Treasurer says he looks up Republicans’ kids, would defund SC colleges, more. Seriously?
Someone should check on South Carolina Treasurer Curtis Loftis. He does not seem like a happy camper.
In fact Loftis, a Republican, seemed stark raving mad during a near 30 minute rant on an Upstate talk show that hit the internet Oct. 20. He touched on the following topics:
▪ Comparing a “class” at the Medical University of South Carolina to happenings in Mao Zedong’s China in which people “never came out alive”
▪ Looking up information on the children of elected Republican officials in South Carolina.
▪ “Defunding” South Carolina’s colleges, including the one that educated him.
And just a few other little things like that.
When you get over the weird-factor of the interview, you begin to understand how disturbing it is that a person with Loftis’ ideas is one of the people in charge of South Carolina. Loftis is a person with irresponsible, cynical and sometimes outright bizarre ideas who should not be in office.
Loftis begins the radio chat by railing against an investment practice that centers on putting money into companies that are environmentally and socially conscious. It doesn’t take long before listeners find out that Loftis believes “environmental, social and governance investing,” or “ESG,” is some sort of new leftist weapon to take over the world. In Loftis’ mind, “ESG” has invaded South Carolina’s universities.
Three other initials are needed for everything else that comes out of Loftis’ mouth after this — WTF.
Universities “are instituting the same world view that ESG gives through diversity, equity, inclusion, anti-racism, queer theory, lesbian theory,” Loftis says. “(The University of South) Carolina and the others have more in common with Karl Marx than they do with Thomas Jefferson, and it’s got to stop.”
Tell that to all the Republican-voting lawyers who are sending their kids to USC’s law school. Tell that to the Darla Moore School of Business.
That Loftis believes USC, where the business school christened a temple to capitalism along Assembly Street in 2014, has some sort of Marxist guiding principles shows the depths of his self-inflicted ignorance.
Loftis went on to say that South Carolina’s universities “turned against us.”
“If it was up to me I wouldn’t give them a damn dime,” he said of South Carolina’s colleges. “But it’s not up to me.”
All South Carolinians can be thankful for that.
Loftis “has just proposed defunding our state universities,” the host said during a break.
What makes this laughable is that Loftis went to USC. He even said so during the interview. And he “loved” his time there, he said. So Loftis would take money from USC, driving up tuition and possibly taking away the college opportunities for young people that he was granted? Loftis is discouraging parents from letting their kids attend a university that set him up to be an elected official? What does Loftis have to say to the current college Republicans? Stop going to class?
Most of Loftis’ words don’t bear repeating, but for the sake of South Carolina, we have to delve deeper into the muck of his mind so anyone reading this knows just how depraved this elected official is.
“You go to the Medical University of South Carolina’s website and you take this class where you go and you tell that you’re, you know, I’m sorry for being a white person, that white people have been bad and we deserve to be punished,” Loftis said.
Loftis compares the “class” to “struggle sessions” in China under Mao Zedong in which “so many people never came out alive.”
In these struggle sessions in China, people were publicly humiliated, accused of wrongdoing, beaten and tortured, according to sources on the history of China. Amazing that something like that is going on at MUSC and the cops aren’t looking into it.
Loftis also admits to looking up information about the children of elected Republicans.
“When I meet prominent South Carolinians, generally speaking they can be Republicans, especially if they’re in office, business people. I look up their kids. If their kids went to college, their kids are Democrats. We have elected officials in South Carolina, they’re Republicans, and every single one of their children are voting Democrat in both the primary and the general elections because they went to Carolina and to Clemson and to Wofford and to Furman.”
Here’s a question for elected Republicans who have met Loftis. Now that you know when you were done shaking his hand, he went and looked up information on your kids, do you still support him? Do you want him in your party? What is Loftis possibly doing with this information on Republicans’ children?
And why is the fact that Republican parents have kids that vote Democrat such a crazy thought to Loftis? That’s how families are. They include people with different views, but if they’re your family, you love and support them despite those differences. It just shows that Loftis is not living in the same world as nearly everyone else.
“It all comes back to ESG and this whole woke — you can call it a thousand things, neo-Marxism, neo-collectivism, postmodernism — all of this stands for ‘We’re going to tell you how to think. We’re going to tell you how to act.’”
Here’s a person criticizing Republican-voting parents for not having Republican-voting kids, now criticizing the perception of forced conformity. Loftis goes on digging his hole of irrationality.
ESG means “’We’re going to take your churches. We’re going to take your children. We’re going to take your businesses. We’re taking everything you have by these speech codes. The chamber of commerce is going to help us . . . The national banks are going to help us. The investment companies, everybody’s going to help us.”
Take your children? What is he talking about? And now “the chamber of commerce” is in on all this? And the national banks? Do what?
How can Loftis be part of the statewide elected cadre running South Carolina when he doesn’t even live in the real world?
You think it can’t get more depraved? It does.
“Don’t walk in Target,” Loftis proposed as a way of fixing the perceived “woke” problems. “I don’t care what you need. I don’t care if your families will starve. Go some place else. Don’t go to Disney. Don’t go to the movies. Live your life at home. Restructure your life because these people hate you.”
Starve your family if it means sticking it to Target? Are these your typical Republican views? They sound like the rantings of someone who is dangerous for South Carolina.
The South Carolina Republican Party should no longer support Loftis. Anything less is an endorsement of his ravings. The Democratic Party should put up a candidate to take him on in the next election in 2026. If these two parties claim to represent the best interests of South Carolina, they can’t continue to leave Loftis unchecked. A third party Alliance candidate, Sarah Work, is running against Loftis this year.
Early in Loftis’ rant, he said “the problem we have is the average person listens to this and says, ‘This is just crazy.’”
Loftis almost strung together a sensible phrase. The one thing he got wrong? There is no problem with your average person saying “this is just crazy” to his ideas.