By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | Over the last 14 years, two South Carolina governors pounded a philosophy on the stump and at the Statehouse that there was little government could do to be good or worthwhile.

This drumbeat against government, a child of Washington think tanks from the 1990s, seeped into South Carolina under Gov. Mark Sanford, who was obsessed against government borrowing to finance long-term needs. Then it found an erstwhile acolyte in his successor, Gov. Nikki Haley, now headed to the national stage. Using the bully pulpit of the governor’s office, they railed against big government, preached a gospel against taxes and proselytized for treating government like a business.