POLITICAL DEATH WATCH: BOB INGLIS

If the nation should go wholly nuts, expect South Carolina to lead the way. At least it is trying to. If you have followed the political news from there, you know what I mean.

I mentioned SC Congressman Bob Inglis once before. This Repub has called himself a member of the Religious Right and has been critical of what he calls the Far Right. The Far Right is pretty much the teabaggers.

Inglis has the pinched, thin-lipped face of a puritan. Sometimes you know a Republican when you see one, and he is a case in point. And he is no RINO: He has voted with the Republicult 95% of the time.

But he is in a run-off for renomination that will take place a week from now. He came in well behind in the first round, and he appears to be doomed. Why? Because despite his conservatism there are streaks of independence and pragmatism in his record - he voted for cap & trade and TARP, for example - and he has been critical of some on the right.

It was he who reported that a teabagger told him of wanting the uninsured to die on the hospital steps. He advised one furious audience not to listen to Glen Beck because he preys on fear. He thinks that in the Congress, working across the aisle is a good thing in principle.

What a "real" conservative is has changed over the years. Today you have to be in absolute ideological lock-step with the teabaggers and the social issues reactionaries to qualify as one. And if you aren't one, it's goodbye.

So take a moment to pity Bob Inglis, a man who tried to cling to a shred of rationality in a blizzard of madness. He is by no means what a Congressman ought to be. But there are worse possibilities out there. And South Carolina - described by a Civil War era politician as too small for a republic and too big for an insane asylum - is about to send one to Washington in his place.