Back during the Republican gubernatorial primary campaign, after one of the many debates someone asked us if we watched. Internal response was, “Why the fuck would we?” External response was, “No.” It might have had a little bit to do with the candidates, but a whole lot to do with the office and level of political polishing. For most debates for higher office, they’re totally stone-cold boring and contain no new information. Just a competition to see who could most artfully chop up their stump speeches into timed segments. So let’s kill the debates.

Most of the presidential debates, and they began in the summer of 2007 for chrissakes, were just exercises in waiting for the freak candidate to say something weird or drinking games for people who find it hard to get obliterated without rules and points. In races with a lot of people, many candidates say very little and even less of actual import. They would be better served with covering themselves with bumper stickers and turning about for the cameras.

Democratic gubernatorial nominee Vince Sheheen decided to a new twist on an exceptionally old trick — did the staff get high and approve this? — by challenging GOP nominee Nikki Haley to fucking Lincoln-Douglas debates. A whole mess of ‘em! And stories were written far and wide. This comprises the vast majority of all action regarding debates. Candidate A proposes something a little out of the ordinary. Candidate B says bah to that. Then so many news stories. It’s just a method to generate news coverage. As a result, most of the people who actually give a damn are those who are directly involved, and nobody else cares.

In that way, more than 90 percent of all political debates between candidates are little different than the presidential nominating conventions. No, they’re actually very much worse. Conventions have political memorabilia to buy, the occasional famous person sighting, entertainment by famous people (this applies mostly to Democrats, or to your definition of “famous”) and those wonderful hospitality parties thrown by big corporations and special interests that have the open bars and free food. Debates, even high-level debates, don’t come close. The best swag you’ll bring home is a press pass bought off some writer at the hotel bar. And about 90 minutes of sheer boredom.

Lower ballot race debates could be worthwhile, but if you’ve had to sit through multiple city council debates or watched State House candidates go at it in some back room in BFE with 11 people attending, you’d agree that the news value is negligible. Columbia would be better served by having the city candidates debate in front of the Metro desk reporters and save everyone else the trouble.

But here’s the connection between the debates and the conventions: as former DNC chairman Don Fowler taught us at Carolina, conventions never help a campaign and if they have effect, it’s bad. Fowler pointed to RNC ’92 in Houston and his own DNC ’88 in Atlanta as examples. The same goes for the debates. They’re only particularly newsworthy and have an effect on the campaign if somebody seriously fucks up, as in George H.W. Bush in ’92 in Richmond (looking at his watch) or Al Gore in 2000 (le sigh).

Discussions, like among the Pub Politics crew or the fabulous C-SPAN broadcast of William F. Buckley and George McGovern from several years ago are different matters altogether. People sitting down with different points of view and talking about them can elicit interesting commentary and analysis. And jokes that aren’t pre-scripted. Operatives, former pols, reporters who are allowed an opinion — Lee Bandy at the Dan Rather thing in ’08 was great — these are people close enough to the action to really know what’s going down, but removed enough to actually say something worth listening to.

But these candidate debates, they’re moribund, they’re out cold. It’s toe-tag time.

Rep. Nikki Haley‘s release of her legislative emails on Friday was disappointing on several different fronts. From what we know about legislators and their emailing habits, most, if not all, are extremely careful about doing nothing but official business through their legislative accounts. Despite the special exception the General Assembly has given itself in regard to releasing said emails, there can be a strong case made in the court of public opinion to have such emails released if it’s deemed to be in the public interest. Across the country, most other communication media owned by the government and used by government officials and staff are up for public examination. Just ask Houston Nutt about the incident coming from extensive text messaging from a University of Arkansas-owned cell phone.

And with Haley, the intersection of her transparency crusade and two very believable allegations of sexual indiscretions obviously led to a request for emails from her legislative account, exceptions be damned. But Haley bollixed it up from Day One, especially with Democratic nominee Vince Sheheen releasing so much information that about the only thing he didn’t do was invite the public to view a live colonoscopy. When you’re marketing yourself as Ms. Transparency, getting positively owned by your opponent on exactly that issue doesn’t look so good (not that it’ll matter in the long run to voters, who are giving her a break on everything). So, after relentless pounding on the issue, she finally gives in. Sort of.

Reporters could view the emails, but — NO COPIES! NO CAMERAS! Lordy. For an account that one wouldn’t expect to have much, anyway, the campaign’s straight-up paranoia is telling. It also gives a feel of the amateur. In effect, the campaign was saying, “Here, we’re going to do the least possible to get you off our ass and quit looking into this.” Not exactly what you’d expect from the transparency candidate.

We know that if you’re going to do something as an official, you do it from your personal account. This is something even the general public realized after the brouhaha surrounding Gov. Mark Sanford last year. If someone really wants to know what’s been going down, they need to get into Haley’s Yahoo! account. Otherwise, this is all academic.

When former The State editorial cartoonist Robert Ariail took a new job with The Herald-Journal, we thought it was a good thing for an accomplished guy and a nice move by a newspaper that is perhaps not going down the path of running a mid-size daily paper with the staff of a 7,000-circulation weekly. But what of the recent past? Ariail had joined up with the S.C. Policy Council for a little while, working with the half-baked but excessively well-funded The Nerve.

And that’s the rub. On July 18, Ariail went live with the cartoon above, which got more that a little bit of play for showing Rep. Nikki Haley in a burqa. After discussing the piece with friends, we decided that was perhaps not the best way to go. At the very least, it might be considered more than a little insensitive considering Sen. Jake Knotts‘ publicized ill-timed remarks.

But the Policy Council and Haley are tight, as she is with all of the little satellites of the disintegrating Sanford cabal. When the cartoon came out, though, we don’t remember hearing a peep out of the SCPC or anything from the Haley campaign drawing attention to the Policy Council’s association with Ariail. And yet, the following passage went out from a Nerve email on Wednesday.

The Nerve wishes cartoonist Robert Ariail the best as he begins his new venture with the Herald-Journal in Spartanburg. Ariail, who was twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, has been a great asset to The Nerve over the past several months. We’ve all enjoyed hearing his clever ideas and seeing him turn his thoughts into brilliant sketches. We are looking forward to seeing this gifted artist’s continued success.

Interesting.

Democratic gubernatorial nominee Vince Sheheen brought on a new member to his campaign, hiring former Jim Hodges campaign manager Tim Shock. According to Sheheen head man Trav Robertson, the campaign has been staffing up since the end of the primary campaign. It never hurts to bring on someone who got a Democrat elected statewide not named Tenenbaum or Rex.

State and national Democrats are increasingly confident about Sheheen’s chances. The state Senator has courted the business community while also working to exploit a rift between Haley and establishment Republicans anxious about her fiscally conservative agenda.

A national Democratic official told CNN that Shock will bring an air of seriousness to the campaign.

“He’s an old horse but really knows his way around campaigns,” the official said. “He isn’t too flashy but will ensure Sheheen has a professional and structurally solid campaign.”

Democrats familiar with the race insisted that the hiring was not a campaign shake-up, but simply an effort to staff up ahead of a competitive race.

We’re a little disappointed with the reaction from Rep. Nikki Haley‘s campaign, saying a career politician hired a career political insider. Would it then be preferred to have a candidate with no experience hiring a high-level staffer with no experience? Would that work in any other sector in the world? “Yes, certainly — this main over here has never dealt with running a major steel company, but he did do well as a low-level manager. Kick that gentleman upstairs, and make this intern his vice president of operations.”

Guys, you can do a little better in your PR operation. The stock responses have to come out well-formulated and better organized. Can’t keep throwing that cheese as we get closer to November.

It’s understandable why even Republicans who didn’t back Rep. Nikki Haley‘s gubernatorial campaign are looking on the bright side after the runoff. There’s the usual closing of the ranks, plus piggy-backing off of positive (nearly fawning) national coverage. She’s a woman, and a minority. She’s loved by the teabaggers. But she’s isn’t right for South Carolina, for the reasons that have been and will continue to be borne out.

She’s Gov. Mark Sanford‘s third term, period.

There are a myriad of different ways this can be fleshed out, not the least of which is that she’s a card-carrying member of the Sanford cabal and in hock to the people that comprise it. Then there’s something about a couple vetoes. Haley was only one of 27 representatives to vote to sustain a veto on $1.64 million that is going to the State Museum, and voted to sustain another veto with $50,000 in funding. Yet she has the gall to hold her victory party there. Mind you, if the first veto was sustained, the Museum would have likely had to raise its ticket prices to $25 per person and have tons of other issues.

Very Sanford-esque, isn’t it? This is who she is, and this is what we’ll get if she’s elected governor. We’ll also be getting another four years of war between a governor and the legislature. If we had U.S. Rep. Gresham Barrett, Lt. Gov. André Bauer or Atty. Gen. Henry McMaster as the nominee, this wouldn’t be the case. GOP voters had a 75 percent chance of picking a nominee that could govern effectively and actually implement conservative principles instead of yakking about them and getting into battles with legislators. But they didn’t. And when everything really starts going to shit around the middle of the next legislative session, we’ll be here to say, “Told you so.”

You get the government you vote for. And the voters in the runoff decided on more of the same.

Our illustrious governor has stepped out once again. Where is he, where did he go? He’s supposed to be back in town today, ostensibly to vote for his hand-picked successor, Rep. Nikki Haley in the Republican gubernatorial runoff. Where he’s been, though, is unknown except to a small few. Is this the sort of thing we might expect with a Gov. Haley? Only time will tell.

The funniest part is — guess what? — Lt. Gov. André Bauer had no idea. Nobody told him. Again. And nobody else is talking, like Sanford is off on some sort of special operations mission or something. Operación: Vaquero del Amor.

Nearly one year to the day that Gov. Mark Sanford embarked on a secret trip to Argentina and turned S.C. politics on its ear, Sanford’s whereabouts are unknown to the press and the public.

Monday, Sanford’s spokesman Ben Fox told The State Sanford is on “personal time” but declined to say where the governor is.

[...]

State Law Enforcement Division Director Reggie Lloyd said Sanford has security with him but would not elaborate.

“We’ve left it up to the governor’s office to disclose where (Sanford) is,” Lloyd said.

In deference to the two-term failure, his spokesman said that Sanford spent most of the weekend with his sons, but how much can we trust anything coming out of the Governor’s Office? Over the past several years, the Governor and his minions have done a damn good job at destroying any trustworthiness that once existed there.

On Primary Day, everyone saw that this year, money didn’t matter. Neither did being more knowledgeable about the issues, having better ideas, or more experience in getting things done. For a lot of voters, it came down to, “You’re not that person.” Naturally, that’s not exactly the best way to elect someone, but the voting public as a whole has never been very wise in how it makes decisions.

For most elections, money in the bank is like an early return. If people and organizations are willing to part with money to further a campaign, that’s seen by some as even more of a personal stake in a campaign than a vote. After all, it stands to reason that if you give a decent amount of cash, you’re even that more motivated to head to the polls. Again, that isn’t the case this time. As reported Thursday and reiterated Sunday by The State, U.S. Rep. Gresham Barrett out-rose Rep. Nikki Haley between the primary and Thursday, in their race to capture the Republican gubernatorial nomination.

Barrett sports $299,225, with Haley at $224,271, and the story doesn’t even mention spending, in which Barrett should be far and away ahead because of his distinct dollar advantage going into June. And it doesn’t matter. The same people who closed their eyes and shot into the dark will likely return to the polls tomorrow and give Haley the nomination. This is despite the fact that most South Carolinians don’t want Sanford 2.0, which is what Haley is, in spades. When the S.C. Chamber of Commerce and business leaders across the state are turning hard against a GOP candidate, that should tell you something.

Even though Haley’s fundraising operation has been godawful since its very inception, it’ll take off after the runoff simply because she’s the Republican nominee. Then, Democratic nominee Vince Sheheen will be the person with the small stack. And that’ll leave a lot of right-thinking Republicans in a quandary. Do they vote for Sheheen? After all, even with the recent détente between Gov. Mark Sanford and the GOP leadership in the General Assembly, a Haley administration would be a return to the bad old days of an intransigent ideologue in the Governor’s Mansion, who won’t make the necessary compromises that are needed to make needed changes for our state.

There is a precedent. A lot of Republicans voted for Jim Hodges after David Beasley’s misbegotten term. Unfortunately, when given the chance to pick the right guy in 2002, they dropped the ball. Second chances do abound. Give Sheheen a term, beat him up for four years, then find a strong candidate to run against him in 2014. Either way, a Democrat will win. It’s this cycle or the next one. Because four years of Haley is going to go down like a lead zeppelin.

It might be a better idea for Sheheen to take over this time, because greenbacks will probably matter a lot more in 2014.

For the season finale of “Real Time with Bill Maher” last Friday, they did a recap of the primary elections — who won, what it means and why Carly Fiorina is so obsessed with U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer’s hair. And as conversations about the primary typically do, this one meandered to the alleged affairs between Rep. Nikki Haley and Will Folks and Larry Marchant. There was some prep for this one, though. The team went to the graphic design program and Maher had a good time with it.

But in typical South Carolina fashion, we didn’t make it into the Elite Eight of the Stupid States tournament. Arizona took out No. 2 seed Alabama in the semis and triumphed in the championship against Texas. Always missing out on the title.

We like to kid the teabaggers. When we went to the rally at the State House on April 15, we hadn’t seen that many angry, old white people with the exception of a canceled Skynyrd concert. But with turnout expected to be light tomorrow, the motivated make the decisions. And angry, old white people can be pretty motivated.

Consider the recent survey by Public Policy Polling (yes, we know they lean Democratic, and Rasmussen leans Republican and blah blah blah — get over it). About 29 percent of people responding said that they self-identify as Tea Partiers, and Rep. Nikki Haley and Curtis Loftis, both Tea Party/S.C. Club for Growth candidates, are benefiting.

From what we’ve been hearing, this is holding true in races across the state. Candidates with distinct financial disadvantages, who should have no chance in hell of being competitive, much less winning, have chances to be and do just that. Conventional wisdom — something we live by as students of history and lovers of trends — is getting a swift kick in the twig and berries.

We, born into a family with two working parents, after the peaks of the civil rights and women’s rights movements, grew up understanding that people were equal. Silly us. Shit — we live in the South, where equal is never really equal. The rich are more equal, whites are more equal, and so are men. Or so we thought.

The reaction of supporters of Rep. Nikki Haley‘s gubernatorial campaign, and even some that don’t have a horse in the race, is sickening. Her campaign is benefiting because of one thing — her gender. As we’ve said before, if she was a he, and Will Folks and Larry Marchant were women, Haley would be dead in the water. But that isn’t the case.

It isn’t the case because she’s a woman. And, oh, a female politician would never cheat on her spouse with two total douchebags, would she? Actually, yeah, she would. As the Bloodhound Gang song goes, “we ain’t nothing but mammals.” What, like getting your hormones from ovaries instead of testicles makes you more virtuous? Don’t think so.

For a lot of people under 30, a female politician is just a politician. These notions of gender mattering come from older generations. Hence, why Haley keeps referring to herself as a woman, as if we were all blind and deaf. Why, yes, Representative — I’m going to vote for you because you have two X chromosomes. Congratulations.

And she’s got a lead in the Republican primary race because of this absurd gender bias that holds that women are more virtuous than men, and that she can’t defend herself. That’s right. You’d never see people circling the wagons around a male candidate like this. And if you’re a male candidate, official or just general wag like us, and you criticize her, you’re just another one of “the boys ganging up on the girl.”

Cue the epic eye-rolling.

Brad Warthen points out a column by Salon‘s Joe Conason that dips into this idiocy.

Brandishing charges of sexual infidelity, the state’s male Republican establishment has launched a vile character assassination of gubernatorial front-runner Nikki Haley, who is married with two children.

To which Warthen counters:

What utter and complete politically correct drivel: Because she’s a woman (I suppose), her being elected would be “progress.” Because the people accusing her are contemptible, what they say isn’t true. Because she is called names, electing her would be a “higher morality.”

Is this actually supposed to pass for thought?

Haley’s an adult and a politician. The same rules apply to her as to everyone else.