wistv.com – Columbia, South Carolina |
On the last post, a reader called my attention to the video of the exchange, such as it was, between Nikki Haley and Gina Smith.
You really should watch it. It’s very short.
Our governor begins the Q and A by saying, “And we will now answer any questions you may have.”
The first question is from Gina. It’s rather involved. It takes about 13 seconds to ask it. The governor waits impassively until the end, and — almost, but not quite, before Gina gets her last word out, then says, “Gina, I’m not going to answer any of your questions. Anybody else?”
The first word that always pops into my head at these moments is “unprofessional.” But then it occurs to me that to folks who vote for people like Nikki Haley, “professional” is a bad thing. It smacks of being “a career politician,” and God forbid we should have people in positions of responsibility in government who know what they are doing! In choosing Nikki, they went deliberately for unprofessional, and that’s what they got.
So I fall back on “immature,” which works nearly as well.
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Another thing to consider here…
I don’t know what was going on just before this or right after. Perhaps the governor was actually engaging in real, grownup, governing business (possibly the rollout of her ethics reform package that she suddenly got interested in presenting).
It could, of course, have been something really serious and important. But when you act out like this, that tends to be all that people notice. Just FYI…
Yeah, I just looked more closely. It was indeed the ethics package. And here’s where it gets really, truly ironic…
THAT is what Gina was trying to ask her about. But instead of engaging, the governor throws her quiet little tantrum, and completely distracts from the ostensible reason for the gathering…
Brad you’ve certainly piled on to poor ole Nikki here. And with some pretty good reasoning. And of course we have the Akin idiot in MO who went from +6 to -10 vs Claire McCaskill in less than a week. Probably saved the Senate for the Dems. But what gets me is why be so selective when picking on the Republicans? They are all just so completely larded up with craziness. Mitt Romney may be the worst of all.
No, he isn’t. Romney is awesome compared to Nikki. And allow me to say here and now that Nikki is awesome compared to Todd Akin.
Individuals ARE different. If I could get everyone who reads me to internalize that one idea — that it’s not about party; it’s not about ideology; it’s about the character of the individual — I could die happy, because I really would have accomplished something worthwhile.
As for piling onto Nikki…
I haven’t even gotten to the post I’ve meant to write ever since reading the paper this morning, about Cindi’s column about Nikki’s utter disregard of the law in her pursuit of her policies.
THAT is substantive, and far more important than the gov’s little flare-ups with reporters. If an elected official doesn’t respect the law, then you’ve got nothing. But Corey got me distracted with this stuff…
It would be interesting to see how Haley reacted to the news that several major networks are not planning to cover the Republican Convention on Monday night, when she is scheduled to speak. I wonder if she’ll speak to anyone from the networks in the future?
Yeah, nothing happens on the Monday. Increasingly, attention focuses on the last two nights — especially the last night, when the nominee makes his big speech.
Larry Sabato today waxed nostalgic about the days, when he and I were young, and there were only three channels on the TV, and all of them covered the conventions gavel-to-gavel. If you watched TV, you watched the convention.
How well I remember. And how connected it made me feel to the process.
Now, vast numbers of Americans will instead be watching “Ice Road Truckers” or “Jersey Shore” or the like, because THAT, for whatever unfathomable reason, is what matters to them.
I wish you hadn’t gotten me to thinking about that. Stuff like this makes me not like this century…
Mitt is worse than Nikki. Here’s why. Haley at least has a set of core principals that she uses to govern. You may not agree with those principals (I don’t) but nonetheless we know where she’s coming from. She’s a hardcore tea partier who believes government should be smaller, taxes lower and laissez faire capitalism should be the overriding guiding principal of the American economy. She has always been opposed to government based healthcare. She has always been pro-life. She has always believed in reducing regulations and in an extreme interpretation of the second ammendment. Sure Haley is quirky in how she governs. And I probably don’t agree with anything she does regarding policy ideas. But she DOES have a core, guiding set of principals.
Mitt Romney has no principals at all. He lied his way through the Republican primaries and his opponents called him out on it repeatidly. And now he’s doing the same in the general. He has been on virtually all sides of all issues so we really don’t know what, if any, core convictions he has. As for transparency he is even less so than our governor, if that’s possible. His taxes must really be a doozy.
When all is said and done give me a politician who is wrong on the issues and quirky over a completely unprincipaled and dangerous scoundrel any day.
Brad, I too wax nostaligic from time to time but really the conventions are just not important and can be watched anytime. I’m sure you still can watch gavel to gavel if that’s what is really important to you. Frankly, as much a political junkie as I am the whole process seems a bit offputting so I doubt I’ll watch any of it live. Ice Road Truckers at least offers a bit of drama.
” It smacks of being “a career politician,” and God forbid we should have people in positions of responsibility in government who know what they are doing! ”
Is that what we have here in South Carolina? We have plenty of career politicians but based on the results, it’s difficult to see much competence. Well, unless you admire the ability to name roads after dead people or give yourself a very generous pension.
They know what they are doing, that’s for sure.
The next reporter should have just repeated Gina’s question (“what she said”) just to show solidarity. (Maybe they did — I didn’t see it).
It’s definitely immature, and probably counter-productive. Kinda funny, though.
As far as a different century, I’m not sure which one I would prefer.
Maybe it’s because I’ve been a father, and now a grandfather, for so long. But I see nothing amusing in such behavior.
And Bud, as for Nikki versus Mitt — I see it completely the other way, because Mitt is NOT an idealogue. It’s what made him the most acceptable among the GOP primary candidates.
More than anyone else, he was the pragmatist, the guy who wanted to be the “manager” of the United States. He wasn’t a True Believer in a bunch of half-formed, crackpot notions that bear little relationship to reality.
So yeah, I prefer Mitt to Nikki.
I think both Mitt and Nikki may have started out with good intentions but as Mae West said, they strayed.
Our ^**(3$## political system being what it is forces people with good intentions to adopt (perhaps adapt is a better word choice) to the extremes in order to get on the ballot.
As far as Nikki goes, it the good ol’ days the media would have agreed she did not follow the rules (media accurate, politician responsive) and would have collectively removed her name from the news columns and reports until she came back to the formula. We did this with Sheriff Frank Powell at The State back in the early 70s. We simply quit using his name, and anything he said or did was referenced as sources to the Richland County Sheriff’s Department. Which means he would hold a news kfc, and we would say that sheriff’s department sources said …
Nikki needs to see what happens and how lonely and frightenly it gets when the media goes away.
I’d love to see The State and other media start talking about Governor’s Office sources said today that Electrolux had made a major announcement, etc.
In a few days her highness would be begging for SC media mention. Right now she thinks that is a given, so she concentrates on a national audience.
Again, she is launching a lot of initiative as full-blown policy declarations, and is getting her behind handed back to her. The ol’ fashion way, of talking about it, of throwing up trial balloons, of letting politicians react in the news columns and the public in the letters to the editor … well, that worked.
Not sure “pragmatist” comes to mind when I think of Mitt Romney. Other words that do: panderer, political opportunist, flip-flopper, plutocrat, bully, opaque (as opposed to transparent), etch-a-sketch artist to name a few. I think of a pragmatist as someone who has core values but is willing to reconsider when presented with new facts and information that do not conform with those core values.
Mitt Romney merely goes with the flow regardless of the information at hand. Thus he is a panderer, not a pragmatist. Yesterdays drill baby drill speech is a perfectly good example of his pandering to the right wing extremists on that important issue. Virtually no mention of alternative energy sources or conservation. Any talk of energy independence by 2020 without a conservation/alternative energy component really is pie in the sky.
I see where you’re going, tired old man, but we need press oversight of the Would-be Dictator Governor! It’s not like we have a viable ethics oversight!
“Nothing sucks like Electrolux”
Kathryn, part of the reason press oversight works is that the politicians believe that the press is a force that impacts them.
Wicked Haley is of the opinion that what she thinks of herself enjoys primacy, and that she can distainfully dismiss the media as so many annoying gnats.
What I am suggesting is that the media ought to make her a pariah –they would still cover her administration as tehy should, but never refer to her by name.
Again, Wicked Haley did not hold a press kfc; instead, sources within the Governor’s Office said today that “Nothing sucks like Electrolux.”
You still have the press coverage; the spot light is on the event, not wicked haley.
And this whole biz of speaking at the GOP convention, well, let the national people cover it — the same media that are planning massive live cutbacks in coverage.
“… ” and God forbid we should have people in positions of responsibility in government who know what they are doing!” -Brad W.
Brad’s definition of “know what thet are doing”: lawyer-politicians.
Brad, is it really true that the only politicians during your voting lifetime that you ever favored have been lawyers or lackluster names unrecognizable to the (U.S.) general public at large?
By all the indications you give your readers it seems so. And since we do not believe you are careless, you may want to talk to someone about your obsession.
SC Governot Nikki Haley is the duly elected official and representative of South Carolina. She should answer all questions from the media, but as we have seen in past videos, she acts like the person doesn’t exist.
However, in this case, Governot Haley addresses Gina Smith by name. Ms. Smith had great questions that I wanted answers to.
Governot Haley is not Steve Spurrier where it could be his priviledge to ignore Ron Morris from The State. She is an elected official and as such, she should answer all media questions, not just those questions posted on her Facebook page where she mixes family life with politics.
Her parents should put their daughter over their knee and spank the living tar out of her for being rude and disrespectul to the citizens of South Carolina.