Skip to main content

Rankin Out of Touch


 

Luke Rankin is out of Touch with Voters


Horry County Senator Luke Rankin put himself in a political box last week that he will find it difficult to get out of as reelection time rolls around. With reform of the process which elects judges in the state being a hot topic among the voters and other elected officials, Rankin chose last week to voice support, in an hour-long speech on the Senate floor last week, for the current process.


As Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and Vice Chairman of the Judicial Merit Selection Commission, Rankin has a lot of say in who becomes judges in South Carolina. He probably can’t be blamed for wanting to keep that power in his hands.


However, 695,791 voters in the recent South Carolina Presidential Primary election answered a question included on the ballot of whether the current process of electing judges in the state should be reformed. Over 91 percent, 634,345 to be exact, said YES. When 9 out of every 10 voters disagree with the position of their elected official, that elected official is definitely out of touch with the wishes of those he is elected to represent.


American democracy is representative democracy. We elect people to represent us in legislative bodies. Rankin started his career as a Democrat for the first three terms of his service in the Senate. He switched to the Republican Party in 2004 when it became almost impossible for a Democrat to be elected from Horry County.


In the last few years, many of the voters around Horry County have been calling Rankin a RINO as his votes on issues have been counter to the general conservative bent in Horry County. He was the only Republican in the Senate to vote against the Constitutional Carry Bill which was signed into law last week.


Now Rankin will face strong opposition in the June 2024 Republican Primary for his Senate seat. Voters are already questioning whether the time has come to replace him with a more conservative, true Republican voice. Last week Rankin gave voters another reason to question his Republican credentials.

Popular posts from this blog

Rankin Senate Issues Hurt Horry County Residents

Rankin Senate Issues Hurt Horry County Residents By Dennis Mitchell A recent article by a Columbia news outlet claimed senators are looking to change SC Senate rules in order to remove Horry County Sen. Luke Rankin from his chairmanship of the Senate Judiciary Committee.   The desire to remove Rankin from the committee chairmanship apparently results from his opposition, during the last session, to the SC Justice Act, which proposed to amend liability law to make each defendant in a personal injury lawsuit liable only for their percentage of liability that led to the injury or loss. The passage of the act was important to small business owners, especially those in the hospitality industry.   Twenty four state senators, a majority in that chamber, signed on as co-sponsors of the legislation. However, the bill was stalled in the Judiciary Committee for over a year and, when it did finally get to the floor for debate, a powerful Democratic senator was successful in tabling the am...

Malfeasance - Job Creation

  Malfeasance - Job Creation In a world where job creation is the holy grail of economic policy, our valiant government has heroically stepped in to ensure that everyone has a job—even if that job is creating more jobs. Yes, the government has mastered the art of job inception, making the movie "Inception" look like child’s play. The idea is simple: hire a person to find people who need jobs, and then hire more people to manage the people who are finding people who need jobs. It’s job creation, government-style! It’s like a never-ending Russian nesting doll of employment. Only in America, can folks get excited about a jobs report that says over 200,000 jobs were created.   That sounds like good news, but when you realize most of the jobs created were government jobs, one starts to realize that this ain't such a good thing after all.   Many economists would agree with me that a new government job does not add anything to America's GDP.   Look, America is something lik...

Royal Prerogative and American Democracy

  Royal Prerogative and American Democracy By Dennis Mitchell This week we celebrate the 4th of July and its meaning as the day in 1776 on which the 13 colonies in North America declared their independence from Great Britain. It is the 248th anniversary of this bold action. It can also be celebrated as the day on which government of laws replaced government by the whims of a monarch was introduced to the western world. It is ironic that it occurs just several days after the Supreme Court of the United States declared the American president, whoever it may be, is immune from prosecution for criminal acts within the scope of the president’s official duties. The Court did not specify what official duties it was referring to, leaving that decision to a lower court over which it may rule in the future. In doing so, it can be argued that the Supreme Court reintroduced the concept of royal prerogative into the American system of government. Royal prerogative is defined as a body of author...