THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

David Beasley is leading in the race for the Republican nomination for United States Senate from South Carolina. He got 36% of the vote in the primary and is shooting for a majority in the runoff.

Beasley's plurality shows that the South Carolina Republican Party is beyond redemption. And I mean that literally.

In 1998 Beasley won the governorship by a narrow margin because he demanded that the Confederate flag that flew over the capitol building since 1963 be allowed to stay there. There was a big movement to take it down, and a huge movement to keep it up.

But even before he was elected in 1998 there was talk about his getting a cabinet post if Republicans won the presidency in 2000, and even getting the vice presidential nomination.

It was generally felt Beasley could not get a national post if he did not denounce the Confederate flag. But he had to have that Confederate flag vote to win the governorship in November of 1998.

Everybody always says to Republicans that "Conservatives have nowhere else to go," so it was taken for granted that if Beasley dropped his support of the flag as soon as possible after he was elected governor in November of 1998, he would be in a position to get a national post if Republicans won in 2000.

Since "conservatives have nowhere else to go," it was assumed that by his reelection bid in 2002, flag supporters would have forgotten that he had abandoned them, and they would have nowhere else to go anyway.

But if flag supporters were to forget Beasley sold them out by 2002, he had to do the sellout as fast as possible after he got their vote in November of 1998.

To be considered for a national post if Republicans won in 2000, Beasley also had to abandon the Confederate flag as soon as possible after his election in November of 1998.

So in December of 1998, governor-elect David Beasley announced that he had spent the entire night on his knees, and God had told him to switch sides on the Confederate flag. Bill Schneider, the political analyst on CNN, gave Beasley "The Political Play of the Week" for this perfectly timed switch.

Not "The Religious Play of the Week." The POLITICAL Play of the Week.

Schneider did not mention that God Almighty had been the political advisor who dictated this Political Play of the Week. It never even occurred to him to believe that.

I was the only person in the State of South Carolina who even mentioned that this was blasphemy. Pro-flaggers thought Beasley was great. Anti-flaggers thought he was awful. But only I discussed this blasphemy in whitakeronline.ORG.

South Carolina is chock full of people who scream that their politics were "Of the Lord", that they speak only "Of The Lord" and they speak only "For the Lord". Yet I, who never says he speaks for the Lord, was the ONLY one who mentioned Beasley's open blasphemy.

Bob Jones, the Fourth or the Eleventh, or whoever it is who owns the Bob Jones religion business now, had never thought the flag had offended anybody until all the business leaders and Republicans went against it. When that happened Bob Jones, the Whatever, decided the flag offended blacks and switched with the tide. He never mentioned Beasley's convenient blasphemy.

He never will.