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The Spectacle Blog
Okay, I tried for over a week to resist commenting on the sleazy charges being hurled at South Carolina gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley, but the flesh is weak and my fingers just started typing all by themselves. Let me preface this to say that there is NO REASON to believe the charges against Mrs. Haley. And there is every reason to ostracize Will Folks and Larry Marchant (the accusers of Mrs. Haley) from polite society for the rest of their lives and their afterlives as well. Gentlemen do not kiss and tell (if there even was a kiss). And if these tales are FALSE, as most of us believe, then these two men have committed not just false witness, but one of the sleaziest, rankest, vilest, most unforgivable sorts of false witness imaginable: They will have, in front of a whole state (and now country), accused an innocent woman of adultery, thus embarrassing her, interfering with her marriage, harmed her innocent children, and smeared her reputation in what for most good people is one of the worst ways possible. If this is what these two men did, they should book their tickets to Hades and expect no redemption, no mercy, no relief.
That said, there is this one caveat: If in the highly unlikely event they are telling the truth and Mrs. Haley has been lieing, then it behooves Mrs. Haley, as a matter not just of personal conscience but of an absolute duty to her state, her party, and the conservative movement, for her to withdraw from the race. The simple fact is that if she wins the nomination and then, between nomination and election, is shown to have lied, she will have immediately ceded the state’s governorship to the Democratic opposition. This, she cannot risk. This, she cannot do. Her political career is not worth more than the ability of the usually right-leaning citizens of South Carolina to have a governor dedicated to policies they favor and that they best think will affect their lives. Yet if she is shown to have lied, she will almost certainly lose the election, relegating the governorship to somebody the voters otherwise would not choose.
I repeat, this is written NOT in the belief that she is lying. Quite the contrary. She is almost certainly innocent of the allegations, and she therefore would not deserve ever to have faced them. But it must be said that when a whole state has been roiled by an internationally embarrassing sex scandal, it would take unmitigated selfishness for somebody with similar skeletons to press ahead in search of the same office.
Obviously, she knows the truth. If the truth is on her side, as we believe, then may she be twice blessed, because those falsely accused are due extra credit for merit from men and angels alike.
View all comments (24) | Leave a comment
More Blog Posts by Quin Hillyer
http://spectator.org/blog/2010/06/04/on-nikki-haley
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Jeff M| 6.4.10 @ 11:14AM
Isn't the present participle of "lie" spelled "lying"? Or did Oxford or Webster's Dictionary send out some memo changing that?
This is a good piece.
Quin| 6.4.10 @ 12:00PM
Thanks for the compliment. Yes, you are right about the present participle. I did it correctly in the final paragraph. Earlier, I think I had originally arranged the sentence differently, and then when I rewrote the sentence I absent-mindedly just erased the "d" on "lied" and added "ing." I tend to be less careful on blog posts than on formal columns. Thanks for the correction!
martin j smith| 6.4.10 @ 12:04PM
All Conservative and Republican candidates should be held to exactly the standard set out here. If you know that you have an issue that can lead to your defeat in an election ( and even if you win) get out before it is a bigger problem personally and politically. this kind of reasoning is not limited to this situation. You know that ump that admitted wrong doing--that should be an object lesson to us all.
Ken (Old Texican)| 6.4.10 @ 12:36PM
Quin,
...once again, thank you from ole' groupie Ken.
Sir...keep firing hi velocity ammo.
God bless
Quin| 6.4.10 @ 12:48PM
Old Texican, you are too kind.....
:)
Tim| 6.4.10 @ 1:17PM
As usual, a republican sex scandal demands resignation while the other party defends their people's privacy. Not saying I would change it, just another maalox inducing moment.
MacAoidh | 6.4.10 @ 2:06PM
It appears Haley has taken up that challenge:
http://politicalwire.com/archi....._true.html
Host: “If something comes out after you win the primary, or after you win the general election become South Carolina’s next governor, if something were to come out that validates the claims that have been made against you — in terms of stepping out on your husband and on your marriage — would you resign as governor because basically the way you’ve handled it has been an absolute, 100 percent denial? Would you resign or would it be dragged out?
Haley: “Yes.”
Host: “Yes, you would resign?”
Haley: “Yes.”
Quin| 6.4.10 @ 2:28PM
This "challenge" to resign doesn't address the substance of my caveat. What I am saying is that only she (and any paramour) knows if she indeed had committed adultery. If she has, she must assume it will come out, even if she doesn't believe that it will. The whole point is to NOT EVEN REACH the point of living up to the challenge to resign. If she gets the nomination and then must resign from the race, she will, ipso facto, have screwed over the stat Republican Party and the state itself. It is not good enough to say she will resign if it is proved; if there is anything that actually occurred that might cause a resignation, then she shouldn't go forward with her campaign in the first place.
None of which assumes there actually is something; this is just to clarify my hypothetical point. Meanwhile, to Mrs. Haley: Godspeed and good luck, if you have indeed been slandered, as we all want to believe.
Buddy H.| 6.4.10 @ 4:03PM
Are they still conservatives? Maybe, immoral Conservsatives? Lying Conservatives?
Oldefarte| 6.4.10 @ 4:32PM
As I've said before, it's not the sexual immorality, but the NOT TELLING/ADMITTING THE TRUTH about same that is the issue. The former is/will be a personal matter between herself and her family; but the latter will signify a propensity to duplicate such behavior on numerous occasions. The proclamation [under judicial oath] of IT JUST DEPENDS UPON WHAT THE MEANING OF IS, IS was a far greater offense than the pizza generated celebrations within the Oval Office. Lying includes not only the activist words of falsehood, but also the non-activist silence of omission. The TRUTH should ALWAYS be told!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Truthyness| 6.4.10 @ 4:44PM
I don't take these allegations seriously seriously at all. A bunch of sexist nonsense. If Haley slept with those two goons she must be an out-of-control nymphomaniac.
Oldefarte| 6.8.10 @ 2:08PM
In other words, I SAY, THEREFORE IT HAS TO BE TRUE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Margie| 6.4.10 @ 5:01PM
There you have it. Another example of how we DO hold our fellow (and ladies) Republicans accountable. I think it's commendable that Quin is doing such. I fully agree, and hope Mrs. Haley will take to heart his advice, either way.
Mike Sundown| 6.4.10 @ 6:57PM
The issue isn't sex. The issue is hyopcrisy.
If you're going to play the family-values, card, you'd better have some family values. Lying about it isn't a great idea, either.
Nikki says she's willing to take a lie-detector test. Wire her up!
Truthyness| 6.4.10 @ 8:52PM
Maybe Bauer, Marchant and Knotts should say Haley serviced them all simultaneously in a motel room just last night. It would have as much credibility is any of the other fertilizer that's been spraying out of their mouths and it would serve their purpose of degrading an attractive, intelligent woman who dared to enter politics.
These people are sick. Forty-five years ago they would have been turning the dogs and hoses loose on blacks. And this is the crowd Huckabee aligns himself with. Incredible.
Truthyness| 6.4.10 @ 8:30PM
The issue is the bunch of neanderthal, disgusting women-haters and bigots who constitute the old boy network of South Carolina politics and are in a panic someone is going to clean their filthy house.
David James Stroud| 6.4.10 @ 9:33PM
Scratching my head...how does Nimrata translate to Nikki. How can you be Sikh and Christian? Please explain. When daddy is a doctor it opens up doors not usually found to the common man. Her culture and background are ill-suited for the job.
Truthyness| 6.5.10 @ 3:27AM
Because, obviously, someone of Indian heritage can't be a governor of a southern state.
Man, if the Left wants to limit the GOP to stupid, southern, white, male bigots, looks like they couldn't do better than the political establishment of South Carolina.
Ann| 6.7.10 @ 6:21PM
The spelling error ("lieing" instead of "lying") is but one grammatical error of several in your piece--and not even close to the most egregious. Just because you are writing digitally does not grant you the right to butcher the English language. Sloppy language is often the result of lazy thinking.
Oldefarte| 6.8.10 @ 2:15PM
Geez, another POINTY-HEADED LIBERAL, with a DICTIONARY UP THEIR ASS. I guess it just depends upon WHAT THE MEANING OF IS, IS, right??????????????????
Ann| 6.9.10 @ 6:51PM
Gosh, Oldefarte, you are so smart, wise, and well spoken! What a service you do to the conservative movemet. Incidentally, for any pointy-headed liberal to have a dictionary up "their" ass, he would need to have more than one ass. So perhaps you are describing yourself? (My head is not pointy.) If you object to the correct use of our native tongue, you might be more comfortable living in another country. Perhaps you are an undercover liberal trying to make conservatives sound stupid. (If so, kudos on the successful effort!) Or maybe you're nothing but one of the good old boys Nikki Haley just showed the door.
MsCarolinaAstro-turf| 6.9.10 @ 9:45AM
Nikki Haley converted to Christianity when she was 24. She is a native born daughter of SC though of immigrant parents. She goes to church with her family twice a year in obeyance with God's Law - Honor they parents so that thy days shall be long.
I have met her personally. I cannot swear to her morality, honesty, patriotism or any other facet of her inner being, but I can tell you that I believe that she's the best candidate for the job of Governor of South Carolina.
Senator Jake Knotts has clearly made it apparent that it is time for him to go home to Lexington and withdraw from public office. His blatant slurs against Nikki Haley show that he is way out of touch with the people of South Carolina. He is an embarassment to our state.
The "gentlemen" (I use that term past loosely) who cast moral aspersions toward Nikki - if it could have been proved, it already would have been proved.
She took on the establishment Republicans despite their warnings of retribution for doing so (which they made fact by stripping her of all her chairs of committees) by submitting a bill that would require them to record their votes. According to Nikki, "If it is important enough to come before the House and the Senate for a vote, then it is important that the vote be on the record.", much to the chagrin of the good old boys of both parties.
She would not only be the first female governor of SC, but the first minority female governor. She would be the second person of East Indian descent to be elected as a governor. Bobby Jindal is the other one and clearly he has shown himself to be a conservative leader.
The good old boys quashed H3047 this year. The bill was the Roll Call voting bill. It required our legislature to record their votes all fo the time - not 5% of the time as they currently do.
Their latest claim, according to Larry Martin and Jake Knotts, is that a law requiring votes be on the record and accountable to the people, is UNCONSTITUTIONAL.
They have to be delusional. Time to go home, boys.