DeMint Will Leave Senate to Run Heritage Foundation

[struggle4progress]

By JENNIFER STEINHAUER
Published: December 6, 2012

WASHINGTON — Senator Jim DeMint, the conservative Republican from South Carolina who helped incite the Tea Party movement, will leave the Senate to become president of the Heritage Foundation ...

The departure of Mr. DeMint — who has fashioned himself into a bit of a kingmaker for conservative Republicans, often at the expense of his own Republican colleagues — will require Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina, a Republican, to name a successor who would then run to maintain the seat in a special election in 2014, when Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, the senior senator from the state, will be up for re-election ...

Mr. DeMint will depart the Senate in January ...

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/07/us/politics/jim-demint-to-leave-senate-to-run-heritage-foundation.html?_r=0

[graham4anything]

1. Stephen Colbert for Senator, he is from SC I believe

This could be an easy 2 seat pickup in 2014

as the tea party is going to fight the republicans on it, a civil war inner party

Colbert should actually do it Al Franken style

[LeftishBrit]

2. Well...

at least this means DeMented won't end up staying in the senate till he's 100 and getting more and more power through seniority, like Thurmond.

Any chance of his getting replaced by a Dem? I assume, this being South Carolina, the answer is No?

[struggle4progress]

3. No chance IMO. Republican gov appoints temp replacement,

and I expect James Petigru's antebellum quip still describes the majority for the upcoming election itself:

South Carolina -- too small for a republic and too large for a lunatic asylum

[jcgoldie]

4. conservative think tank?

Oxymorons for $800 Alex!

[NYtoBush-Drop Dead]

5. Now if he would take that cretin, Lindsay...

That would make my day.