Nikki Haley posted this on her Facebook page this morning:
Today the legislature will come back in to take up our vetoes. We will report the votes on the many pork projects that we struck and let you know how legislators voted. They will also take up the removal of the Confederate flag. We ask everyone to remember the importance of respect during this debate. There are no winners or losers with this vote. Passions are running high but in the words of Cynthia Hurd “Be kinder than necessary.”
OK, she tarnished the shine on the message a bit by unnecessarily referring to things that a majority of lawmakers thought worthy of funding as “pork,” but this is a Facebook message, not a major policy address. Old habits die hard. But the rest of the message is something we should all heed.
I posted, in response to that, my thanks (again) for the governor’s leadership on this, and urged her to do what she can to prevent any effort to delay or to weaken the power of what we are about to do with any “compromise.”
You can be kind, and still insist upon doing the right thing.
But the being kind is important. In fact, it’s the main point here.
As I’ve said so often before, getting the flag down isn’t the goal in itself. When it comes down, if it comes down the right way — not in conflict, but in a consensus of unity — then it will show us that our state has come an amazingly long way in terms of our ability to respect each other and work together to accomplish things that up to this point, thanks to a lot of nasty impulses that have held our state back for its entire history, have proved intractable.
We are experiencing a moment that I did not expect, did not dare to dream of, in which the broad-based willingness to put all that stuff behind us and move forward finally exists. So be kind. And get it done.
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Some of it is pork- including some monies for things that weren’t even requested by those groups.
One person’s pork is another person’s job.
Which doesn’t mean it should be funded by the government, does it? Or should the Governor not be allowed to veto anything?
If she’s trying to be an effective advocate, slinging dismissive words like “pork” is not the way to do it. She can quietly veto whatever she likes.
Exactly! That’s what we keep telling the Germans!
Except it’s goats, not pork
Yeah, but I even hesitated to say anything about it, thinking I wasn’t being “kinder than necessary.” I mean, I did it by way of saying Nikki wasn’t being that either, but at some point it gets kind of petty.
Reminds me of an experience I had in, I want to say, 2nd grade, in the old days when we still had the morning prayer in public schools.
After the prayer, one of my classmates told on another, telling the teacher, “So-and-so had his eyes open during the prayer.” Of course, the teacher said, “How did you know?”
… which at the time seemed like devastating wit to me…