KP brings our attention to this breaking news:
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) – South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley said Monday she can’t back up claims that half of the people wanting work at the Energy Department’s Savannah River Site failed drug tests and half of the remainder couldn’t pass reading and writing tests.
Haley said in an interview with The Associated Press that she’s learned a lesson and is going to be more careful.
“I’ve never felt like I had to back up what people tell me. You assume that you’re given good information,” Haley said. “And now I’m learning through you guys that I have to be careful before I say something.”
Haley said she’d probably repeated “a million times” the story that about the test failures before being questioned about the assertions after a Lexington Rotary Club on Sept. 8. Her spokesman has been asked almost daily since then whether the claim could be substantiated…
Hey, if she has truly “learned a lesson,” I think that’s wonderful. And if she’s going to be more careful (and, dare we hope, thoughtful), that would be even better.
Hurray for the governor for admitting her error.
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Ah, spoken as a true representative of Unparty values. Respect without any cynical undertones. Now I’m sure somebody will make the assertion that the acknowledgement of error is politically motivated.
But as the Good Book says, ‘Love hopes all things . . . .” Even love of country.
The disturbing part for me is that she says she based policy on this anecdotal evidence that seems so obviously off the charts on the face of it that I can’t imagine building policy on it without scrutinizing the information. She’s just a mess. Where are the critical thinking skills here? (And, she says she still wants drug testing for the unemployed, even now knowing that the basis for this is bogus).
What she has been repeating is nothing short of gossip or the old “I know someone who knows someone who…”
Does she know the meaning of “fact-checker”?
I commend Governor Haley. Like you, I hope she will be more thoughtful.
Sadly, I can’t help having the feeling that this is an effort to get back into the good graces of the press after making such a glaring error (OK several glaring errors) recently.
In any case, it is refreshing to hear a politician admit to mistakes.
You mean if I told her that if she jumped off a cliff she would fly, she would just do it? Way cool.
“If she’s learned a lesson, that will be wonderful.” If I had 40 billion dollars, I’d be Warren Buffett. Get real, Brad. The governor only learns what she needs to know to succeed in electioneering; everything else is superfluous. She may not trust those whom she blames for giving her bum information, but I doubt she’ll be more careful in her statements in the future.
It won’t last. She’s a pathological liar.
@ Kathy Duffy Thomas: LOL, really
I truly don’t know if she’s that stupid that she can’t calculate how many people that would have to be, or the the cost of extreme hyperbole on our state’s image.
I actually think she’s a parrot—the “little girl” remark sounded like something she heard from some old guy circa Strom Thurmond vintage. The SRS remark sounds like something some eternally negative nabob said–we all know people like this, and she ran with it. I noticed it when I asked her a question at Columbia Rotary [insert trackback here]–she reflected back what I said.
She hasn’t admitted much. She hasn’t admitted that she has been happy to espouse an inaccurate belief that the unemployed deserve their fate (and do not deserve assistance from the government) because they are unworthy drug addicts and willfully uneducated. She hasn’t admitted that she listens to and repeats the destructive mantras of the far right uncritically because it serves her personal self-interest and that of her cronies. She hasn’t even begun to apologize for the errors of her ways. No brownie points from me.
That’s not how I read the article. The way I read it is that she is shifting the blame to other people, like she did with that “little girl” from the Post and Courier, Renee Dudley.
I said “Hurray for the governor.”
I should add, with greater emphasis, hooray for whoever was asking her spokesman “almost daily since then whether the claim could be substantiated.”
Because THAT’S why the truth came out. Or rather, that’s why the truth was admitted. I think we all had a pretty good idea what the truth was all along.
I don’t know who it was who stayed on them about it, but I suspect it was my good friend Jim Davenport of the AP, who was the reporter on this story. That sounds like him.
Or hopefully Bobby Hitt demanded some sense be shown? At least for the moment.
In my belief structure the governor ought to be the one riding heard. Something is better than nothing, however. Barely. Just barely.
http://www.theonion.com/articles/obama-visits-southcarolinaravaged-south-carolina,26114/
@ Mark
Riding “herd”? I think we’ve heard plenty from her.
She didn’t apologize. She blamed the error on someone else.
Well, yeah — but that’s just her little way.
What do you want, eggs in your beer? You take what you can get. This is progress…