Furman and Case Against Trey Gowdy; Part Two

     This morning I called the Poage Library at Baylor University inviting them to contact Chet Edwards to read these two blogs. He has a lectureship there since he was voted out of Congress with the Tea Party Insurgency that has been the backbone of Trey Gowdy's career there.  My Furman classmate Baron Hill, a Blue Dog Democrat from Indiana was also voted out that year. With the loss of those two Furman's Danielle Vinson's challenge in the recent issue of the alum magazine faced a bigger hurdle, the challenge for the Congress to work for the greater good of the country.

    Chet Edwards drew high praise from the Baptist Joint Committee in DC, the authentic church state watchdog for the best kind of Baptists, the kind Furman buttressed in its best days of Baptist affiliation. Edwards is the George Truett legacy of Baptist thought and was a key speaker a decade ago when Baptists celebrated in DC a historic commemoration of Truett's two hour speech on the nation's capitol Steps commemorating his speech there.

    Chet Edwards was Furman President Elizabeth Davis Congressman for many years when she was at Baylor. Influential Democrats floated his name as possible replacement for Joe Biden in 2012. Best I can figure President Davis was a contemporary of Trey Gowdy when they were both students at Baylor. Baylor is a big school and I haven't seen where either claimed to know the other there.

    My friend Randall Balmer has written in Mother Jones about the Baptist upheaval at Baylor in 2004. I hope to have the link for you here soon.

    So for the folks who follow these things, Bill Moyers and Wuthnow, Balmer, Molly Worthen and Charles Marsh and the authors of the Baptist shelf at the Furman library the BX 6400s, these things matter.

     Aside from the Baptist implications Trey Gowdy is on the wrong side of many other things that matter.

    Norm Ornstein of the Conservative AEI, points to Trey Gowdy's Tea Party Revolution as the culprit of gridlock in the Obama years. Check Its Worse than It looks and see if you come to a different conclusion.

   Trey Gowdy has wallowed in the masturbatory politics of Fox News--and in the case of Bill Oreilly the literal masturbator, google the drshow.org hour long panel on Fox News of mid September. In all his "Christian" witness he appears struck mute to examine the dark money underbelly world of the politics of the NRA and how Citizens United has abetted that. Citizens United and the underbelly of the NRA is a matter I'm certain would've concerned LD Johnson, Marshall Frady and Carlyle Marney.

     Gowdy is a beneficiary of the "ratfucking" politics Daley exposes in his book by the same name. Google Betrayal of Democracy at Nybooks.com

      Gowdy is the current incarnation of the worst legacy of Strom Thurmond. The Heritage Foundation of Jim Demint Gowdy personifies was hatched in the bowels of Strom Thurmond's Senate offices, the literal basement according to Joe Crespino's Strom Thurmond's America. Page 254, Quoting

          ....An antipathy to the politics and culture of liberalism, one in which the aggrieved white God-fearing American, mistreated at the hands of forces both elite and minority, stood center stage. End of Quote

    The quote is even stronger in larger context. Crespino was in Greenville at the Upcountry History Museum Sept 19. Many Furman folks had to be there. Still waiting on them to tell us the implications for Gowdy of Crespino's presentation.

     Gowdy is on the wrong side of Baptist History.  He is on the wrong side of the politics of Downtown Greenville as a Destination City. And he is a complete disaster for what was once Furman's great promise as the University of Governor Richard Riley.

     Let's see if the larger Furman community in Upstate SC, and its sister institutions Converse and and Wofford can do something to help end the political career of Trey Gowdy and his lesser vision for South Carolina and the nation.