Mark Sanford is no longer the most embarrassing politician in South Carolina: His lieutenant governor, Andre Bauer, is in hot water after comparing government assistance for the poor to "feeding stray animals." Said Bauer, who is running to succeed Sanford as governor: "You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don't think too much further than that."
Reaction to the remarks, first reported in the Greenville News, was quick. Bauer allowed that he could have chosen his words more carefully but declined to back off. "In government, we are too often giving a handout instead of a hand up," he said in an interview with the State. Analyzing "the pure viciousness" of Bauer's position suggests he "believes that we should try to starve the poor out of existence," Jay Bookman writes for the Atlanta-Journal Constitution. "Deprive them of food and they will cease breeding: Problem solved, neat as that."
(More Andre Bauer stories.)
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