Remember Andre Bauer? He’s the lieutenant governor of South Carolina – the guy Mark Sanford didn’t want to risk taking charge of the state while he hiked the Appalachian Trail. The guy who has to keep denying that he’s gay, over and over. And now, he’s one of the guys running for S.C. governor from the GOP. In my ongoing project of keeping readers up to date on just how weird, and even gothic, South Carolina politics gets, here’s something that happened on Friday.

Long story short, Bauer held a town hall meeting in Fountain Inn, S.C , where he gave a speech in which touched on a favorite S.C  political tactic, threatening to punish the poor. Bauer said he thinks reduced-price lunches should be taken away from poor kids if their parents don’t pass a drug test or attend parent-teacher conferences or PTA meetings. This kind of crap is standard fare in ye olde Palmetto State, where no matter what major issues are swirling around in an election year, there’s always time to pause to beat hell out of the poor.

But that’s not the half of it. During the speech, Bauer compared people who receive government assistance to stray animals who keep breeding because they don’t know any better. Read the details here. As I’ve said before, N.C.’s political scandals are pretty feeble compared to the vicious knuckle-draggers and throwbacks that run my home state. I'm sure this is just the beginning of a banner year for them.

• Andre Bauer training for a year of poor-bashing