Haley against stimulus, for it as well

We’ve considered Rep. Nikki Haley‘s gubernatorial campaign to be half-baked from the very beginning. She entered the race after the biggest names in the Republican primary were in (or assumed to be in), and after they started raising money. Our sources have indicated to us that her finance operation has been late in getting its shit together, and her grassroots planning has been worse. Then you have the campaign’s political director, Justin Evans, leaving in December before things get interesting. There’s a story there, but nobody’s talking.

Now we’ve got this stimulus business. As the Sanford candidate, Haley’s been trying to toe the rhetorical line on the stimulus bills, bringing it up multiple times in the GOP gubernatorial debate recently. Quoted today in The State from the debate, she said, “I don’t want any Washington bailout money of any kind.” Au contraire. Last year, she voted for the cash. The justification? Her belief in Gov. Mark Sanford‘s strange thinking that the state could reject it.

Let’s put this in context. Six years ago, U.S. Sen. John Kerry got raked over the coals for the statement, “I was for it before I was against it.” Haley has one-upped that, by being — by her statements and actions — for and against something at the same time. That is truly deft political dancing. A few pols might have been able to pull that one off, Lyndon Johnson and Bill Clinton come to mind, but those men were geniuses at the art of politics, the type that come around once in a generation.

If what we’ve seen so far is the case, the District 87 representative is not cut of that cloth.