Petigru was wrong

South Carolina politics have been a raree show for more than 180 years. During their first temper tantrum from 1828-1832, then-President Andrew Jackson cooled some jets by offering to lead Federal troops there in person and hang anyone who so much thought of secession. Of course, Jackson was North Carolinian by birth and so had a short fuse where South Carolina was concerned.

The next fit led to a civil war which left 600,000 people dead and the South's economy ruined for 75 years. Instead of a president leading troops, South Carolina got Sherman and the precursor to blitzkrieg.

None of this seems to have sunk in. In the space of one year we have had South Carolina governor Mark Sanford giving "a walk in the woods" a new meaning; Joe Wilson, a South Carolina congressman, offending even Republican decorum during a presidential address to Congress, and now this.

If the GOP were running against any party but the Democrats, they could lie over and die right now. Bizarre as this spite, in a primary contest, may be, this time South Carolina doesn't have a monopoly on strangeness. In normal times this level of intermural spite would assure the other party of a big win. However, the times aren't normal, and the Democrats are as good as the Boston Bruins at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

In 1860, attempting to prove that there were reasonable people in South Carolina, James L. Petigru said "South Carolina is too small for a republic, and too large for a lunatic asylum." Events have proven him right on the first point, again and again. Current events seem to be proving him wrong on the second.