Sen. Jim DeMint Resigning From Senate to Head Up Heritage Foundation

Powerful conservative senator Jim DeMint is calling it quits.

DeMint will replace Ed Feulner as president of the conservative Heritage Foundation, which has an annual budget of about $80 million.

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There’s about to be a political circus in South Carolina, the state that entered “hiking the Appalachian trail” into the lexicon, the state proudly represented by a Good Ol’ Boy wannabe who yelled “You lie!” at President Obama in a joint session of Congress because he was opposed to expanding health-care coverage for more Americans, the state in which the Senate President posed at a party in Rebel garb with a pair of African-American slaves, and the state where horse-bonking seems to be the sport of choice.

The Wall Street Journal has more on his departure:

Sen. DeMint’s departure means that South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, a Republican, will name a successor, who will have to run in a special election in 2014. In that year, both Mr. DeMint’s replacement and Sen. Lindsey Graham will be running for reelection in South Carolina. …

In an interview preceding the succession announcement, Sen. DeMint said he is taking the Heritage job because he sees it as a vehicle to popularize conservative ideas in a way that connects with a broader public. “This is an urgent time,” the senator said, “because we saw in the last election we were not able to communicate conservative ideas that win elections.” Mr. DeMint, who was a market researcher before he entered politics, said he plans to take the Heritage Foundation’s traditional research plus that of think tanks at the state level and “translate those policy papers into real-life demonstrations of things that work.” He said, “We want to figure out what works at the local and state level” and give those models national attention.

DeMint is a man who, twice in six years, asserted his unconscionable position that gays and unwed mothers should not be allowed to teach in public schools. (As an aside, you have to love the syntax nightmare in this CNN piece about that statement: “…that openly gay individuals and single mothers who are involved in a sexual relationship should not be allowed to teach.” Is DeMint saying openly gay individuals and single mothers may be involved in sexual relationships, or is just a poorly constructed sentence?)

Your move, Gov. Nikki Haley. Will she appoint herself?

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Jim Geraghty over at the National Review Online has The Replacements: