Don’t vote for ‘frat boy Joe?’ That’s rich coming from Kappa Alpha Gov. McMaster

As a young college lad in 1969, Henry McMaster did not win the “coveted Best Lover Award” in his fraternity, but he was an officer in Kappa Alpha that year, according to a University of South Carolina year book.

He was officer No. 1 in fact, the year book says.

The sound you hear right now is Gov. McMaster stumbling over his own feet right as the gubernatorial campaign ad season kicks off.

In his first campaign ad, McMaster says South Carolina residents should not vote for “frat boy Joe” Cunningham in the upcoming gubernatorial race.

“Joe drinks beer in Congress,” the 30-second ad says, as reported on by The State’s Joseph Bustos. “Joe blows a foghorn in congressional hearings. Joe wants to be internet famous. Joe loves weed and voted against the police.”

Some light treasonous activity like trying to overturn a fair election, that’s okay for McMaster’s man Donald Trump. But a beer and some weed — a Kappa Alpha would never.

First: don’t take this column as an endorsement of Cunningham. It’s not. This is about a pot calling the kettle black of the most high order.

McMaster’s biography on the governor’s website says he graduated from USC in 1969 and “as an undergraduate was a member of Kappa Alpha Order.”

To make the “frat boy Joe” comment even more of a stumble, Cunningham was never in a frat, according to Cunningham’s own tweet. So in an odd way, McMaster is insulting himself far more than Cunningham with any remark about frat boys.

McMaster trying to criticize Cunningham for a perceived “frat boy” mentality after McMaster was a literal frat boy is a microcosm of the hypocritical mental loops some South Carolina Republicans jump through almost daily.

They scream about election fraud when they’re the party that got the most votes in South Carolina. National elections are rigged, unless Republicans win. People should have personal liberties and rights, unless they’re transgender.

You shouldn’t vote for that frat boy. You should vote for this frat boy.

One would think that McMaster would be courting the frat vote instead of insulting them by positing that the term “frat boy” is a term of derision. That’s just one more contradiction.

Democrats aren’t without their contradictions, but Republicans just have the most reliable, demeaning and comical ones.

Before we go into more of what’s wrong with McMaster’s “frat boy Joe” ad, let’s talk about Kappa Alpha.

The KA fraternity celebrated being founded “in 1865 at Washington and Lee in Old Virginia under the watchful eye of General Robert E. Lee,” the USC yearbook says.

The USC chapter of Kappa Alpha in 1969 was “. . . a way of life, a philosophy of living having its roots in the Old South that Lee so loved.”

The KA fraternity was known for decades for flying giant Confederate flags. In the 1969 USC yearbook, a picture shows a gathering of KA frat members mingling with one of those enormous Confederate Flags draped on a building among the crowd.

How did McMaster feel about celebrating General Lee and the Confederate flag and the “Old South” back then? How does he feel about it now?

Getting back to why McMaster’s “frat boy Joe” ad fails miserably: the ad is a sad degradation for a lawmaker who focuses on the issues in which he believes he excels.

McMaster and the people around him making this ad knew the focus would be on the “frat boy Joe” comment. They’re many things, but they aren’t dumb about what reporters and the public will say. By pushing “frat boy Joe,” they’ve distracted from what McMaster is best at.

For months, McMaster has touted what he says is South Carolina staying open and never shutting down during the pandemic. He brags that this put our economy in a better position than other states. He’s a hawk on abortion, calling for a total ban. A vote for McMaster is a vote for law enforcement, he says. He’s against pretty much every policy of the Biden administration.

Agree or disagree with his stances, it’s without dispute that McMaster has focused on policy.

Now, McMaster has reduced himself to a bit of the Trump-style name calling that marks too much of the Republican party these days.

The problem with McMaster trying to take one from the Trump playbook: McMaster has taken the gubernatorial race down to a juvenile level right away, and he just isn’t good at being the name-calling bully. He’s failed at his very first go because of the laughable delusion that “frat boy Joe” is an insult that will resonate and “frat boy Hank” won’t come back to bite him.

McMaster might not have won the “Best Lover Award” in his frat during the 1969 semester, but he’s winning the “Best Hypocrite” award right now.