he is merely an obstructionist — a second coming of former U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms, the North Carolina Republican who became known as “Senator No” for blocking treaties, spending bills and regulatory measures.

“I spend most of my time in Washington working on ideas to reform health care, reduce taxes and fix Social Security,” DeMint said. “But when necessary, I’m not going to be shy about fighting legislation that would bankrupt our economy or take away our freedoms.”

Rosen covers Washington for McClatchy Newspapers in South Carolina.