By FITSNews || State Senator Shane Massey (R-Aiken) will drop out of the race for South Carolina’s Third Congressional District seat, acknowledging that he is trailing two better-known opponents in the race for money and votes. Reports regarding Massey’s departure from the race to replace Gresham Barrett first surfaced Tuesday on the local blog, The Garnet Spy, and have since been confirmed by sources close to the Senator’s campaign.
The official word should be coming soon.
Massey’s departure leaves the battle for the GOP nomination to two polar opposites – longtime big government backer Rex Rice, a RINO State Representative from Pickens County, and Jeff Duncan, a State Representative from Laurens, S.C. who is one of the few genuine fiscal conservatives in Columbia.
Obviously, we’ve been very supportive of Duncan’s bid and very critical of Rex’s – a trend which will continue. What can we say? You gotta “walk the walk” (not just “talk the talk”) to earn our support. Either that or pay us obscene amounts of money.
Speaking of “walking the walk,” we’ve actually been very impressed of late with Shane Massey’s voting record. Among other tough, principled votes, Massey has stood his ground in opposition to a controversial incentives package for a wealthy, out-of-state GOP developer despite tremendous pressure being exerted on him.
We’ve been tough on Massey in the past, but he seems to have gotten his act together lately.
We hope he continues voting with the Senate’s core group of fiscal conservatives, and wish that default RINOs like Thomas Alexander, Paul Campbell, Ronnie Cromer, Mike Fair, Wes Hayes, Shane Martin, David Thomas and others would get with the program, too, and stop sucking up to the RINO leadership.
Assuming they started acting like Republicans (not socialists), those seven votes could completely alter the ideological direction of the State Senate …
By vicupstate March 16, 2010 at 7:14 pm
Mike Fair… a Socialist. Wow. That’s pretty far off the reservation don’t you think.
By fitsnews March 16, 2010 at 7:20 pm
Vic-
You’re right. Fair sold his vote for a line item that anybody with a brain could tell would NEVER make it into the budget due to the revenue situation.
http://www.fitsnews.com/2009/05/06/a-fair-price/
So he’s an idiot and crook … who happens to vote consistently with a bunch of socialists.
Thanks for giving us the opportunity to clarify, dude.
-FITS
By Matt March 16, 2010 at 9:17 pm
Hmmm…sounds like a certain SC GOP operative who people say has racked up lots of potential conflicts of interests is having a bad day:
First Romney endorses someone not named Gresham Barrett.
Then Massey drops out of his race.
Is Trey Gowdy next? (if any of the “conservatives” running in SC-4 were worth anything, they’d expose Gowdy on some things…)
By CarolinaBuckeye March 16, 2010 at 9:27 pm
Sorry to see Shane go, but Jeff Duncan is the candidate we need now, more than ever. Congress and President Obama have launched a full out assault on individual liberty, the Constitution and the taxpayer. We need fiscal conservatives like Jeff in Congress acting as a brick wall against these socialistic policies.
By Chad March 17, 2010 at 9:13 am
I understand the talk about Rex and Jeff leading the way but I believe there is a sleeper in this race in Neal Collins. He doesn’t get talked about much yet but he personally knocked on all the doors in my neighborhood and is the only candidate to do so for as long as I can remember. He’s making a much stronger grass roots push than anyone seems to realize and I forsee him definitely shaking things up in this election.
By Mitch March 17, 2010 at 11:39 am
Neal is a nice guy, but how does he expect to make a dent in a Congressional race by only knocking on doors? There’s going to be what, 150,000 people vote in the Republican primary in the third district? Maybe he’ll be about to knock on 15,000 doors? And of those 15,000 doors, maybe 5,000 were actually home?
If he was smart, he’d run for the state house. With that kind of door knocking campaign, he’d blow away the competition.