Strom Thurmond's Son Loses To Black Candidate

South Carolina state representative Tim Scott defeated Paul Thurmond, the son of Strom Thurmond, in last Tuesday's Republican primary to select that party's candidiate for an open U.S. House of Representatives seat in South Carolina. Scott won 69 percent of the vote. John Nichols writes that "[i]n the heart of Dixie, in the state that . . . spawned the States' Rights Party and then merged that party's politics into the GOP, it should mean something that Strom Thurmond's son just got beat in a Republican primary. And it should mean something more that the man who beat him was African-American."