A great interview with Human Events’ conservative of the year, Senator Jim DeMint:
Jim DeMint, Conservative of the Year
By: Erick Erickson
“I want to sincerely congratulate Senator DeMint on this award. Fully aware that Human Events cannot give the award to me every year, Human Events has made the only other choice they could make. Tough, courageous, rock-solid and unflinching, Jim DeMint charts the way for all of us in truly historic times.”
— Rush Limbaugh
Conservative of the Year, 2007
He did not start out a conservative fighter. He was no warrior when he first arrived on Capitol Hill in 1999. Jim DeMint had replaced Rep. Bob Inglis in South Carolina’s 4th Congressional District. Inglis had vacated the seat to run a losing race against Senator Ernest Hollins.
DeMint’s tenure started out like that of most freshmen congressmen — anonymous and committed to bringing home the bacon, much like Rep. Inglis who, when Senator DeMint moved up to the Senate, moved back into his old House seat until the tea party movement threw him out in 2010.
Something happened to DeMint though. In a National Journal article last month, Michael Hirsh fingered the fight over No Child Left Behind, which DeMint originally opposed, but then ultimately supported.
Among the conservatives who cooled on Bush was Sen. Jim DeMint. DeMint recalled that Bush told him, at a White House meeting back in 2001, when the South Carolinian was a second-term House member, that Bush would fight for “flexibility” for state charter schools as part of his new federal education program, No Child Left Behind, according to a DeMint aide, who requested anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak to the press. DeMint was then far from the small-government agitator and tea party champion he has become. But the Bush plan disturbed DeMint, and he decided to vote no—until the president called him in and said, “Jim, I promise to get this [state flexibility] back in conference. But I need you not to make an issue of it on the House floor,” the aide recalled. “DeMint said, ‘OK, Mr. President, I’ll trust you.’ But Bush didn’t even lift a finger to get it in conference.”
For DeMint, it was the beginning of a decade of disappointments in his president and his party, as he gradually became more alienated from the GOP leadership.
After the No Child Left Behind incident, DeMint started teaming up with other conservative fighters like Mike Pence (R-IN) to fight back. Congressman Mike Pence tells Human Events, “Senator Jim DeMint is a force of nature in the conservative movement. His steadfast and consistent stand in defense of fiscal discipline, a strong national defense and traditional moral values is unparalleled in Washington, DC and should give hope to millions of conservatives across the country as they look for conservative leadership in our nation’s capital.”
Elected as social conservatives who were fiscally responsible, the GOP under George W. Bush had largely become pro-life statists with even Fred Barnes championing the idea of “big government conservatives” in the Weekly Standard. DeMint had had enough.
In 2004, Jim DeMint ran for the United States Senate for the seat vacated by Ernest Hollings. He ran against Inez Tenenbaum, the state schools superintendent. Decisively beating her by over 9%, DeMint’s win put both of South Carolina’s Senate seats in the hands of Republicans for the first time since Reconstruction.
