This ploy enables Senator DeMent to solicit campaign contributions outside of South Carolina. With unemployment and poverty as high as it is in SC, reaching out to the conservative base across the country makes sense for him.

The late Senator Jesse Helms did exactly the same thing. You'd be surprised at the amount of cash conservatives can raise by single-issue ideologues. I can see it now: Letters, emails to folks showing that DeMent is the only person who can protect us from Reid, Pelosi, Obama.

But it's rare to see a legislator so bluntly acknowledge that his votes aren't about his constituents.
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Oh, come on. Michael Bennett did it just last week

http://www.politico.com/blogs/politicolive/1109/Bennet_willing_to_sacrifice_seat_over_health_vote.html

Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) said Sunday that he will vote for landmark health care reform legislation even if it means he will be defeated at the polls next November.

"If you get to the final point and you are a critical vote for health care reform, and every piece of evidence tells you, if you support that bill, you will lose your job, would you cast the vote and lose your job? " CNN's John King asked Bennet on the "State of the Union" program.

"Yes," said Bennet, a former Denver public schools chief who was appointed to the Senate by Colorado's governor when President Barack Obama tapped Ken Salazar to be interior secretary.

King warned Bennet that the video of his vow would be sequestered in the event he is voted out next year.

"All right. That tape will be held -- I hate to tell you that, but that tape will be held right now," the CNN host said.