Tim Scott "will become the only African-American currently serving in the Senate and the first black Republican to serve in the upper chamber since the 1970s."

Appointed by Nikki Haley to replace Jim DeMint.

Scott was first elected to the House in 2010, winning an open seat after defeating the son of longtime Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.), the former segregationist who held the state’s other Senate seat for nearly 50 years until 2003.

He will become just the seventh African-American to serve in the Senate and the first black senator from the South since the 1880s.

Only three black senators have been voted into office by their constituents: Sen. Edward Brooke (R-Mass.), Sen. Carol Moseley Braun (D-Ill.) and now-President Barack Obama (D-Ill.). The others were elected by their state legislatures (before direct election of U.S. senators began) or appointed.

DeMint's term runs until 2016, but there will be a special election in 2014, so it remains to be seen whether this black Republican from the South can win a state-wide election.

ADDED: The linked WaPo article identifies Thurmond — "the former segregationist" — as a Republican, but when he was a big-time segregationist, he was a Democrat:

Thurmond represented South Carolina in the United States Senate from 1954 until 2003, at first as a Democrat and, after 1964, as a Republican....

In opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1957, he conducted the longest filibuster ever by a lone senator, at 24 hours and 18 minutes in length, nonstop. In the 1960s, he opposed the civil rights legislation of 1964 and 1965 to end segregation and enforce the voting rights of African-American citizens. He always insisted he had never been a racist, but was opposed to excessive federal authority.

Did Gingrich win?

I'm hearing reports that he's the projected winner (in South Carolina), but it looks even with 1% reporting.

ADDED: The link above goes to CNN. Here's Wapo.

MORE SHOCKING NEWS: Heidi Klum and Seal are getting divorced! 

AND: I know, I know. Exit polls. But remember exit polls in 2004? Here's what I wrote that strange November evening:

Yes, I care a lot about the outcome of the election, and I'm sitting here waiting for the news to come in, sampling the dribbled out exit polls, and fretting. But at the same time, I feel complete assurance that as soon as the outcome is known, I'll fully accept it. Either man will make a decent enough President. I think Bush deserves to continue in office, but if it is to be Kerry, Kerry can handle the job too.... It is equanimity that flows through me. Time for a nice glass of win, a plate of pasta with Bolognese sauce, and a calm absorption of reality.

UPDATE: "A nice glass of win" -- ah, so hope does live on! Time for a nice glass of wine and toast to hope! A glass to be refilled later, perhaps, in a quenching of sorrow!

ANOTHER UPDATE: 10:53 p.m. Maybe I am going to get that nice glass of win after all. I'm really surprised. I let those exit polls affect me. Then I called up my sister in Florida and ended up talking with her for a long time, just watching the numbers on the TV screen with the sound off, so I wasn't getting any punditizing and wasn't drawing conclusions about much of anything. I got off the phone, and it took a while for me to absorb it, but eventually I got the message that everything was trending toward Bush.

IN THE COMMENTS: AJ Lynch said:

Seal got pissed when Heidi asked him for an open marriage with Newt?

I think Gingrich is going to win in South Carolina.

And then what will happen?

ADDED: Gingrich is doing well because of his performance in the debates. Perhaps if Gingrich is the candidate, Obama won't debate him. Why give him a chance to shine? Here's why. Obama will predict that the majority of Americans will prefer the nice man who is President over the strange and brash man who is attempting to crush him. Think how we felt back in 2000 when this happened:



All Obama will need to do is stand his ground and be the normal person, and Gingrich will look like a jackass. Do not fear the Newt. He is self-limiting. Just like ManBearPig.

Now, picture Mitt Romney and Barack Obama in a debate. Come on, wake up and picture them. Hey! Come on! Look, it will be 2 low-key stammerers lulling you into a deep slumber. But before you drift off, something emotional will happen to you. One man will have made you feel some warmth. You'll care about him. Not you, my readers, the majority of you. But you, the American voters, the majority of you. You will feel something that you won't ever need to subject to a process of rational judgment. You will float on, half-asleep and into your polling place where you will make your mark next to the name Barack Obama.

"And the next leg of the marathon is the Palmetto State... Here we come South Carolina!!!"

Perry hangs in.

"Next time Holder speaks, someone should run to a judge for a TRO."

"And file a race-discrimination suit against whoever’s hosting him. Every single time...."

That's mainly a joke, but this isn't:

... I anticipate that South Carolina (and Texas) will take the preclearance decisions to a three judge court in DC, with direct appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.  I further expect that in this litigation, South Carolina (and Texas) will argue, among other arguments, that Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional...

If review is expedited — which seems likely — the Supreme Court will be looking at this question and perhaps striking down the provision during the 2012 campaigns. Which party would be helped by that issue? Democrats will be positioned to preen about their concern for racial equality, and that puts Republicans in the position of championing the importance of leaving states alone to do things their own way, which — for some people at least — is a reminder of the bad old days when there clearly was discrimination and some states — mainly the states that are now stuck with the preclearance procedure — pontificated about "states' rights."

Nevertheless, I think the Republicans will be better off if this becomes an issue. First, people who reflexively impose that "bad old days" template are probably already voting for Democrats. Second, huge majorities of Americans support voter ID requirements, which means that few people buy into the race pandering. Third, playing the race card backfires once people clearly see that's all that's going on. And fourth, there really is something screwy about treating a few states differently from the other states, and if if a high-profile Supreme Court case makes people notice this strangeness, they'll be suspicious of the politicians and lawyers who strain to make the argument that it's right.

"I saved the money from the Army. Army, Army, Army, Army money. My personal Army money."

That's Alvin Greene's answer to the question a lot of people are asking:

How did Alvin M. Greene, an unemployed military veteran who lives with his father, come up with the $10,400 filing fee for the Democratic Senate primary he won Tuesday?...

South Carolina has a history of political plants being placed in elections to skew turnout. In 1992, Republican operative Rod Shealy was convicted of hiring an African-American fisherman to run for congressional office in hopes of stimulating white turnout to help his sister get elected lieutenant governor. The case of Greene, who is African American, has reminded many here of the Shealy incident, though political sleuths have not come up with any logical meddler or motive.

Wait. One thing that's not much like what just happened is being used to show a "history" of things like this happening?  And it's from 19 years ago?! What would be the point of using Greene this way? Speaking of patterns, isn't there a pattern of quirky outsiders blowing their own money running for office?

Is it in the Democratic Party's interest to hound this man? He got 60% of the vote for some reason. It's not as if the guy he beat had any chance of winning. Without harder information, it seems as if people are trying to humiliate and intimidate Greene. He's already got a criminal charge pending against him. And what kind of a criminal charge is that anyway? Asking another adult to look at a pornographic picture? Would you call the police on someone who did that? Would you want your tax money used to prosecute someone who did that?

The people picked their candidate, but he's so terrible that it must be a conspiracy.

Democrats freaking out about Alvin Greene. Here's Balloon Juice:

I’ve seen a lot of shitty primary candidates in my time, so I’m ready to buy that a relatively inarticulate nobody with a closet full of skeletons would spend $10K on a quixotic run for Senate. What feels off about Greene is his complete lack of excitement and engagement. Usually a nut who’s going to blow his last dollar on a campaign does it for some crazy reason that animates them, and they talk about it incessantly. Greene has none of that. Put that together with his resume, and I smell a ratfuck.

Well, at least he's only "relatively inarticulate." What induced that restraint? Why not call him inarticulate? There's a longstanding issue of patronizing black people by calling them "articulate." Remember discussions like this after some clueless folk — e.g., Joe Biden — called Barack Obama "articulate"? (And here's the old "He speaks so well" Chris Rock riff about Colin Powell.)

Now, House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn has called for an investigation. Into what? People had to vote for Alvin Greene, and he got 60% of the vote. It would be interesting to know why the people of South Carolina voted the way they did, but I don't think you should sic the government on someone who wins against the odds. Bring out the information informally, if you like. Don't use the government to intimidate him.

And then there is the obscenity charge, based on Greene's supposedly asking a woman "to look at pornography on his screen at a computer lab in a University of South Carolina dormitory" and saying "Let's go to your room." That could have been talked about during the primary campaign, but apparently, no one saw fit to say anything until afterward. Now, Greene says:

"I'm on the not-guilty side of things...  I have to be. I mean, I mean, I mean. I have no comment, I mean."... Greene is at first reluctant to talk about the charge. But once he starts, he goes on at length.

"It can go away," Greene says. "Just think about a charge. It can be dropped by the solicitor. It can be dropped and erased like it never happened. . . .

I kind of think it will be remembered.

"Folks should be given a chance to correct themselves. Somebody could just be trying to get somebody in trouble. You see, somebody, you know -- you just can't work around somebody. It's hard. I'm just trying to talk about something, frankly. I'm just trying to talk from my perspective. People should be friendly. I mean, leave it alone."

Do we have to talk about Alvin Greene?

You know if this had happened to the GOP, liberals would have a feloniously obscene orgy of mockery.

The Tea Party rally in Greenville, South Carolina looks pretty ugly.

At least as filtered through TPM (boldface added):

The event took place at the Bi-Lo Center in Greenville, and featured former Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) as its keynote speaker. Tancredo, who ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, said that Americans are "going to have to pray that we can hold on to this country."

He added, referring to President Obama: "If his wife says Kenya is his homeland, why don't we just send him back?"

Pastor Stan Craig, of the Choice Hills Baptist Church, was particularly angry about the state of Washington, saying he "was trained to defend the liberties of this nation." He declared that he was prepared to "suit up, get my gun, go to Washington, and do what they trained me to do."...

Dan Gonzales, who Chairs the Constitution Party in Florida, asserted that "this is the end of America right here," and if the Tea Partiers "don't get to work we're going to be fighting in the streets."...

Another speaker, ["apparently William Gheen, President of Americans for Legal Immigration PAC"] claimed Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is gay, noted:

I'm a tolerant person. I don't care about your private life, Lindsey, but as our U.S. Senator I need to figure out why you're trying to sell out your own countrymen, and I need to make sure you being gay isn't it.

That's all quite awful. It plays into the hands of those who would like to squelch the Tea Party movement.

On the beach and poolside.

Chris, on the beach:



Chris and Dell, poolside:



We're done with our weekend on Hilton Head Island, where the full moon rose over the Atlantic Ocean and somebody got married.

Sunrise... midday beach-scape... moonrise hammock-scape.

Late day beachscape.

Religion, free speech, and license plates.

Here is a NYT op-ed about automobile license plates. The writer —Stefan Lonce, who has a book on the subject of vanity license plates — distinguishes 2 forms of religious speech via license plate. First, there are the specialty license plates. South Carolina has introduced a Christian-themed plate that looks like this:


Second, there are vanity plates, and the states sometimes reject the letter/word combinations a driver requests. There is, we are told, federal court lawsuit about Vermont's rejection of a vanity plate that would read JN36NT (which is a reference to a Biblical passage).

It seems obvious that the individual expression in the form of a vanity license plate is the preferable to the state's provision of the religious message on a specialty plate. The "I Believe" specialty plate is almost surely a state endorsement of Christianity that violates the Establishment Clause. (There's no array of specialty plates for different religions and no atheist plate. What would an atheist plate look like?)

But everyone knows that what's on a vanity plate is chosen by the car-owner and doesn't represent the state's point of view. Vermont seems to be overdoing a concern about Establishment Clause and blundering into a Free Speech violation (though, according to Lonce, the federal district court approved the state's decision). The trouble with vanity plates is that at least some of them do need to be censored — there are always some people who want "F**KYU" — so it won't work to have individual choice as the only filter.

Lonce thinks the problem of censoring vanity plates can be solved by setting up a national data base, pooling the efforts of all the states to identify the offending letter/number combinations. An alternative is just to get rid of vanity plates altogether, but states make a lot of money selling them, and people want to buy them.

Which, if any, groups favored Hillary Clinton in South Carolina?

Let's take a closer look at that CNN exit poll:

1. Hillary Clinton did not win a majority or even a plurality of white voters. (Edwards won a plurality of 40%.) She did win a plurality — 42% — of the white female voters (but Barack Obama still won 22% of them). Edwards won a plurality of the white males — 44% (but Obama still got 27% of them). Clinton only got 20% of the black women.

2. Hillary Clinton did not win a majority or even a plurality of the over 60 white vote. (She shared equally with John Edwards, each receiving 42%.) Barack Obama received a majority of the white vote in the 18-29 category.

3. Barack Obama received a majority of the male vote and a majority of the female vote — with exactly the same percentage, 54%.

4. Barack Obama received a majority of the vote in every age category except over 60 — and he won a plurality of the over 60 vote. Only by isolating the over 65 vote do you see a plurality for Clinton (40% over 32%).

5. Barack Obama received a majority or plurality of votes at all education levels, at all degrees of religiosity, at all levels of voting experience, in all regions, at all income levels, and in urban/suburban/rural areas.

6. Barack Obama received a majority among voters who considered each of the 3 main issues — health care, the economy, Iraq — the most important.

7. Barack Obama received a majority from voters who were married and who were unmarried, who placed issues first and who placed character first, who thought the economy was good and who thought it was bad.

8. Barack Obama received a majority from voters who called themselves liberals and who called themselves moderates and a plurality from those who called themselves conservatives.

9. Hillary won a clear majority — 84% — among voters who put "experience" first when asked to rank 4 qualities. Obama won for 2 of the other qualities — "can bring about change" and "electability" — and Edwards won for "cares about people."

10. Hillary Clinton won a plurality from voters who said Americans aren't ready to elect a black President (and a majority of those who said "definitely not ready," though Obama even got 9% of those).

What can Hillary do? Work hard on getting out the elderly vote? Harp on her experience some more? Scare voters about the unelectability of a black man? Hope the other states are not like South Carolina?

Waiting for the South Carolina results.

CNN has an on-screen countdown. 3:09 and counting down!

UPDATE: They plan to project the winner immediately. 22 seconds to go.

UPDATE 2: CNN projects "a strong victory for Barack Obama."

UPDATE 3: CNN shows Edwards and Clinton in a close fight for second, with Edwards getting more of the white vote than Clinton (39% to 36%).

UPDATE 4: There he is! Barack Obama! CNN has just told us that Caroline Kennedy endorses Obama and thinks he's like her father. And now we see Barack hand in hand with Michelle, who's wearing a Jackie Kennedy-invoking pink suit. "We are hungry for change, and we are ready to believe again." Chant: "We want change! We want change!" The huge banner in back of him says "CHANGE we can believe in." The lectern in front of him says "Change." People want to tell you that white people won't vote for the African-American, but "we are here tonight to tell you that is not the America we believe in."

"If somebody came to Arkansas and told us what to do with our flag, we’d tell them what to do with the pole; that’s what we’d do."

Mike Huckabee, working the South Carolina flag issue.