Greetings from the Bostic-Sanford Battleground!

Morning Jolt – April 1, 2013

By Jim Geraghty

The Morning Jolt is back! No fooling. In fact, the news is so surreal lately – the Department of Health and Human Services considering covering the cost of sex-change operations, Rush Limbaugh arguing that gay marriage is now inevitable, Bill Clinton nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize — I can't even come up with any good April Fool's Day jokes. All of my potential joke news items are just too plausible.

Enjoy your Morning Jolt!

Jim

Greetings from the Bostic-Sanford Battleground!

I've spent the past week in Hilton Head, which is in South Carolina's first congressional district.

The runoff between Mark Sanford, the former governor infamous for his "Appalachian Trail" hike, and Curtis Bostic, a former Charleston city-council member, will be held Tuesday. (Put aside your worries of Democratic mischief-making: If you voted in the Democratic primary two weeks ago, you're not allowed to vote in the Republican runoff.)

The Sanford campaign ran an ad in Sunday's Island Packet – a lengthy thanks to the district for the honor of asking for their vote, a reminder of the Cato Institute's praise of his fiscally conservative ways, and oh yes, a rather large photo of Sanford and his sons – a not-too-subtle reminder that, "Hey, I've tried to put things right with my family as best I can."

I've chatted with a couple of active Republican and tea-party activists down here.

If Sanford is the nominee, a certain number of Republicans won't vote for him, citing the 2009 scandal and sense that Sanford embarrassed the state by traveling to Argentina and not telling anyone. (The affair is considered much less of an issue than his leaving the state under false pretenses.) Very few of those folks feel strongly enough about Sanford to vote for Elizabeth Colbert-Bush; they'll just stay home.

Of course, if Bostic is the nominee, a certain number of Republicans will stay home as well. No doubt, Bostic has two key bases of support, Evangelical Christians and home schoolers. As one Beaufort County resident put it to me, "I'm hearing folks saying, 'My preacher says I should vote for him.'" The problem is breaking beyond that base, and branching out support beyond the Charleston suburbs into Beaufort County, into the retiree-heavy precincts along Route 278 and on Hilton Head Island. Bostic's candidacy is pretty clearly built around his religious identity – he's described himself as a creationist – and that's not quite the brand of conservatism that traditionally sells in this district. If last week's Public Policy Polling survey is to be believed, it's almost a wash when it comes to which candidate can unify the party: "Sanford (76%) and Bostic (72%) are both earning less than 80% of the GOP vote."

The smart money is on a Sanford victory, although Bostic could keep it close. PPP has Sanford ahead 53 percent to 40 percent, as of a week ago. The former governor starts with a base of about 20,000 voters who supported him in the first round of the primary; almost all of those voters can be counted on to show up Tuesday, while Bostic starts from a base of about 7,000. There are about 22,000 Republicans who voted for some other candidate in the primary.

For those in this neck of the woods, both men will appear at noon at the Hilton Head Island First Monday Club candidate forum at Aunt Chilada's, 69 Pope Avenue, Hilton Head.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is going to dump a ton of effort into this race either way (although not necessarily money, as they'll probably bet that Elizabeth Colbert-Busch will be able to raise money through her famous brother's endorsement). If they win, or even if it's close, they can brag that they've managed to win a House race in South Carolina. Republican activists are a little nervous down here; they know that while this is a Republican district, it is one where Obama took about 40 percent of the vote in 2012. Normally, the lower-turnout special election should benefit the Republican. But with Colbert talking up his sister, and perhaps the national spotlight on a potential Sanford comeback, turnout could be considerably higher.

If Elizabeth Colbert-Busch's brother had never made it big, no one would be arguing she belongs in Congress. Her bio page features three pictures of her brother and four of her.

You Missed Your Sequester Updates Last Week, Didn't You?

Give the president credit, he endured four weeks of the sequester's oh-so-painful spending cuts before hitting the links:

With the sun shining at the nation's capital, President Obama went golfing Saturday afternoon - his first golf outing since the sequester cuts went into effect on March 1.

The president hit the links with friend and Chicago businessman Marty Nesbitt and White House staffers Michael Brush and Marvin Nicholson, the White House said.

The president last golfed in February with golf powerhouse Tiger Woods at a posh golf club, the Floridian, in Palm City, Fla.

Politico notices, yet again, that the doomsday talk has not yet come to pass:

More than a month after Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood warned of "calamity" in the skies, travelers are still flying. Airlines aren't yet canceling flights. And there's no sign of the long lines the Obama administration warned everyone to expect when automatic spending cuts hit March 1.

What happened? The much-feared budget ax is turning out to be a slow-rolling series of snips, with effects that have been much more gradual or modest than projected.

Airlines have yet to suspend or cancel flights in response to the cuts, even though LaHood predicted during a White House appearance Feb. 22 that they would do so "within the next 30 days."

Meanwhile, far fewer airport control towers are facing potential closures than the 238 that the Federal Aviation Administration warned about in February. Only 24 towers — in places like Olathe, Kan., and Gig Harbor, Wash. — are in the first batch set to lose all their FAA funding on April 7. Dozens more will follow through early May, but local or state funding will keep some of those towers operating indefinitely.

The Wall Street Journal is looking high and low for actual, real-world cuts:

The sequester, the series of federal budget cuts that went into effect March 1, remains for many in this city a theoretical concept.

A recent tour through Baltimore suggests that officials who run programs affected by Washington's across-the-board cuts are seeking ways to pare their budgets in ways that don't directly affect services.

Among the approaches: trimming operating hours, asking existing workers to take on new duties, or hoping volunteers or donors will step up. And since many potential cuts have yet to take place, the real-world impact so far has been blunted.

And in one of the areas where the sequester cuts might genuinely hurt, the pain appears to be partially alleviated:

Civilian defense employees now are facing 14 unpaid furlough days this summer instead of the 22 previously announced by the Pentagon, thanks to more funding from Congress.

Up to 750,000 defense workers will still lose nearly three weeks' pay; military officials must still cover about $43 billion in mandatory budget cuts between now and October.

North Korea Just Won't Stay Out of the Headlines, Will It?

Sure, the North Korean regime has established a long, frustrating, and ignoble tradition of extortion and saber-rattling. But doesn't the latest round feel . . . different?

Like this, for instance:

U.S. officials and independent experts say North Korea appears to have taken unusual steps to conceal details about the nuclear weapon it tested last month, fueling suspicions that its scientists shifted to a bomb design that uses highly enriched uranium as the core.

At least two separate analyses of the Feb. 12 detonation confirmed that the effects of the blast were remarkably well contained, with few radioactive traces escaping into the atmosphere where they could be detected, according to U.S. officials and weapons experts who have studied the data.

And is this response from the U.S. and our allies . . . standard issue?

The U.S. flew F-22 stealth fighter jets to South Korea Sunday for joint exercises, a further demonstration of advanced military capabilities meant to deter provocations from Pyongyang.

The arrival of the F-22 fighters follows U.S. displays of air power last week that included B-52 bombers and B-2 stealth bombers. The F-22s are ordinarily stationed in Japan at Kadena Air Base but flew to Osan Air Base in South Korea for the continuing exercises.

The F-22s, among the most expensive and advanced weapons in the Air Force's arsenal, are capable of evading radar and air-defense systems. The U.S. hasn't used them in combat but has deployed them in the United Arab Emirates and Japan as a deterrent against Iran and North Korea.

Over at The Daily Beast, Gordon Chang diagnoses the ominous escalation: "Every year, Pyongyang makes bombastic threats before the U.S.-South Korea military exercises. Then, the North Koreans go quiet when the drills begin. This year, however, the tantrum has continued and the words have become increasingly dire. This month, for instance, Pyongyang abrogated the armistice ending the Korean War and threatened pre-emptive nuclear strikes on the United States. The one-a-day rhetorical blasts suggest something is terribly wrong inside the North Korean regime."

Actually, there's always been a lot that's been terribly wrong inside the North Korean regime. But the point is that somehow, things have gotten terribly worse.

ADDENDA: I'll spend most of Monday playing the game, "Just how many miles above the speed limit can you travel on Interstate 95," so Campaign Spot updates will be sparse . . .

Remember Peggy Noonan's lament of "Understaffed America"? I sure saw that this past week on vacation. I've worked in the service industry, I know that it's particularly tough and sometimes thankless work, and I try to be patient. But time and again, I go into restaurants, the hostess seats us . . . and we're just left there, waiting, for a waiter to appear, greet us, mention any specials, take any drink orders, etcetera. I started getting out my watch and measuring – four or five minutes going by in between sightings of the waiter. And it's not just our table or section's waiter who's off in the kitchen; there are no other waiters around. And this is at lunch hour!

Okay, American restaurants. It's time to start hiring again.

. . . Hey, remember when Ashley Judd was the Democrats' Great White Hope in Kentucky?

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