More On Ted Pitts’ Sellout Of South Carolina School Children

SELF-PRESERVATION, SELF-ADVANCEMENT MOTIVATED ENDORSEMENT OF MEANINGLESS “PUBLIC CHOICE” PLAN

FITSNews - December 14, 2007 - We’ve gotten dozens of phone calls and e-mails here at FITSNews since we published our admittedly-pointed criticism of S.C. Rep. Ted Pitts, the Lexington County Republican who decided to sell several hundred thousand South Carolina school kids down the river last week. Most of those calls and e-mails have criticized our original post, which lambasted Pitts’ surprise endorsement of S.C. Superintendent Jim Rex’s utterly “choice-less” public school choice proposal.

“Lay off Ted,” we’ve been told on numerous occasions. “He’s a good guy. A good conservative.”

Maybe so, but when elected officials brazenly put their own political interests ahead of the best interest of the state, we’re not going to shut up about it, no matter who they are.

In fact, we’ve been doing a little digging on Rep. Pitts’ situation and have uncovered several items of interest that lend credence to our original theory - which is that Pitts started sucking up to Superintenent Rex and his incompetent cabal of educrats for the dual-purpose of staving off a primary challenge in his district and positioning himself to become the next Chairman of the powerful House Education Committee.

Pitts’ desire to lead the Education Committee is no big secret within South Carolina’s political cesspool. It’s been confirmed to us by numerous state legislators and political insiders, although recently we’ve been told that his “deliberate calculation” concerning the effects of a school choice sellout on the vote count of that committee may have been off the mark.

In short, we’ve been told Pitts’ gambit may not turn up as many new votes as he originally thought it would.

More revealing, however, is a review of Pitts’ recent political missteps within his Lexington County district, which is comprised almost exclusively of good ole’ boy bible-thumpers who send their kids to public schools.

Since Lexington’s public schools are undeniably superior to public schools pretty much anywhere else in South Carolina, Pitts’ constituents have been on his ass for years about his prior support of legitimate school choice options.

Misguidedly, they have by-and-large been led to believe that expanding educational options for parents would somehow create a mass, cash-draining exodus from their public system, when the reality is that Lexington is one of the few parts of the state where the public schools are actually fulfilling their responsibilities to children and parents, thus eliminating the so-called “threat of exodus.”

Yet Pitts has accompanied his locally-unpopular prior support of real choices for kids who aren’t as fortunate (i.e. kids in Bamberg, Barnwell, Chester, Fairfield, Hampton, Jasper, Laurens, Lee, Marion, Orangeburg and Williamsburg Counties, just to name a few) with two boneheaded moves that have alienated the other two defining demographics of his District - religious nuts and rednecks.

This summer, Pitts proposed reforms to South Carolina’s “blue laws” that would have dramatically reduced the hoops businesses must jump through in order to stay open on Sunday, an economically-sensible idea, no doubt, but one that earned him the unmitigated contempt of Lexington Bible-thumpers.

Pitts was excoriated from the pulpits of local churches in his district, with the fire and brimstone crowd roundly criticizing his proposal. In fact, one Lexingtonian recently told FITSNews that Pitts’ bill represented “an immoral incursion into the Biblical sanctity of the Sabbath.”

Yikes.

Just two months prior to that misstep, Pitts pissed off his sizable redneck demographic by expressing an interest in revisiting the controversial Confederate Flag debate, and not in the way rednecks wanted it revisited.

In this column by liberal La Socialista editorial page editor Brad Warthen, Pitts said “our state shouldn’t promote anything that offends a large block of its people,” and went on to criticize fellow lawmakers for lacking the “appetite” to reconsider the current location of the controversial banner.

As with Pitts’ blue laws fiasco, he was expressing a perfectly legitimate position, but one starkly at odds with his constituents.

“Ted was sitting on a three-legged stool,” said one Lexington County activist who spoke with FITSNews on the condition of anonymity. “And he went and kicked all three legs out. You don’t go up against God, the flag or public schools in Lexington, and he went up against all three.”

After selling out on school choice, however, Pitts has instantly restored credibility with one of those three legs. He’s the new darling of the educrat community - a fiscal conservative Republican who has joined Democratic Superintendent Rex’s thinly-veiled effort to take legitimate educational options off the table and replace them with sham options left entirely up to public schools that hate them with a passion.

Combined with his pathetic attempt at damage control in the wake of the flag controversy, Pitts is deliberately attempting to cut those same three legs out from underneath a possible primary challenger.

What’s next, Representative, an anti-blue law tent revival?

While Pitts jockeys to save his own ass (and attempts to expand his personal influence in Columbia), nearly 200,000 South Carolina school children remain trapped in failing or below average schools, and their chances of ever escaping the clutches of a completely ineffective, money-hungry monopoly would completely vanish if the bogus bill he’s suddenly championing passes.

Make no mistake, getting rid of the school choice issue by pretending to do something about it is Jim Rex’s primary obsession, and Pitts is now a loyal foot soldier in his plan to do just that.

So no, we’re not going to “lay off” Ted Pitts. Not one bit. Not for a second.

In fact, we’re just gettin’ warmed up …

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