Palmetto politics

So, um, either this Nikki Haley person really gets around, or South Carolina politics really is that scuzzy.

Not that the two explanations rule each other out.

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You know what?

She’s hot, she does conservative (liberal) economics well, and so I don’t care.

[Youtube="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsXz0BjEG00"]

She could be pulling trains every night, and it wouldn’t change my vote.

That said, it does look like it could be a smear.

And she was pretty good at calling her opponent out:

[Youtube="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Dkrud8Yjok"]

So what the heck.  It could be untrue, and even if it’s true, she’s good at taking care of it.  I’m not married to the lady — I just want a good conservative governor who can kick some ass now and then.

Even if she’s the female version of Bill Clinton — and the scuzziness of these men would speak to that, if their stories were true (we’re talking Gennifer Flowers territory here) — I don’t care.  (And Lt. Gov. Bauer looks like a sleazebag, too.)

Looks like she’s the one.

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Anyway, the behaviour of the others in this case — “I won’t talk of it again.  Um, except for that book deal” — tends to support Haley’s side of it.

It’s just the sheer outrageousness/ballsiness of it — “Oh, I’m trailing in the polls against a mother of two — I know, I’ll have two of my staffers say they shagged her!” — that leads one to think, “there can’t be all this smoke without a fire”.  But of course there can.

Update:  One of my Republican friends said of this whole tawdry affair:

Oh for the love of Pete.  Our side doesn’t so much need a party chair and whatnot as they need a mean ol’ den mother.

No matter who’s telling the truth here, I think that’s wise counsel.

Update again:  Jim Geraghty has fun with it.

Perhaps the lesson is that when you look like this…  [/snip photo of Nikki Haley looking entirely too good for her own good]  … every rival male’s preferred method of taking you down a peg is to claim they’ve slept with you.

“Yes, I tearfully must admit that I, ruggedly handsome, irresistible cad that I am, proved to be too overwhelmingly attractive for the young, beautiful woman with a bright future to resist. I realize that by calling a press conference and telling everyone in the state, I am harming my reputation, but I am simply too honest to be quiet about how I am an utterly overwhelmingly seductive a tower of masculinity, and how a woman who looks like this could not pull away from my siren’s call.”

Heh.