Of course the state's top elected Republicans want to peel the S.C. Bureau of Senior Services away from the Department of Health and Human Services and hand it over to Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer. What politician who can count wouldn't want to politicize the agency that funnels millions in federal seniors money to the demographic group that most reliably votes on Election Day?

It's no surprise, as well, that some S.C. local councils on aging like the idea of replacing those stodgy bureaucrats at HHS with Bauer, 35. A politician slavering for elective office beyond the politically meaningless lieutenant governorship - especially one who's so young, so pliant, so eager to please - is a good guy to have as your personal bagman.

Indeed, this plan, up for legislative consideration this week, has such strong political legs that even Gov. Mark Sanford, that maven of transparency and accountability in government, has endorsed it. So much (for not, at least) for Sanford's quest to make such self-service spit-and-baling-wire transactions less commonplace in S.C. government.

As part of the deal, the separately elected Bauer's staff would go from three to 24. And his office budget would go up by $26.6 million in federal aging money from its current $240,000?

Can Bauer handle all that responsibility? We have no idea and neither, we suspect, do Sanford and the House and Senate conferees who this week will try to work out a compromise bill on the subject. That's what makes this proposal so scary.

Will a last-minute outbreak of reason - a what-are-we-doing? moment of clarity - forestall this truly bad idea from passage? Given the cynicism behind the proposal, we are inclined to doubt it. But we can always hope.