Lyndon Johnson, Sarah Palin, Curtis Bostic & SC-1

Or what king march­ing into bat­tle would not first sit down and decide whether with ten thou­sand troops he can suc­cess­fully oppose another king advanc­ing upon him with twenty thou­sand troops? But if not, while he is still far away, he will send a del­e­ga­tion to ask for peace terms.

Luke 14:31 – 32

One of the most impor­tant things a gen­eral has to decide dur­ing a bat­tle that’s an uphill fight is whether to com­mit his reserves or retreat and regroup.

At Water­loo Napoleon com­mit­ted his guard and lost the bat­tle and his last chance of empire. At the Wilder­ness Lee’s Tex­ans made the dif­fer­ence against Grant as the tide was turn­ing. Michael de Ruyter the great­est war­rior in the his­tory of the Dutch was the absolute mas­ter of know­ing when mak­ing that extra fight was right.

That deci­sion know­ing if it’s time to fight and when it’s not is the dif­fer­ence between a great gen­eral and a good general.

The same is true in pol­i­tics Lyn­don John­son one of the great­est polit­i­cal oper­a­tors in his­tory was the man in charge of money in the 1940 con­gres­sional elec­tions for Democ­rats. While he had the money to finance and in some cases over-​finance can­di­dates as Robert Caro points out on page 651 of his vol­ume. Lyn­don John­son the Path to Power some were refused:

Fran­cis T. Mur­phy said he had a “50−50″ chance. He could win, he said, “by get­ting vote to polls in key wards.” but money was needed to accom­plish that. “None,” John­son wrote next to Murphy’s name. C.H. Arm­bruster of Ohio asked for $1000, but said he would take less: “urgent.” he said, “None,” John­son wrote. “$1,000 would be a life­saver.” George W. Wolf wrote. “Two coun­ties hold fate…Hard bat­tle.” None.

Johnson’s deci­sion to cut off some can­di­dates was not due to the lack of funds.

And that brings us to the spe­cial elec­tion in SC-​1

I’ve already given my opin­ion on the dis­as­ter that Mark San­ford would be for the GOP if he wins the pri­mary and espe­cially if he wins the gen­eral. I’ve urged peo­ple to kick in for Bostic and as we’ve reached this elec­tion day an impor­tant event has taken place, or rather it hasn’t

There is hope in the Bostic camp that the can­di­date might get an endorse­ment from Sarah Palin, who in the past has been able to trans­form under­dogs into win­ners, as when her 2010 sup­port helped Nikki Haley become South Carolina’s gov­er­nor. It was Haley’s choice of Tim Scott as this state’s first black Repub­li­can sen­a­tor since Recon­struc­tion that opened the con­gres­sional seat that San­ford and Bostic are now fight­ing for, and so it would in some sense be less than coin­ci­den­tal if the Palin light­ning struck again here.

That hope has been in vain.

A Sarah Palin endorse­ment would have meant money, it would have meant vol­un­teers and it would have given Bostic instant grav­i­tas against Mark San­ford as no other endorse­ment could.

It hasn’t come.

I’ve already talked about Sarah Palin as a polit­i­cal ven­ture capitalist

Sarah Palin is the per­fect polit­i­cal cap­i­tal­ist, she has taken her polit­i­cal cap­i­tal, invested it in the can­di­dates of her choice and come out with even more. No amount of polit­i­cal snark or clever Conan skits will change that. The MSM can pre­tend her cap­i­tal doesn’t exist, but you’d bet­ter believe Ted Cruz, Kelly Ayotte and dozens of mem­bers of the con­gress who received that cap­i­tal when they needed it know it is there and when and if she needs to draw on that cap­i­tal, I sus­pect they will remem­ber it.

The essence of a smart polit­i­cal oper­a­tor is to know when to spend said cap­i­tal and when not to, when the expen­di­ture will lead to suc­cess and when it is in vain. When such a move can lead to vic­tory or when a defeat will be costly for the entire cause.

That she didn’t endorse in a state where she has endorsed before speaks vol­umes about this pri­mary and none of it is good.

Stacy McCain is on the ground in South Car­olina and his lat­est report says the fol­low­ing:

Speak­ing of Gen­tle­man Jour­nal­ists, National Review‘s Jim Ger­aghty recently paid a visit to Hilton Head:

As one Beau­fort County res­i­dent put it to me, “I’m hear­ing folks say, ‘My pas­tor says I should vote for [Bostic]‘”

If the coun­sel of clergy is heeded, the head­line on a Bostic vic­tory will be Mir­a­cle Upset, but polls indi­cate that Chris­tian­ity itself is now viewed as a lia­bil­ity by South Car­olina Repub­li­cans, unless it is the cheap-​grace gospel wherein Mark Sanford’s 2009 embar­rass­ment is shrugged off as some­thing incon­se­quen­tial that only the Lib­eral Media Elite care about. There may still be Repub­li­cans who take “fam­ily val­ues” seri­ously, but they are nei­ther fash­ion­able nor influ­en­tial, and none of the Wiz­ards and Gurus think that the anti-​adultery vote will amount to a major­ity in today’s GOP runoff.

that’s depress­ing enough but his piece seems less about Bostic and more about a dif­fer­ent subject:

Some of my blog­ger friends seem to have for­got­ten that it was Ali who, as a con­sul­tant to the cam­paign that elected Scott Brown to the Sen­ate seat for­merly held by Ted Kennedy, ensured that blog­gers like myself, Da Tech Guy, Ace of Spades and Pamela Geller had prime seat­ing at the vic­tory party that Jan­u­ary 2010 night in Boston. Pud­ding, anyone?

Is there a strain of Charles Johnson-​ism in all this? Are there peo­ple try­ing to set them­selves up as Supreme Arbiters of who is and is not accept­able inside the Big Tent? And, if so, why are they simul­ta­ne­ously indig­nant about hav­ing Ali Akbar work as a dig­i­tal strate­gist, but blithely indif­fer­ent to hav­ing Mark San­ford become the “face” of the Repub­li­can Party?

Some would rather reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.

Stacy’s cov­er­age has been first rate as usual, you should read it all but the tone of this post is a bad sign.

I hope I’m wrong, I hope that Cur­tis Bostic can make it over the fin­ish line with­out Palin. I hope that South Car­olina Repub­li­cans under­stand what is at stake here with­out the Gov­er­nor hav­ing to per­suade them. I’m happy to lend my voice as insignif­i­cant as it is in the cause for his elec­tion and ask every sin­gle voter in South Carolina’s 1^st dis­trict to choose wisely.

I hope, but I also know in 1940 Fran­cis T. Mur­phy lost by 44.7%, C. H. Arm­bruster lost by 21.4% and George W. Wolfe lost by 9.4% and remem­ber the note next to each of those names placed there by an ear­lier polit­i­cal mas­ter in answer to their request for help.

None.

Update: Bostic lost by 13.16% Palin choose wisely.