This morning, I found this on Twitter, it having been reTweeted by at least one party:
In case you’re too busy to read sanctimonious @BradWarthen blog on GOP guv field, let me sum it up: “Whatever! I hate them all!”
Nothing like knowing that all your careful, reluctant efforts to express difficult conclusions are being appreciated.
If you’ll recall, Rob’s been doing all he can to keep me straight, in his own gentle manner.
On Sunday, my former newspaper endorsed Henry McMaster in the GOP primary for governor. The piece was well argued, and contained points that I had forgotten regarding his record. The piece was based upon his record, of course, because nothing in his campaign would cause a reasonable person to want to support him. It wasn’t as persuasive as the endorsement the previous week for Vincent Sheheen, but it made the most of a sad situation. Nikki Haley wants to give us four more years of Mark Sanford (and she would, too — believe it). Gresham Barrett is an ill-defined candidate who seems to be the sum of partisan cliches. Andre Bauer is Andre Bauer.
If I had still been at the paper (where I always argued that we had to choose somebody), or had a gun to my head forcing me to choose one of the Republicans, I’d probably go with Henry, too. And I would base it on the hope that he would be a better governor — just as he has been a pretty decent attorney general — than he is a candidate.
But I’m not at the paper any more, and therefore don’t have that institutional obligation to express a preference regarding every electoral choice. And nobody has a gun to my head.
So I am free to say that the performance of all of the GOP candidates in this primary convinces me that it is critically important that none of them become governor. Perhaps the best way to put it succinctly is the way an outsider, Gail Collins of the NYT, put it yesterday:
The issues in the primary have basically been which Republican dislikes government most. During the Tuesday debate, Bauer claimed that illegal immigration was caused by lavish government welfare payments, which caused poor people to refuse to do manual labor. Haley bragged that she had opposed the federal stimulus program. The attorney general, Henry McMaster, who is currently suing to try to stop the federal government from bringing health care reform to South Carolina, attributed the failures of the state’s public schools to teachers’ being so busy “filling out federal forms that they can’t teach.”
Ms. Collins was being facetious (as usual), but there’s nothing in what she writes that is inaccurate. Basically, this has been a contest between four people who each want to seem the most ticked off at the very notion of government. And I’ve heard enough of it. This constant drip of negativity is depressing and counterproductive. It counsels hopelessness to people who don’t have much hope to start with as they contemplate what we’ve seen in the governor’s office in recent years.
We’ve had eight years of a governor who doesn’t believe in governing. It is an outrage, and an insult to the people of South Carolina, that candidates would seriously try to position themselves that same way. They should all be running against that bankrupt legacy, not competing to see who will inherit it.
I decided recently that I would not do endorsements on this blog, so the fact that I can’t bring myself to back any of these Republicans doesn’t mean much. But I’ve spent 20 years writing on the theme of the importance of gubernatorial leadership. As weak as the office is, it’s still the one position with a pulpit bully enough to make a difference, to try to break our state out of the ennui born of believing we’ll always be last where we want to be first, and first where we want to be last. For that reason, I think it’s critically important to speak out now, and often, on the subject of just how unsuited these candidates are to lead South Carolina out of its current political malaise.
It’s important because, party politics being what they are in this state, the Republican nominee starts out with an advantage, no matter how poor a candidate he or she may be. Unfortunately, too few white voters in South Carolina will even consider pulling the lever for a Democrat. But I want to urge those people to start considering broadening their horizons. I’m not asking them to become Democrats. God forbid; I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, any more than I would want to see anyone become a Republican. My disdain for both parties remains undiminished. But within each party, there are good candidates and bad ones.
And in this election, unless all probability is turned on its head and the super-flaky Robert Ford gets the Democratic nod, there is little question — from a disinterested, nonpartisan perspective of a knowledgeable person who cares about the future of this state — that the Democratic nominee will be someone FAR more likely to have a positive vision of the kind of leadership that a governor can provide in difficult times. And only someone with that sort of attitude can have a chance of doing any good.
There are no two ways about it. South Carolina needs and deserves better than what any of the Republican candidates are offering this year. The very last thing we need is more of the same.
THIS JUST IN:
Tim Pearson with the Nikki Haley campaign just sent me a message saying,
The Michael Haley twitter account you’re quoting on your blog is not Michael Haley. Just someone with too much time on their hands.
Tim
YIKES! Sorry about that.
In an earlier version of this post, I had announced that as of last night at 11:12, MichaelHaleySC had been following me on Twitter, and had posted the following:
One week everyone! Don’t forget to go vote for SC’s next Governor, Nikki Haley! I’d be honored to be your “first dude!”about 11 hours ago via webCheck out the campaign’s latest TV ad!……I might have made an appearance! http://www.youtube.com/user/nikkihaley2010#p/u/6/RsXz0BjEG00about 11 hours ago via webLarry Marchant is a liar, plain and simple. Thanks for all your prayers.about 1 hour ago via web
None of that struck me as the usual kind of spoof you see on Twitter, so I was taken in and actually thought it was from Mr. Haley.
Apparently not. Sorry. Thanks for the heads-up, Tim… assuming you ARE Tim…
This is too much. I had been sort of unplugged from the rumor mill for a few hours when my wife told me she’d half-heard something else on the telly about Nikki Haley, so I checked Twitter, and when I saw the names attached to the latest salacious allegation…
… I just said to myself, this is more than I can handle at the end of a long day.
Y’all talk about it if you want. Me, I’m going to hit the sack and hope that tomorrow brings us a higher quality of nasty rumor.
Remember what I wrote about Gresham Barrett in my last column for The State? Actually, it wasn’t the last column that ran in the paper, but it was the last I wrote. I’d already written the piece about Robert Ariail, who was leaving with me, and my “unfinished business” piece that ran the Sunday after we left.
But I was determined to get a Gresham Barrett column written, if only because I’d been frustrated trying to get ahold of the guy. I had decided to do a column on each gubernatorial candidate as he or she announced, and Barrett was the second to come along (I’d already written about Vincent Sheheen). I was doing this because I regarded the choice that voters would have to make in 2010 to be so important that I wanted to help the conversation along as much as I could — even if I weren’t around to do columns on any of the rest of the candidates.
The weird thing about this one was that I had been trying to get Barrett on the phone to interview him for a couple of weeks. That may not sound weird to you, but it was a unique experience for me in the 12 years that I served as editorial page editor of the state’s largest newspaper. I couldn’t remember when it took more than a few hours to reach anyone who was serious about wanting to be governor. It’s not that I was so special; it’s that they were that eager for the free media.
But I don’t think I’d ever have gotten Barrett if I hadn’t made a nuisance of myself. On that Wednesday morning, I told his aide B.J. Boling — who had always been so helpful when he handled media for the McCain campaign in 2008 — that this was it. I didn’t want this to be the last piece of mine ever to run in the state — I wanted it to be one of the other two previously mentioned. Which meant I had to reach him that day, and write it the same day for Thursday’s paper. Even then, B.J. was unable to get him on the horn until 5 p.m., which meant I had to make Cindi Scoppe stay late to read behind me. But I got it into the paper.
Since I was writing it in such a rush, I was wary of my own irritation with the candidate. So I held back from fully expressing just how unsatisfying that interview was, beyond noting that he was “light on details,” and that his “crowning achievement” from his time as a legislator in Columbia was a partial-birth abortion plan. That was the biggest thing he did, “absolutely, without a doubt.” Being a pro-life kind of guy, I’m all for such bans. But I would not list the need for one as being among the burning issues of South Carolina. Against the blank backdrop that his career seemed to me to be, that was pretty disappointing.
Beyond that, I dutifully listed each fact I was able to draw out of him, thin as it all was.
Anyway, I have since referred to just how blank a slate Mr. Barrett seems to me, and been taken to task by B.J. And I accepted service. He’s right; I haven’t interviewed the guy since. And with that in mind, I called B.J. the other day hoping to get some time with his candidate. But B.J. hasn’t called me back. He probably thinks I’m calling about something else.
Bottom line, since I haven’t talked with the guy for a year, I’m not qualified to judge. But I read with particular interest Cindi’s column last week in which she describes the results of a 90-minute interview with the guy:
I HAVE A HUGE problem with Gresham Barrett.It’s not his political positions or his rhetoric. It’s not even that frenetic thing he does with his hands in his TV commercial, though if I watched more TV ….It’s that I can’t figure out what I think about him.I can’t get a clear impression of what distinguishes him from his opponents. Even after he spent nearly an hour and a half with our editorial board earlier this month, answering every question I could think of to try to help me and my colleagues form some opinion, I came away empty. I wasn’t the only one who felt that way.This is both disappointing and bizarre.Disappointing because I had such high hopes for him. It’s no secret that I’ve been impressed with the job Henry McMaster has done as attorney general, and came into this campaign thinking he would be my favorite Republican. But when he went over the top on tax policy and I had that whole bizarre conversation wherein I couldn’t get him to give me a clear answer, and then he started blurring the line between candidate and attorney general, I started hoping for a better choice. Since I have had the least interaction with Mr. Barrett, and since the main thing I could recall his having done in the past few years was to change his mind and act like a grown-up by taking the least evil of the two horribly horrible positions on the TARP, he was the obvious place to pin my hopes.Bizarre because usually I get the most out of meetings with the candidates I know the least about. First impressions and all that.
So it’s not just me.
With me, you could chalk up a lack of results from an interview to my loose, let’s-see-where-this-goes style. But Cindi is a high-organized, task-oriented interrogator. She goes in determined to get answers to questions X, Y and Z, and woe to the subject that stands in her way.
So this struck me as interesting. Is Gresham Barrettt the Zelig of this campaign, the “curiously nondescript enigma” of 2010?
Shortly after I posted the thing about Henry’s “Vultures” ad, I came home, and in the mail was this flyer.
I’m just not believing Henry. He’s been such a sensible, grown-up attorney general after all those years of Charlie Condon’s pandering, and now this.
What office is he running for, anyway? Some office I’ve never heard of, some kind of super-sheriff to clean up Washington, and save it from Obama and the other godless commies?
“Our Founding Fathers Would Be Ashamed?” Yeah, I think maybe they would.
Let’s make the totally wild supposition, just for a moment, that the things he’s saying about Washington aren’t totally loopy. What on Earth does it have to do with the issues facing South Carolina?
Definitely not what we need in a governor.
I see that The State endorsed Vincent Sheheen Sunday, and made a good case. Presumably, that means the GOP endorsement will be this Sunday. The way things are going, I just don’t see how a credible case can be made for any of these folks. Not Henry, not in this mode. Not Nikki, the darling of BOTH the Tea Party and the Sanford crowd — and a sincere imitator of Sarah Palin. Certainly not Andre. That would seem to leave Gresham… who thinks we need an Arizona-style immigration law in SC.
I didn’t expect us to be here at this point. I figured by now, at least one of these folks would come across as acceptable, so that we could have a real choice in the fall. But most of them seem to be trying so HARD not to.
I hate to pick on Henry when he’s dealing with death threats — and I hope and pray that comes out OK for him — but I forgot to mention this after I saw it a couple of days back.
Have you SEEN that thoroughly outrageous new TV ad of his? After having put out a fairly reasonable piece recently (which contrasted nicely with some of the stuff his rivals were doing), he now comes out with yet another bid to out-extreme the other Republicans.
I would compare it to the infamous 1964 daisy petal/mushroom cloud ad, except it actually contains MORE radical distortion of reality. To quote from the text:
They’re circling…After bailouts and takeovers…The Vultures want more. Our healthcare… our hard earned money… our liberty. South Carolina’s sovereignty is under attack… by politicians preying on our freedoms. Henry McMaster is leading the fight for the conservative cause….
Say what? If I believed half this nonsense about the Dems in Washington (who are not, near as I can tell, running for SC governor, so why is Henry running against them?), I’d say it was time for SC to fire on Fort Sumter again.
But I don’t. And I don’t see how anyone could.
Just had lunch with Leighton Lord, who I hear (according to unpublished polls) is leading the GOP race for attorney general. As we were eating at the Palmetto Club, the news broke that Andy Brack’s Statehouse Report was endorsing him:
In the race for state attorney general, Columbia lawyer Leighton Lord stands out for his vital
management experience. The lead lawyer for bringing Boeing’s billion-dollar investment into the state, he has run a major law firm and knows how to oversee the needs of a multimillion dollar operation like the attorney general’s office.
Lord’s opponents tout their experience in the courtroom, but it’s rare for the state’s chief prosecutor to get before a judge or jury often. The attorney general’s role is, rather, to pull together the disparate roles of police, prosecutors and other legal entities as a team to fight crime and improve safety. Lord has the pragmatic credentials to get things done and make our state safer without simply locking up more prisoners and throwing away the keys.
That took some of the Republicans at the gathering aback somewhat (Andy Brack? Isn’t he a Democrat?), but Lord was pleased to get the boost.
The gathering was a lot like a Columbia Rotary Club meeting: Gayle Averyt was the host, and was joined by Laine Ligon, Jimmy Derrick, Crawford Clarkson, Martin Moore, John Denise, John Durst, among others. I was there as the guest of ADCO’s Lanier Jones, who had been invited by Gayle.
Now that I’m back at my laptop and can see the item, I see that Andy’s also endorsed Frank Holleman and Brent Nelsen for superintendent of education, and Converse Chellis for treasurer.
Kathryn called my attention to a piece in The Free Times about our fellow Rotarian Henry McMaster (“Henry McMaster: Slumlord Millionaire?”), and I moaned about how it was way too long to get to… not realizing that she wanted me to read it because she was quoted in it extensively. I’ll quote a portion of it, and you can go to The Free Times for the rest:
The whole spectacle regarding the McMasters and their lawsuit makes University Hill resident Kathryn Fenner bristle. She’s the vice president of the University Hill Neighborhood Association and serves on the city’s code-enforcement task force, a blue-ribbon committee that was set up to make recommendations on city ordinances.
Fenner has observed Peggy McMaster for years — Peggy sits on the board of the neighborhood association — and Fenner’s house is surrounded by five properties the McMasters own.Sitting in her modern, brightly colored, sun-lit living room with two large dogs playing around her, Fenner launches into an all-out assault on the way Henry and Peggy McMaster have handled their role as local landlords in the neighborhood. To her, their actions have been offensive.The McMasters, she says, have a don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy with their tenants regarding the city’s over-occupancy laws. As an attorney, she finds it laughable that Henry is appealing a zoning ordinance because she thinks he’s clearly ignoring precedent of the law.But that’s the thing with the McMasters, Fenner says: They have a sense of entitlement that allows them to act like complete hypocrites, apparently without even realizing they’re doing it.“I think that if you are supposed to be the chief law enforcement officer in the state, you probably shouldn’t be nodding and winking at lawbreaking,” she says.She’s speaking specifically about occupancy laws, which several tenants admitted to Free Times they were breaking but said they had a wink-and-nod agreement with their landlords about doing.Henry has fought hard against the city to keep on doing what he’s doing and several tenants are happy their landlords are going to bat for them — with good reason. The McMasters enjoy more rent money coming in and renters end up paying less individually.But it’s the way Henry has been doing it that bothers Fenner so much.In testimony he gave on his wife’s behalf to the zoning board in 2007, McMaster said, “The constitution says if you’re a single housekeeping unit you may not be the traditional family, but you’re a family just the same and you’re not hurting anything any more than a traditional family.”That really bothers Fenner, a self-described Democrat, who took umbrage to McMaster’s staunch, headline-grabbing opposition to same-sex unions when a constitutional amendment to ban state recognition of them was put on the ballot in 2006.“What offends me chiefly is the hypocrisy,” Fenner says. “The hypocrisy that we’re going to protect non-traditional families when we can make a buck out of it and we’re going to pillory non-traditional families when we can make political bucks out of it.”
First, let me answer a question of Bud’s:
THAT’s how fed up I am with tawdriness.
-BradThen why do you keep writing and talking about it? It’s your blog, you can ignore it.
Simple: No more important question lies before this blog than that of who will be our next governor. It is of supreme importance that we do a much, much better of choosing than we have in recent elections.
And there is one candidate who will come closest to exactly duplicating what we have now. That is Nikki Haley. Nikki Haley becoming governor is the single worst likely outcome we could have in this election. So anything that bears upon her chances is important.
And you know what? I think this sordid nonsense is helping her. Which brings me to a rather silly conspiracy theory: What if this is Will Folks’ way of helping Nikki Haley get elected?
Frankly, I don’t believe Will is capable of that kind of sublety, that level of subterfuge, “a feint within a feint within a feint.” So put me on record as not believing what I’m supposing here.
But the weird thing is that nothing else fits the facts — nothing other than simply believing Will when he says he was backed into making this revelation by The Free Times, and didn’t intend for it to cause such a splash.
Nikki says he’s lying. She denies the revolting allegation categorically. And when it comes to a “he-said, she-said” contest between Will Folks and a lady, I choose to believe the lady.
But that creates another problem. If she’s the one telling the truth, that means he’s lying outright. And answer this: What would be his motivation? I do not doubt for a moment that Nikki Haley IS his preferred candidate; no one else would even come close. Will might not seem to believe in much, but near as I can tell, to the extent that he believes in anything, it’s the anti-government extremism that Mark Sanford and Nikki Haley embody.
So why would he lie (if indeed he is lying) to harm her? I can’t imagine why.
But what if lying helps her? What if telling a loathsome lie, one meant to be seen through, is intended to play to the paranoia of her base, the people who cheer loudest for Sarah Palin when she’s cheerfully complaining about how elites pick on her? Those folks won’t distinguish between Will and the “liberal media.” They won’t care that the MSM is being led along as helpless as a child on this (they can’t ignore something that affects Nikki’s viability any more than I can), by someone who can only be credibly described as a Haley ally — someone who is, indeed, a “conservative” by their definition of the word.
Nikki loves playing Joan of Arc at the stake, the pure one being persecuted by the corrupt powers that be. This is her idiom, her strong suit. Not to mention the fact that this has sucked up all the political oxygen for two days at a critical time in the campaign, and right as she is at the height of her strength.
Anyway, bottom line: I don’t believe in this conspiracy theory, even as I present it to you. (And it will be easily exploded the minute Will presents credible support for his allegation, if he has any.) But I don’t believe in any of the other explanations, either. Maybe by throwing this one out there, it will cause someone else to think of an explanation that truly fits the facts, one that makes us all go, “Oh yeah!” and set this thing aside.
So that we can go back to considering Nikki Haley on her merits. That way, I think South Carolina comes out ahead.
As if things weren’t tawdry enough this week, my attention is being called to this video making fun of various SC GOP scandals.
A friend who is a highly responsible professional still employed by the staid, set-in-its-ways MSM brought it to my attention because she thought she knew her scandals, but couldn’t place all the faces in this video.
Neither can I, which makes me sort of proud. Can you?
This just in from the state Chamber of Commerce:
SOUTH CAROLINA CHAMBER OF COMMERCE ENDORSES HOUSE CANDIDATES AHEAD OF PRIMARIES
Columbia, S.C. – The South Carolina Chamber of Commerce, the state’s largest broad-based business organization, is pleased to announce the endorsements of the following House of Representative candidates who have primary challengers.
District 2 – Bill Sandifer, (Oconee)
District 10 – Dan Cooper, (Anderson)
District 17 – Harry Cato, (Greenville)
District 26 – Henry Wilson, (Pickens)
District 35 – Keith Kelly, (Spartanburg)
District 36 – Rita Allison, (Spartanburg)
District 38 – Joey Millwood, (Spartanburg)
District 39 – Marion Frye, (Saluda)
District 41 – Boyd Brown, (Fairfield)
District 55 – Jackie Hayes, (Dillon)
District 61 – Lester Branham, (Florence)
District 62 – Robert Williams, (Darlington)
District 75 – Jim Harrison, (Richland)
District 80 – Jimmy Bales, (Richland)
District 83 – Bill Hixon, (Aiken)
District 84 – Roland Smith, (Aiken)
District 86 – Jim Stewart, (Aiken)
District 87 – Todd Atwater, (Lexington)
District 98 – Chris Murphy, (Dorchester)
District 106 – Nelson Hardwick, (Horry)
District 112 – Mike Sottile, (Charleston)
District 123 – Richard Chalk, (Beaufort)
“South Carolinians who want good jobs and a strong economy should proactively support pro-business candidates,” said Otis Rawl, president and chief executive officer of the South Carolina Chamber of Commerce. “Candidates endorsed by the South Carolina Chamber of Commerce have demonstrated their support for priorities that support a strong economy and a competitive Palmetto State. These House candidates are committed to representing the people in their respective districts who each need good jobs, a competitive state economy and a pro-prosperity working environment to ultimately raise their individual incomes.”
The Chamber will issue further House endorsements after the primaries on June 8. In the race for governor, the Chamber has endorsed Gresham Barrett (R) and Vincent Sheheen (D). Visit www.scchamber.net for more information.
What do all of these candidates have in common? They’re all incumbents, or running in races without an incumbent. In District 26, incumbent Rex Rice is running for Congress; in District 87, Nikki Haley is running for governor; and in District 98, Annette Young is not seeking re-election.
It’s a shame the Chamber didn’t dig a little harder to make some real discernments (or at least give us some reasoning for its choices in the cases where there was no incumbent), because endorsements such as this WOULD mean more than usual this year, if they’d only put some thought into it. That’s because we won’t be getting an such fodder for thought from The State. This year, my former paper is only endorsing for governor, attorney general and 5th circuit solicitor, near as I can tell. And that leaves a big vacuum. I wish I could fill it, but I’m only one guy. And despite what that Lois Lane keeps saying, I am NOT Superman.
Here are links to some of the things being written today as a result of one SC blogger essentially saying of a female candidate, “Yeah, I tapped that.” (What, you know of a classier way to put it? Please share, because I’m at a loss as we all go swirling down the flushing toilet together in this sordid mess.):
Yes, the Wonkette. And ironically, the much-maligned (by me) Wonkette actually tries to responsibly answer the question, “Who should we trust?” (which of course should be “whom,” but why quibble?) and turns to my staid old newspaper to get the scoop on said blogger. Which is just weird. This disgusting mess is weird on so many levels…
By the way, Howard Kurtz shows he really doesn’t know South Carolina when he writes:
A year ago South Carolina wouldn’t have even been in the top half of my list of states with the craziest politics. But in the interim a lot has happened, and South Carolina is now in my top 10 and after this morning’s developments it’s making a strong bid for top 5.
I feel like he’s dissing us suggesting there might be four other states vying as hard as we are to be an insane asylum.
We are in a class by ourselves.
Man oh man, there’s just no ignoring this loathsome story, as everyone gets in on the act:
COLUMBIA, SC (WIS/AP) – Nikki Haley took to the airwaves Monday afternoon to “emphatically” deny a political blogger and former Sanford aide’s claim that he had a romantic relationship with the Republican gubernatorial candidate in 2007….
… The Columbia Free Times has “been investigating a story involving an alleged affair between Haley and Folks for several weeks,” and on Monday cited an unnamed source who claimed Folks privately admitted the affair in 2009. “Furthermore, the source … says former Haley staffer B.J. Boling told him Haley had confided in him about the affair around the time Boling was working on her House reelection campaign in 2008,” the Free Times reported.State Republican Party Chairwoman Karen Floyd criticized the media for covering the story at all, saying in a statement, “South Carolinians deserve a higher level of political discourse than this, and they frankly deserve a press corps that focuses on real, substantive issues rather than on Internet rumor mongering.” Palin also lambasted the “lamestream media” as she defended Haley on Facebook Monday afternoon.
“I’ve been there,” Palin wrote. “Any lies told about you will strengthen your resolve to clean up political and media corruption. You and your supporters will grow stronger through things like this.”
Clue for Sarah Palin: The Free Times is NOT the MSM. It may be a lot of things, good and bad, but it’s not that. I suppose she’s color-blind in that range. But then, she doesn’t read a lot, I hear…
You know, I don’t know if I can abide seeing one more mailer (such as the one above that came in the mail today) or yard sign trumpeting to the world that the candidate in question is a “Conservative Republican.”
You know, as opposed to all those liberal Republicans running around over here in Lexington County.
This is not new, but in the era of Nikki Haley and the Tea Party (which I’m considering using as the name of my new band, if Nikki will agree to front it), I’m hearing it more and more. And in the more extreme cases, such as with Nikki herself, “Conservative” is being touted as something apart from Republicans, mere Republicans not being worthy, you see.
Set aside the appalling notion that to the voters these folks are reaching out to, ordinary South Carolina Republicans just aren’t right-wing enough. I mean, think about that for a minute…
That’s long enough. Thankfully, S.C. Democrats aren’t given to this sort of redundancy, this rococo gilding of the ideological lily. If I saw one sign in my community that claimed to be for a “Liberal Democrat,” I believe I’d run for the hills. That would be just one extremism too many for me.
Remind me, if I run for office, to put “liberal republican” or “conservative democrat” (note the lower case; God forbid I should be mistaken for an adherent of one of those granfalloons). And I think I’ll refer to my opposition as “fascist anarchists,” to use Ferris Bueller’s term.
Anything for a little variety.
The other day, a reader made the following observations about Nikki Haley here on the blog:
For Haley, a bad day. The tea party simply has not caught on. Haley cannot turn the numbers out nor can she draw the bucks in (with the exception of Mark Sanford’s Club for Growth disreputably non-transparent $400k contribution)….
But on Saturday morning, May 15, 24 days out from the primary, Haley is visably collapsing. Mark Sanford’s cash will make an effort to prop her up, but you can stick a fork in her. She’s done.
I thought that reader was dead wrong, and that the opposite was true, but rather than spend time arguing on that thread, I wrote another post in which I went on at great length about how depressing I found her rally with Sarah Palin to be. I felt that I was watching a candidate coming into her own, surging in confidence and energy. (And the depressing thing is that that is bad news for South Carolina, and I sincerely doubted my ability to persuade her supporters of that — they seemed immune to reason.) But it was just a gut thing, based on all my years of experience. I had no way to back it up.
Until now. This just in from Rasmussen:
With South Carolina’s Republican Primary for Governor less than three weeks away, State Representative Nikki Haley, coming off a fresh endorsement by Sarah Palin, now leads the GOP pack.
A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Republican Primary voters shows Haley earning 30% support. She’s followed by State Attorney General Henry McMaster who picks up 19% and Congressman Gresham Barrett with 17%. Lieutenant Governor Andre Bauer captures 12% of the vote.
Three percent (3%) prefer some other candidate in the race, but nearly one-in-five potential primary voters (18%) remain undecided.
The new findings mark a dramatic turn of events for Haley who ran fourth in March with just 12% support.r McMaster earned 21% of the vote at that time, with Bauer at 17% and Barrett at 14%.
Of course, from a national perspective, it would look like the deciding factor was Sarah Palin. But there’s a lot more going on than that. Some reasons why I’m not a bit surprised at these poll numbers:
So now, Nikki Haley is the candidate to beat in the GOP race for governor. And I’m not surprised.
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) – A South Carolina judge has ordered a political group spending heavily to promote Republican gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley to pull its television ads supporting her campaign.
Spartanburg County Judge James M. Hayes issued the order Wednesday at the request of Haley primary opponent U.S. Rep. Gresham Barrett and three donors to ReformSC….
Did you see that coming? I didn’t. I sort of thought the Mark Sanford allies at ReformSC were going to keep getting away with pumping $400,000 into Nikki’s campaign.
As for the legal issues involved, here’s an excerpt from an earlier story by The State‘s John O’Connor:
A rival of Republican gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley said television ads featuring the state representative and purchased by an outside group might violate state election laws.
Terry Sullivan, campaign adviser to gubernatorial candidate U.S. Rep. Gresham Barrett, said the campaign is studying whether the ads, featuring Haley and her signature issue of roll-call voting in the Legislature, violate state election laws. The chairman of the group running the ads, ReformSC, said he was “very comfortable” with their content….
Third-party advertising, such as that by ReformSC, a 501(c)(4) educational nonprofit, is a gray area in politics. Such groups are limited in what they can say about candidates, with a distinction drawn around ads using so-called “magic words” such as “vote for” or “vote against.” Those rules have been clouded by recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions, including a 2007 decision involving a Wisconsin right-to-life group. That decision requires issue ads “take no position on a candidate’s character, qualifications, or fitness for office,” among other requirements.
Such third-party groups are also forbidden from coordinating with campaigns.
ReformSC chairman Pat McKinney said the group has followed its attorney’s advice, and that the Haley campaign was not aware the group was filming or airing the ads. Haley spokesman Tim Pearson said the campaign did not know of the ads, or that the tea party rally was being filmed. Haley’s appearance at the rally had been advertised for several weeks.
Just thought I’d bring to your attention Cindi Scoppe’s calm, rational, even-handed take on the Nikki Haleys we have come to know — the appealing, breath-of-fresh-air neophyte lawmaker (vestiges of whom we still see today) and the demagogic ideologue seeking to carry the Mark Sanford banner into South Carolina’s future (which we see far too much of these days).
The value in reading Cindi’s column is that it is rich in specifics, listing Nikki’s positions on quite a number of issues. That’s something you don’t get so much from me. I form a holistic impression of a candidate or an issue, and hold forth on the conclusions I’ve reached. Cindi shares her reporting, point by point. When we went into an editorial board meeting with a candidate, Cindi would have a list of specific questions, so that she could test the candidate against specific positions that we held. I would ask the candidate to start talking (telling us whatever he or she deemed most important), and I would ask questions suggested by what I heard. It made for good teamwork. Cindi made sure we touched all the important bases; I explored unanticipated territory to learn things we would not have learned taking the purely task-oriented approach.
So it is that I think it’s valuable for you, the wise reader, to set my own rambling gestalten observations beside Cindi’s businesslike approach as you move along your own journey in making up your mind about Nikki Haley.
So, without violating Fair Use (I hope), I invite you to go read Cindi’s entire column, which goes from the good…
… She is charming, engaging and smart. She is refreshingly passionate and energetic and not about to put up with the games at the State House. She can explain problems in a way to get voters fired up (“It’s just wrong; it’s wrong all day long,” she says of school administrators’ opposition to a bill that would cost them money by jerking the junk food out of schools). That’s no small thing in a state as apathetic as ours.
She’s all about comprehensive reform — of the tax code, of the executive branch of government, of the school funding system — and her support for those vital changes predates her campaign, and seems far more heartfelt than her GOP opponents….
… to the bad…
… These relatively minor misrepresentations are merely the ones that jumped out at me in a single meeting with our board, and this pattern is disturbingly similar to Mr. Sanford’s signature approach: Take a legitimate problem that’s a bit too complicated or wonky to appeal to the masses, and tart it up to make it look like something it’s not.
Ms. Haley is rigidly ideological. All the Republican candidates support taxpayer-funded “choice” for private schools, but only she would veto a bill expanding public school choice if it didn’t help prop up private schools. All opposed the federal stimulus, but only she opposed accepting the money that we’re on the hook to pay for regardless, because doing so blew the “opportunity” to force the Legislature to make structural reforms….
… to this conclusion:
…When I first met Ms. Haley in 2004, I found her a bit green. But she clearly had a good head on her shoulders and was one of the best new candidates we met that year. As I wrote in our first endorsement of her, she was “so focused on keeping an open mind and being persuaded by facts rather than personality, preconceived notions and party dogma that she’s bound to make smart choices,” and “what she calls a business-like approach strikes us as merely a commonsense, proactive approach that people of any political persuasion should be able to take for granted.”
I wish the Nikki Haley who’s running for governor reminded me more of that person and less of Mark Sanford….
Sorry I haven’t posted yet today, and now I’m rushing off to lunch. But to give y’all something to chew on, I thought I’d share Lindsay Graham’s fairly positive report on his meeting yesterday with Elena Kagan:
Graham Meets with Supreme Court Nominee
WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) today made this statement after meeting with Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan. Graham is a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“Ms. Kagan is not someone a Republican president would have chosen for a position on the Supreme Court. However, the questions the country and Senate will be required to answer are whether she is qualified for the job, possesses the appropriate temperament, and whether her judicial philosophy is within the mainstream of American jurisprudence. It is very important for a nominee to understand the difference between the role of a judge who interprets the law and an elected official who writes the law.
“We had a good meeting and discussed her qualifications and background in the law. We also discussed legal issues related to the War on Terror and positions she has taken in her position as Solicitor General. On many of these issues, we found common agreement.”
Judicial Experience:
“I do not believe that prior judicial experience is a prerequisite for sitting on the Court. Some of the most distinguished justices in history, such as the former Chief Justice of the United States William Rehnquist, did not have prior experience.
“However, Ms. Kagan’s lack of a judicial record will make the hearings even more important. Because she has no judicial decisions to review, her writings and opinions on issues regarding the law will be closely scrutinized. These documents will provide the committee and country a window into her judicial philosophy, qualifications and temperament.
On Military Recruitment:
“Ms. Kagan explained to me that any position she took regarding military recruitment at Harvard should not be taken as a lack of respect for the U.S. Armed Forces. She noted that her father was a World War II veteran. I take her at her word that she respects the military and our men and women serving in uniform.”
#####
Apparently, he did NOT ask her for her views on softball. That Lindsey Graham is all business…
Just got this release from our friend Phil Bailey:
Senator Leventis Condemns Attack on Spratt
Sumter, SC – South Carolina Senator Phil Leventis (D-Sumter) today condemned the National Republican Congressional Committee for their attack on Congressmen John Spratt. NRCC spokesman Andy Sere attacked Congressman Spratt by implying that his “memory must be failing him” and calling him “Amnesiac John” in a press statement on Monday.
Senator Leventis issued the following statement:
“Statements like that should have no place in our political debate. To denigrate a man who has committed much of his adult life to serving his state and his country is troubling. This type chicanery has no place in a public forum. No one from the National Republican Congressional Committee lives here and none of them would call a family or friend amnesic just because they have a disease which is well controlled.”
“It’s not the dog in the fight, it’s the fight in the dog. My good friend, Congressman Spratt, has one of the keenest minds in the Congress. His understanding of complex issues and ability to navigate the halls of government has served our state well. And disgusting comments like the ones from the Republicans are to be condemned.”
###
Amen to that.
This episode aside, I get really tired of John Spratt having strong opposition every two years, no matter what. That sounds really undemocratic of me; I know. Doug would say I’m defending perpetual incumbency, and it’s a good thing when these “career politicians” have opposition to keep them on their toes. But I say it for these reasons:
So that’s why I get tired of it. All that money spent, all that energy, every two years, just because Washington Republicans want another hashmark in their column.