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EDITOR OF REDSTATE

Lynching Nikki Haley

“They’ve strung up Nikki Haley — skipping the issues, skipping the ethics, skipping experience, and going straight to calling her a whore. But they’ve shown nothing.”

It was Clarence Thomas who talked about the high tech lynching the left put him through during his confirmation battle. The left went straight for the pubic hair on the coke can — forget everything about his qualifications, intelligence, or jurisprudence. He had to be stopped.

Down in South Carolina we are seeing another one. Pulling the noose ever tighter, stringing everyone along, the good old boys in South Carolina don’t want the uppity Indian lady becoming Governor because she’s made life too miserable for them.

So we’re having a high tech lynching with Will Folk’s pulling the noose. The media is playing along because they love the spectacle of lynchings, even when they say they don’t. It’s payback time and a ratings bonanza all rolled into one.

There’s no evidence. Will Folks says he has it. Of course he said he wasn’t going to say any more about it and now he won’t shut the hell up. He dribbled out some text messages that prove nothing other than that there is a rumor and Nikki Haley’s campaign staff was intent on minimizing any damage Folks could do.

Will Folks gets higher traffic to his website. The media is making him a wealthier person. More traffic to his site means more ad revenue. And the lynching continues. Let’s not even get into the question of whether he is being paid by another campaign to pursue this.

It’s time to call the bluff. They’ve strung up Nikki Haley — skipping the issues, skipping the ethics, skipping experience, and going straight to calling her a whore. But they’ve shown nothing.

Meanwhile the allies of Henry McMasters, Gresham Barrett (who has multiple campaign staffers clearly involved in this sordid mess), and Andre Bauer are cheering on this lynching — grand masters of the farce with not one bit of Southern charm or chivalry to say any of this goes too far. They want to see the Indian lady taken down. You know what the sad thing is? Even if Folks has evidence, even if we find out that after a week of slowly stringing up Nikki Haley and distracting the campaign this clearly disturbed individual is telling the truth, Haley is still a better candidate and leader than any of the rest.

So the radioactive Will Folks, who lied to the campaign about his intentions, lied to us in saying he would only make one statement, and lied to Haley in his own text messages, needs to stop lying and produce the evidence. Do that, or shut the hell up. The spectacle of going straight for the whore attack may be the only way to shut down Nikki Haley’s campaign momentum, but let’s do as Folks’s said he was going to do — put the chips on the table and be done with it.

In the meantime, why talk issues and qualifications when the press can swing her from the ink stained pages of what used to be a tree.

COMMENTS

  • jeffreywturner

    Could this be perhaps, so that they are impossible to disprove?

    All I have seen so far is a bunch of nonsensical sentences that are alleged to be from people (not Nikki herself mind you) familiar with the rumor, and I suspect we will continue to see such meaningless drivel ion the days to come in order to milk the attention for as long as possible.

    Unless I see an email that is VERIFIABLY from Nikki herself, in which she says something like “Thank you for the night of passionate sex”, then I don’t buy it.

    So, let’s just recap, if Will Folks is telling the truth and did knowingly violate another man’s wife, then he is a c*nt and a douchebag. However, if he is lying about it to smear her, then he is a c*nt and a douchebag.

    Seems to me, no matter what, Will Folks is a c*nt and a douchebag.

  • Hugh

    candidates lives under a micrscope. No telling what you would find. Maybe it’s time to move on to more important matters like who can best be the Chief Executive Officer for the state. Lord knows they need a fresh approach to the old way of backroom management. My advice to McMasters, Barrett, & Bauer is be careful in your glee. Hope you don’t have anything to hide.

  • earlgrey

    We have had a few scandals here (and since this is a democrat leaning area you can guess what party has been involved in MOST of the scandals). Tennessee Waltz being the biggest embarassment.

  • http://itsaboutfreedom.proboards.com IronDioPriest

    It may be that she indeed had an extramarital affair. We simply don’t know. But we DO know that people do it all the time, regardless of their ideology or their public persona. How many times have we been disappointed to learn that a “family values” politician is a lying, cheating POS? This wouldn’t be the first time.

    Of course we want to defend a good woman if she is innocent of what she is being accused. Circling the wagons is the natural thing to do here, especially since it appears at this point that the accusations have no merit.

    But the flip-side of that is people looking awfully foolish if it turns out that she has indeed done what she is accused of.

    Jus’ sayin’.

  • tngal

    The worst thing they’ve got on her is being a conservative.

  • streiff

    does have a downside. I think we’ll just have to take that chance.

  • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine
  • dave2131

    However, think of how awesome of a plan this was. I mean, with the disgraced Mark Sanford going down in flames because of an affair, what better way to tear down Nikki than by claiming she had an affair too. Because in politics you can get away with anything, except one thing…Having an affair – well if you are a conservative…Democrats don’t have to worry about that.

    In this country it doesn’t matter if there is proof or not. The media is all over it – the country is watching. She’s a whore now, who doesn’t love her kids.

    I hate it. I don’t believe it. I will support Nikki. She’s been Palenized now.

    How do you beat it? It doesn’t matter that there’s no proof. How do you change the minds of the people who are too ignorant to see the play here?

  • http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

    Which I tend to read as “I’m going to throw a bomb but don’t ask me to back it up.”

  • http://www.erickerickson.org Erick Erickson

    why?

  • earlgrey

    Who looks more credible? Who has the most to gain? If it was true she would have been better off admitting to it and moving on.

  • liberty131911

    too bad that embarrassed his supporters and damaged his political career……

    Jus’ sayin’

  • hickorystick

    with the “he has a black baby” lie. I guess when your state has the lowest high school graduation rate in the Union, political fact gathering has to be done orally. This is the first state I would like to dump from the Republican likely R list. The Dems can have them (except for the governorship). Maybe that’s what they are really afraid of. If Nikki Haley wins, their children may have to be educated. SC, your kid being the first to graduate from high school in your family, doesn’t have to be a mark of shame.

  • http://hillbillypolitics.com Steph C

    I don’t see the argument except for absolute purists who aren’t very pure themselves while expecting perfection in others.

    We are human, we have failings, and often do things that are against our beliefs. That’s why God’s grace is important to our salvation.

    Besides, focusing on such things, gives the statists only more opportunity to kill our personal pursuit of: life, liberty, and happiness.

    I think I would remind people of the Palinization of the right and Alinksy’s rules for radicals, the same rules upon which the left skewers us but exempts themselves.

    Stop.playing.into. the. trivial.

    Or lose what is truly important.

  • Aaron Gardner
  • http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens
  • http://online.logcabin.org/about/ suzieQ

    I thought both of them left.

  • Achance

    SC, like the other Deep South states has educational and economic issues that lily-white and affluent WA can’t even imagine.

  • hickorystick

    but it is also true. SC is an ugly state, with the ugliest past. I would let it go, except they continue to practice politics this way. This blogger wouldn’t have started this type of rumor if it didn’t work. Sorry about offending your sensibilities. I’ll replace a senator from SC with one from Washington if it helps. I’d prefer a Didier or Rossi to a Graham 10 days out of 10.

  • autiger89

    The lower part of the state, along the coast, is infested with them. How else could Clyburn (and previously, Senator Foghorn Leghorn, Fritz Hollings) keep getting re-elected?

    Greenville, in the upstate, is a bastion of conservatism, and I am glad to live here.

  • http://itsaboutfreedom.proboards.com IronDioPriest

    I’m not throwing any bombs. I like Haley. I’m only looking at the situation with my ideological predisposition tempered by an accounting for the failures of human beings, and jaded by consistent disappointment at exactly that.

    We hold our politicians to a purity standard, and we get consistently burned. You cannot deny it. All I am “jus’ sayin” is that the possibility exists here that by staunchly and unconditionally defending this woman against a specific accusation of sexual infidelity, human nature dictates that the odds are at least somewhere near even that we will again be bitten by our own purity standard.

  • http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

    and in fact all the way across the south.

  • http://moelane.com/ Moe Lane

    Because if your first reaction to all of this – to wit, a female conservative politician angrily denying an accusation of adultery from a mentally unstable convicted domestic abuser with a history of dirty political tricks – is to gloomily expect that it’s the former who’s lying, you’re probably better off taking a break and recharging your batteries.

    I say this with no heat. I had a bad spot in ’04: screaming nightmares, heavy stress bleeding into real life, the works. I was better off for stepping back.

  • Marcus_Traianus

    and could give a possum’s behind if there was a shred of atomic particle sized truth to any of this as of yet unsubstantiated tripe. It has done nothing but serve the sponsor(s) purpose, which is, to distract from the real, substantive issues in this race and across our country. The originators of this tale might as well hang up th “mission accomplished” banner if this narrative prevails.

    Who is better for South Carolina and our country vis a vis Congress for that matter? Is it the bunch of lawless, self indulgent, spendthrift, socialist leaning, America hating, military despising, sociologically destructive, law breaking, constituent ignoring, race baiting Democrat party jackals or somebody who is none of those things and maybe, possibly, in an alternate fantasy universe beyond our current dimension- where a burden of proof is not necessary had a moment of infidelity?

    If you even have to think about the choices. Do me a favor- don’t vote or even better go cliff diving in the Grand Canyon.

  • http://itsaboutfreedom.proboards.com IronDioPriest

    I didn’t say I expect that she is lying. I said it is possible. Nobody looking at the situation objectively can deny it.

    Shall I list the politicians who have vehemently denied extramarital affairs who have subsequently been discovered to have been lying? Denial is the natural reaction to getting caught doing something that will destroy your life. It is the first reaction of every cheater, until they are backed into a corner and there is no other choice but to fess up.

    And again, I am NOT attributing that to Nikki Haley. I am simply acknowledging the possibility, and suggesting that while I understand the impulse to defend her, the possibility exists that doing so will backfire because human nature is what it is.

  • wannabeanncoulter

    IronDioPriest: I tend to agree with you. I’ve been around and around and around long enough to see some incredible implosions by so-called conservative, family values politicians.

    I don’t live in South Carolina, so I have time to wait. If I were an SC voter, I guess I’d have to ask myself whether Haley’s positions on all the issues were more important to me than her personal morality if it became obvious (after her election) that she had had an extramarital affair.

  • janis

    thing and the John Edwards thing, and others recently who have stepped down because they got outed and didn’t want to have all this paraded in explicit detail in the media, don’t you think that Nikki Haley would have stepped down by now if there were ANY truth to this?

    Because I do. If we continue to let the other side, or the squishes on our side, define who we can and cannot have as our leaders, then we might as well all go home and prepare for the gulag.

  • http://pocketchangeproductions.net/ anotherindyfilmguy

    And fed on 24/7 by her enemies.

    Incivility of this sort, aided and abetted, can lead to greater incivility and ultimately violence when those whose side is constantly slandered feel they are being shoved into a corner with no other way out.

    When the truth is your enemy nothing good can come of your actions.

  • http://pocketchangeproductions.net/ anotherindyfilmguy

    1. Dueling was abolished.
    2. *Most* people in cities stopped carrying concealed firearms.
    3. The press corp was pretty much successfully shifted to the communist point of view.
    4. Some of the above.
    5. None of the above.
    6. All of the above.
    7. __________________ etc ad frikkin’ nausea

  • http://itsaboutfreedom.proboards.com IronDioPriest

    … is that human nature is what it is, and that with that acknowledgment comes the inherent risk of being disappointed by human beings and their base impulses. According to my bible, we are fallen – ALL sin and fall short of the glory of God. As my pastor says, “How many is all?”

    Anyone can disappoint us at any time. When there is a specific accusation regarding a public figure, history, objectivity, and intellectual honesty demonstrate that the risk of being disappointed increases. People accused of impropriety generally deny it until the option of denial is eliminated. I don’t understand why that is difficult for some to accept and digest.

  • Achance

    and was the subject of some of them. I’ve had a dime dropped on me to my wife, my boss, my enemies. You just learn to live with it and make sure there is no credible evidence against you. The one thing I’ve never seen, even when there was some open behavior that might give the rumor credibility, is the media picking it up. Maybe it is a change caused by changes in the media and the addition of the so-called new media. I live and worked in a capital city with an active and unfriendly press but the rumors on the street never even made the McClatchey paper’s “Ear” gossip column. There really is a sort of pact between political players that you’re innocent until openly caught because there but for the Grace of God go many.

    So, something gave this one legs that such a story usually doesn’t have and I suspect the legs come from its source which would mean some fairly high-level political player.

  • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

    when a quote like that is on the side, it is also in the text, but wasn’t in this case. I am hopeful that Haley may actually be helped by a backlash from these attacks from the good ole boys. I know that the Upstate has no use for McMaster or Bauer. Aside: I worked for McMaster’s Dad’s law firm while in law school in Columbia.

    I am for Haley!

  • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

    is that most folks, right or left, know that most all of us have been whores (or whoremongers) in the past or are now. Sex is the most popular sin. Yes, its sin, and we are scheduled to commit a sin any minute!

    And folks are too focused on the wallet to abide this good ole boy BS.

  • conservativensc

    I am utterly appalled at Will Folks’ incredulous slanderous accusation and I don’t believe a word of it. I truly believe the man is living in a fantasy world. Nikki has my undivided support. My husband and I have donated and will vote for her. South Carolina needs to rid itself of the establishment. Mrs Haley is the only candidate that can handle such a task and her competition knows this too. They “the good ole boys” are all to aware of the threat and will stop at nothing to defeat her.

    As for the likes of Mr. Folks and whomever behind this most obvious smear campaign… I can only hope that their 15 minutes of infamy is soon over. The little I’ve read about Folks and his absurd ?come to Jesus? confessional moment tells me all that I need to know and that is.. Will Folks is the “Perez Hilton” of South Carolina. He is a pariah and nothing more than a sell out hack! While listening the other day to Keven Cohen?s (a local radio broadcaster) program, it was admitted by Will Folks that he refuses to give direct interviews because he wants any and all discussions to go directly to his site for the hits. ?Hits? turn a profit. The entire story doesn’t pass the smell test for me. However, it does scream ulterior motives that include greed and corruption.

    Erick.. I just want to say Thank you and also offer my thanks to the others that continue to defend and support Nikki Haley.

    With Regards,
    J.R. Olson
    Columbia, SC

  • rinohater

    Why no posts on WA senate candidate Clint Didier…you know the same guy endorsed by Palin who took 100K+ in federal subsidies?

    Boy, everything is just a problem caused by liberals for you hypocrite RINOs, isn’t it?

  • http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

    Further threadjacks will result in your account being disabled.

    We have a diaries section for a reason. We have daily open threads. You have no excuse.

    Do NOT argue here. Take any complaints to the Contact page.

  • rinohater

    Sorry about threadjacking…Will use the other page.

    Was super mad at reading this thread where in you just blame media or “others”..The problem is within i.e RINOs like so many here too.

  • http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens
  • jenniferjmilleresq

    at the debate on Tuesday and people can judge among the candidates then. The main thing that I and other South Carolinians, particularly tea party supporters, care about is tossing out the career politicians entrenched in this State. I think it will be clear what will happen after the debate on Tuesday. Incidentally, it was painful watching that press conference with Nikki’s husband Mike standing there. If I were going through anything like this, the accuser would need to be worried about crossing paths with my husband. I can’t imagine how he feels. Anyway, I don’t know about backlash, but I have a feeling this primary will be really close now, where as before, Nikki would have been way out in front.

  • Jack_Savage

    I mean, nothing could beat SC for dirty politics – nothing like a stuffed ballot box in Texas with LBJ, or anything that ever happened in Illinois for the past 100 years, or Crist in FL, or not in Louisiana – a clean, clean place indeed – or certainly in New York, or New Jersey, or Baltimore, or Minnesota, or the Kennedys in Massachussetts, or…

    …never mind.

    I would rather live in SC than a sandbox for liberals like WA or VT.

  • constitutionalconservative

    It’s clear Folks has shamelessly manipulated the media.

    It’s clear that the media has shamelessly blown up the story.

    It’s clear the good ol’ boys campaigns are implicated here.

    Given the information out there, I think it’s entirely possible something went on. And entirely possible the whole thing is a frame up. But that’s not the pont. Nikki Haley wouldn’t be the first one to have struggles in her marriage. Nikki Haley wasn’t running on beating anyone over the head with a Bible while calling out others for their moral failings.

    She was running on cleaning up the government and promoting fiscal conservatism. And She has an excellent record on those things. She is the victim of a politically motivated smear job.

    And I believe regardless of how this plays out, she deserves conservatives continued support.

  • constitutionalconservative

    And if Erick was right about Barrett being one of the main parties behind the smears, it will keep Cheney’s record of endorsing the worst, most corrupt elements of the D.C. establishment perfect during this election cycle.

    Fortunately, the Republican primary electorate doesn’t seem to be listening to Dick Cheney. We can only hope S.C. continues that trend.

  • dudette

    A good read early morning, jeffreyw….thanks

  • dudette

    but for the reason jeffreyw pointed out so well…

  • davesinsanantonio

    presumed innocent until PROVEN guilty. Has anything been “proven” against her? Has anything been “proven” against Folks?
    Nuff said!

  • bfd2010

    Unlike most of you here, I do live in South Carolina. You have no idea of the daily lying, stealing and cheating done by our State politicians. They passed a law whereby their adsence from voting on an issue results in a YES vote. Of course, within 30 days they can change their position to “that’s not my real position.” These same politicians are a major portion of the motivating force pushing the lynching along. SC voters are clueless. Our upstate Congressman Mr. Clueless Inglis and Senator Slippery Graham are prime examples of our state’s political machine, i.e. they go with the winds of re-election. Here is the real problem for Mrs. Haley, She is in a snake pit. She has proven she can survive. She has proven she can stand on her convictions.

    All the blusters like Inglis, Graham, McMaster, Baurer, Barrett, and a long list of self servers, need to be able to mount their defense of their careers. Nikki and others like her are going to give them fits.

  • myron_j_poltroonian

    My Dear Mr. Gardener, You have brilliantly summed up the “Progressive” Weltanschauung. Also expressed as “We have to kill the children (Destroy the village, etc…) in order to save them (it)”.