I sort of do. If you look at all the trends of the last couple of weeks — the ads from ReformSC, the Palin endorsement, the sympathy-generating scandals, the even-more-sympathy-generating ethnic slur, poll after poll with her numbers higher in each (which is something that feeds on itself), the constant free media (hey, all she needs is that they spell her name right) while her opponents fade into the background (or air embarrassing commercials, such as that awful Gresham Barrett one with the drill sergeant), and the fact that, independent of all that, Nikki Haley has just felt like a candidate with the Big Mo for weeks now (she was the most poised and confident I’ve ever seen her at that Palin rally)…
I feel like she’s peaking, and could surpass 50 percent tonight. Do y’all sense that?
Of course, the odds are slightly against it, but there’s a good chance.
It also occurs to me that Vincent Sheheen might do the same, but that’s more doubtful. His rise in the polls has been quieter and far less meteoric. Force me to bet, and I’d bet he’s in a runoff, which he will win. But Nikki? She just might win the whole thing today…
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“such as that awful Gresham Barrett one with the drill sergeant”
Actually, a lot of people thought that was his best ad… I dunno…
She is definitely peeking though… she was the #1 search trend on yahoo earlier and is still up there now… her website was crawling earlier…
http://www.yahoo.com/
I hope she wins and starts broadening her message a bit…
I’m going to predict a Haley win but with only 40%. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that Andre will somehow finish second or a close third. Name recognition counts. McMaster will finish fourth.
Sheheen will win easily. Rex had several years to demonstrate his leadership ability in state wide office and all he seemed able to do was blame Mark Sanford and non-existent vouchers for not being able to show any improvement in the schools.
I’ll go out on a limb Haley and Sheheen will get more than 50%. Haley just seems to have all the momentum. As for Sheheen, in a 3 way race the number 3 guy (is it Ford?) just doesn’t seem to be polling much of anything. It will probably go something like this:
Sheheen – 55%
Rex – 40%
Ford – 5%
Haley – 51%
McMaster – 25%
Barrett – 15%
Bauer – 9%
Yeah, yarrr (do you mind if I call you “yarrr”?), I think Nikki went viral in the few days before the Sarah Palin rally, and she’s just been building momentum ever since.
As for the drill sergeant thing… an ad exec friend had mentioned it to me, and talked about how it made her cringe with embarrassment for him, so I saw it for the first time last night with that in mind… and agreed. Yeah, I know he was going for cornball humor, but he really missed the mark…
As for the “broadening her message” thing … it’s going to be VERY interesting to see how she moves after getting the nomination. It’s a challenge for someone who’s been running hard to the right of the GOP portrays to move to the middle without risking losing her base…
But here’s how I think she’ll do it: She’ll do a Sanford and emphasize her government-reform platform as a way to appeal to independents (hey, it worked for Sanford in 02 — he fooled ME) and leave all the “I’m a conservative’s conservative’s conservative” stuff in the can. She’ll play up her heritage and the “raghead” comment, and might even get some soft-hearted liberal support. In fact, she’ll get a lot of votes from the kind of people who will vote for her just because she’s a woman. She’ll play all those cards, and can do so without alienating her base. And maybe she can still attend an occasional Tea Party rally and through them some red meat, with a winning smile.
The drill sgt ad was very bad. But at least he made some itsy bitsy attempt to say what he stands for. (Mind you this is a very low bar I’m setting). The worst ad was the one with Sarah Palin describing Nikki Haley as pro-life, pro-second amendment, common-sense conservative. Those weasel word ads just turn me off completely.
Doug, that’s grossly unfair to Rex. I don’t think I’ve heard him whine or complain or blame anyone else for anything. Instead, he’s responded to the school “choice” movement by greatly expanding PUBLIC school choice.
Beyond that, he’s formed some impressive working relationships with such people as Tom Davis, the governor’s former chief of staff and now senator. They’ve worked closely on ways to improve school funding.
Nobody has any room to complain about the job Rex has done, and I would have been glad to give him my vote — except I like Sheheen more, as I explained previously.
How many more years did Rex need to show improvement in the dropout rate?
What specifically has he done to improve schools?
He did cancel the PACT test conveniently when the results could no longer be spun to try and claim improvement. PACT testing proved to be another waste of millions of dollars and classroom instruction hours with no result. Students are still dropping out of high school at rates worse than nearly every other state in the country. No matter how many public choice options you give, it hasn’t made a difference. And every new public choice option means another set of administrators pulling money out of the classroom.
Rex’s tenure has been a failure. He has nothing resembling the support Inez had from teachers — why do you think that is? He did nothing to improve teacher pay, cut overhead, consolidate school districts, slow social promotion… he did find lots of tax dollars to hand over to consultants, though… especially his campaign staff.
Rex in his own words blaming Sanford:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-rex/a-leadership-vacuum-in-so_b_187833.html
And here’s one guy you know well who’s making a nice living off the taxpayers:
February 2009 Department of Education Spending:
Payee Transaction Date Amount
ZEKE STOKES LLC 2/18/09 $5,400.00
ZEKE STOKES LLC 3/2/09 $2,470.00
Nice work if you can get it, huh? That’s one month.
Where do we go to see the work products that were a result of nearly $8000 of taxpayer money?
I know you don’t like details and prefer to go with the 50,000 foot view of the world but these types of things matter to some people.
Well, he’s never complained about him to me, and you think he would, if to anybody.
I’ll be glad to devote a separate post to the subject later, though, if we could go back to discussing Nikki’s chances tonight. I mean, you know, I’m not supporting Rex here; I’m for Sheheen. And there’s interesting stuff going on at the moment…
… besides, Doug, I just went and looked at the piece you referenced. That was about the stimulus. Geez, EVERYBODY, Democrats and Republicans, was on Sanford’s case about THAT. That wasn’t him whining about what you said. He only mentioned vouchers and such in passing (and was dead right in what he said).
But anyway, as I say, we’re off on a tangent here…
Sheheen – 61%
Rex – 28%
Ford – 11%
Haley – 52%
Bauer – 20%
McMaster – 17%
Barrett – 11%
I don’t know, y’all, but wishful thinking aside, I think Nikki’s numbers tonight will be bigger than Vincent’s. She’s peaking right NOW…
Nikki is going to the bank. I dont see a run-off. I see her and Mr Sheehan head to head in the fall which will be a *very* hard choice to make. And I used to call myself ‘conservative’ ……