Moe Lane

The one that I’m married to will give you an earful: if anything, she’s more annoyed than South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley is at Barack Obama over his game-playing about the “budget”.

“I could not be more frustrated than I am right now,” Haley told reporters after the meeting. She said that when she asked Obama if he would consider a last-minute plan to shave about 2 percent from the annual federal budget without increasing taxes, the answer was “no.”

“My kids could go and find $83 billion out of a $4 trillion budget,” Haley said. “This is not rocket science.”

Read the whole thing; especially Gov. Haley’s ah, exasperated comments about Congress taking the last week off. Fair warning: my wife the rocket scientist agrees with THAT, too.

(H/T Instapundit)

Moe Lane

A bit of a rhetorical question, there: reports are saying that South Carolina governor Nikki Haley will be appointing Tim Scott to replace Jim Demint as Senator. Works for me: Tim’s a good guy, good conservative, and he’s already demonstrated an ability to win re-election. A term or two there and he might even be ready for the governorship itself.

…And I really do feel sorry for what the man is about to go through. It’s going to get vile out there, on the Left.

And just a bit angrily, too. If that surprises you, it shouldn’t: while the NYT loathes conservatives in general – while Kathleen Parker of the Washington Post merely(?!) loathes a lot of specific conservatives – both probably despise New Media even more.  And since it was a doofus progressive regional blogger (Logan Smith, for the benefit of those tuning in late*) that started the whole carnival of stupidity in the first place, well…

And that’s that, hopefully.  Until the next time that somebody tries it, of course.

Moe Lane

*Search engines, too.  In light of that, let me print the following terms: nincompoop, doofus, n00b, twerp, goofball, idiot, moron, ineffectual, and justifiably obscure.

Most people are concetrating on the absolutely inane question Gov. Haley got at the end – as God is my witness, the Time interviewer* really did ask whether the Governor tipped Sikh cab drivers more – but the entire interview is in its way engrossing viewing. If only because the interviewer clearly thought that there was a hick in the interviewing room (true) and that her name was Nikki Haley (false). I mean, I grew up in New York and New Jersey and I was humiliated by the utter unsophisticated provincialism of the interviewer; I would take some comfort that the woman’s accent suggests that she’s just some rube right off of the boat, but that’s cultural chauvinism talking. (more…)

Welcome to South Carolina! Here’s your accordion.

You may remember that a few days ago a minor South Carolinian political blog tossed out the very serious allegation that South Carolina governor Nikki Haley was about to be indicted by the Justice Department for alleged tax fraud involving her parents’ temple*. The keyword? “Imminent.” Well, it turns out that the IRS is not actually investigating either the Governor or the temple (H/T @RBPundit) in fact, if I’m reading this correctly the entire thing was more or less based off of the usual bureaucratic paperwork (H/T Hot Air Headlines). The goofball progressive blogger n00b (some guy named Logan Smith) that put up the article in the first place at first tried to stand by his anonymously-sourced allegations, but has since more or less given up and done one of the more grudging and passive-aggressive retractions that it’s been my pleasure to read lately. I don’t even think that Smith is going to get fifteen minutes out of this; and, of course, he’ll never get another shot.

Tragic. (more…)

Woman’s not fond of Bobby Jindal and/or Nikki Haley, for some reason.

You know, I have a problem with the way that somebody ambushed Randi Rhodes and got her to make racist and prejudiced comments about the governors of Louisiana and South Carolina. It’s just… cruel to do that to an alcoholic on a bender; when you have somebody with an existing history of being found face down in the gutter with the recent contents of her stomach spread out around her in a semi-particulate spray, taking advantage of that by shoving a microphone in her face and asking her to spout off some good, old-fashioned racism is simply not very civi… wait, hold on. She talked this trash on the air?

“Bobby Jindal even converted from Hinduism — Nikki Haley, too — in order to be acceptable to the conservative South in Louisiana and uh — [about a five second pause] Georgia! I mean, that is crazy that in order to be acceptable to the party you have to, you know, pretend that you’ve given up your religion!”

While sober?

Well, then.

(more…)

[Please note the edit below: the implication in the CNN article was that Bauer's endorsement of Gingrich was welcomed by the campaign, but there's still wiggle room for Team Newt. I've emailed the Gingrich campaign to confirm.]

Team Newt announced today that they [CNN reported today that the Gingrich campaign] had picked up the endorsement of Andre Bauer, who is: a former Lt. Governor of South Carolina; a former gubernatorial candidate; and a potential candidate for the new SC-07 seat.  If that name sounds familiar, it should… because Andre Bauer was also the person that current South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley gutted like a newly-caught river trout for Bauer’s (alleged) role in attempting to wreck Haley’s marriage and career:

(more…)

…but the white guy insists that it’s not a big deal that he publicly posted a promise to murder an Indian-American female governor if nobody else does.

“I hope someone murders you before I do,” Shafer said he commented on the post. “How’s that for freedom of speech?”

(H/T: Verum Serum) Well… not to editorialize here or anything, but since Nathan Shafer asked: it’s pretty darn awful example of ‘freedom of speech.’ (more…)

I will admit that the New York Times largely did not attack South Carolina governor Nikki Haley (R) all that harshly in this article; in fact, they said some things that were actually complimentary (given that the governor is openly going after entrenched Republican interests in SC, that’s probably not a surprise). But they couldn’t quite resist playing silly games by getting local liberal political flack Jack Bass to say “Her understanding of the role of state government appears rather limited” – and presenting Bass as an authority. Here’s a radical notion for the NYT: if you simply must use a liberal to attack a conservative, could you at least mention the following? (more…)

We talked this afternoon on South Carolina’s Spending Accountability Act (which was formally signed into law today). To refresh people’s memories: Governor Haley had campaigned in part on a platform of transparency, with a specific focus on the South Carolinian legislature’s ability to vote on funding issues without their votes actually going on the record. The Governor has long been a proponent of reversing this, and the Spending Accountability Act is the result: it requires roll call votes on bills, particularly ones involving the budget. We spoke on this and some other matters:

Gov. Haley’s Facebook page (mentioned at the end of the interview) can be found here.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

Nikki Haley was sworn in today as South Carolina governor, and of all the annoyances that the Left has been trying to inflict upon us for the last few days over their petulant inability to dictate what can and cannot be said, this one grates most: they made me forget that briefly. We at RedState have been waiting for this moment for quite some time, after all.

Link to video here; text here. Enjoy.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

Admittedly, we were hoping for more than 37%, but every little bit helps.

[Alvin] Greene, an African-American, captures 63% of the black vote. Eighty percent (80%) of whites favor [Senator Jim] DeMint.

I’m not going to be cruel and quote the total poll results. Suffice it to say that I wish that Greene had actually done something to deserve the public humiliation that is coming for him.  The poor SOB just wanted to try out American democracy for himself, and he’s not going to get anything out of it…

Moe Lane

PS: OTOH, Nikki Haley is easily crushing Vince Shaheen in SC-GOV, and I’m sure that Shaheen has done something to deserve that.