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.

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.

Monday, “the Wonkette” published the second in a series of illustrations by new in-house cartoonist Benjamin Frisch on libertarian poster-gal Ayn Rand traveling to the future, being given the full treatment by old pal Alan Greenspan. And not really being down with this whole teabagger thing she inadvertently spawned. Perusing the last submission, we swore that, in panels right next to each other, were blogger and alleged representative-layer Will Folks and “birther queen” Orly Taitz.

Creepy.

We get a lot of weird emails over here, and this is the fruit of one of the weirdest, and most entertaining. Behold, the rhyme of the S.C. primary.

“We Got a Primary”
Jim Clyburn robo-callin’ me all day like a stalker ex
Vinny Sheheen sayin’ ain’t no runoff with Jim Rex
Kelly Payne damn changin’ the game for ed
Joe Wilson all “You lie” — oh, no, that’s what Haley said
What, what — it’s the primary down here in S.C.
What, what, got CNN, Chuck Todd, MSNBC
What, what, got Jakie Knotts, two more shots, burning crosses in Santee
What, what, know Wes Wolfe can only vote absentee

Callin’ all you Tea Party yellow coiled snake flag wavers
McMaster clowns got Will Folks doin’ Andre Bauer favors
Got emails, videos, private eyes out takin’ pictures
Bill Connor goin’ all “Too much of this” on Larry Richter
Everybody tweetin’ “Where the party at tomorrow evenin’?”
Bauer got a bus full of young chicks, cross the state line he leavin’
What, what it’s the primary down in Succa-lina
What, what, got national politicos sayin’ “Mmmmmm, nothin’ fine-uh”
What, what, got Gina Smith and her homeboy John O’Connah
What, what, got a primary down in Succa-lina
What, what, got a primary down in Succa-line

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.

We were going to wait a little while for things to sort out and come up with a fully-baked take on what went down this evening, but with WACH’s Bryan Cox tweeting and thumping his chest that only they had a story up among local media (and including blogs in that), here we go. Now, “Pub Politics” is usually a tame affair. But today’s pre-primary/sine die hootenanny became all sorts of interesting. Toward the end, Sen. Jake Knotts sat down with other legislators and the fellas and gave his take on the gubernatorial race. Paraphrasing, he said that we already have one raghead in the White House, we don’t need one in the Governor’s Mansion.

There’s about a dozen different things wrong with that comment, starting out with the fact it’s a racist reference to Arabs. We don’t see how a mixed-race gentleman born in Hawai’i or the daughter of Indian immigrants (yeah, it was a reference to Rep. Nikki Haley, a fellow Lexington Republican) can even be accurately slurred in such a way, but there you go.

Immediately, it hit Twitter, and spread like the clap. Like the flu. Like the rage virus. Shit — it spread and it was quick. Suddenly, there are stories popping up on CNN and Politico. S.C. Republican Party chairwoman Karen Floyd issued a condemnation of the remarks.

The South Carolina Republican Party strongly condemns any use of racial or religious slurs. Senator Knotts should apologize for his inappropriate comments, so that we can put this unfortunate incident behind us and focus on issues important to moving our state forward.

Knotts later issued an apology, saying the comments were “intended in jest.”

Haley’s supporters, digging deep down in their well of self-righteousness — of which they run a surplus — went nuts. Now, maybe I’ve just read too much Slate over the years, but there’s something else here that’s been going on for a couple weeks that has us thinking.

Really, what the fuck is it with people who are neck-deep in S.C. politics everyday, going out and saying, “Oh, that’s awful. Politics in this state are so bad. Wah, wah, wah.” Um, yeah, no shit. Why act so surprised? A consultant/blogger and a consultant/lobbyist allege sexual relations with a gubernatorial candidate. A state senator says something racist and stupid. You know, if this were Louisiana, somebody would already be facing criminal charges for something pretty bad. Get real, and get with it.

As for Haley somehow winning the primary outright, well, that’s about one of the most idiotic things we’ve ever heard. Of course, we wouldn’t put it past the South Carolina electorate, which hasn’t always seemed the smartest when it goes to the polls.

There are a few theories put forth as to why this might happen. One is, “Wah! Those boys are ganging up on the girl!” OK. This is 2010, not 1977. That argument didn’t work for Hillary Clinton. So, if there were two women who were former consultants for one of the male gubernatorial candidates saying this, y’all would probably be calling that candidate a predator and a slimeball. See how the gender stereotyping works when the shoe is on the other foot?

The other is, “That yokel called her a bad name! Now she’ll certainly win!” Alright, this makes even less sense. We haven’t seen that tea partiers calling President Barack Obama a Muslim and a Kenyan (and the way they say it is derogatory) is making his poll numbers tick up any. Maybe when it just happens to a female conservative from the suburbs, eh? Because implied in both this statement and the first is that she can’t defend herself — yeah, didn’t think of that, did you?

And yet another goes, “The Establishment hates her! This is just another example.” Well kids, last time we checked Will Folks and Larry Marchant were card-carrying members of the Sanford cabal, along with Haley. Racist remarks aside, yeah, it’s no shock that Knotts is no fan of Haley. Knotts and the Sanford cabal have been at each other for a while.

Personally, we hope she loses. Not because of any bias, but because Gov. Mark Sanford‘s cronies have had a strangle-hold on the Governor’s Office for eight years and need to go. If Haley is elected, we’ll be dealing with this mess the whole way. Four more years of enmity between the governor and the General Assembly. Governance more suited to a political philosophy class than elective office. In short, if you liked what 2002-2010 has looked like, especially the last four years, then by all means, vote for Sanford 2.0. And then don’t be surprised when a Democrat is elected in 2014.

BONUS: Well, it sure looks like the campaign of U.S. Rep. Gresham Barrett is either leakier than a beached wooden barge in the Cooper River, or someone over there just loves talking to reporters, bloggers, and generally rolling over on the campaign.

A source close to the campaign of one rival — Rep. Gresham Barrett, who touts his Christian faith in his ads — said the Barrett campaign has at least discussed playing the religion card. The source said his aides sometimes refer to her by the Indian name with which she was born, “Nimrata,” in the campaign office.

“They always thought that the religion thing would be what would save Gresham in the end against Nikki,” said the source, an outside adviser to Barrett who said he was speaking to a reporter because he disliked the notion of attacking Haley on her faith.

In our last post regarding the circumstances that Larry Marchant was forced out from Lt. Gov. André Bauer‘s gubernatorial campaign, we wrote that the phrase “inappropriate conduct” was loaded like a turducken. Indeed it was. Marchant, a lobbyist and political consultant, told the Associated Press Wednesday that he and Rep. Nikki Haley knocked boots in the Beehive State.

Marchant says their one-night stand happened in 2008 during a trip to Utah. He was married then and still is.

Earlier Wednesday, Marchant resigned from the campaign of gubernatorial hopeful Andre Bauer, the state’s lieutenant governor.

Haley is a mother of two who says she has always been faithful in 13 years of marriage.

Let’s see — Will Folks, Marchant, did she go for the sleazeball Sanfordite trifecta with another guy, or just limit it to these to gentlemen?

The title to this post comes from the Charleston City Paper‘s Chris Haire, who seems to get just as fired up about RedState’s Erick Erickson, the Viking, as we do. The tweet pretty much ruined our morning, as we planned on laying down and listening to podcasts all morning, which is how we enjoy spending our weekend mornings. Now we’re ending up writing this while listening to audio of Thursday’s “Pardon the Interruption.” Dammit.

So, Erickson responded to comments on his post. It was fucking painful to read.

I can’t say that I am surprised by the level of aggravation and acrimony in the comments of my “Letting the Chips Fall” post. I certainly promised more than I delivered. You should have seen the first six drafts. They were much better.

Six drafts? Really? What is he, a bad writer in an English 101 class? And they were better? Maybe he should have run with one of those half-dozen, then.

For the few cheery souls remaining, I appreciate that you got the point — it’s exactly what Will Folks has been doing, but doing in a ridiculous third person narrative. The emails and phone calls from people in the media wanting to know when exactly I was going to do the big reveal on this were more than a little illuminating.

OK, so while trying to raise money for a candidate in a state in which he does not live, and knows even less about, he talks big and delivers nothing and that was the point? Hey, we have a public relations degree. We know spin when we see it, especially bad spin. And goddamn, this is bad spin. Then he goes into his bad argument again.

Look — if you told us we would be spending all this time sticking up for the gubernatorial campaign of Lt. Gov. André Bauer, we would have told you that you were nuts. But here we are again. Here’s how Erickson came up with his theory that the Bauer campaign was behind all this: He references the well-known fact that Will Folks worked with Rod Shealy four years ago. Then, he sites the well-known belief that Sen. Jake Knotts had a guy investigating political opponents who were, and this is important, out to get him. And to back it all up, what does Erickson do? He sites a Harper’s article from three years ago, and year-old posts from Wheels, who was then and is now a paid consultant of Richard Quinn & Associates, the firm behind Atty. Gen. Henry McMaster‘s gubernatorial campaign.

It — it boggles the mind. The man is an uninformed fool. We haven’t chimed in on the Tim James mess as it deals with the Alabama gubernatorial election. Know why? We don’t know enough. Just reading what shows up in news stories and blogs does not make you informed. It comes from discussions with people in the know, people not in the know, and generally living in the eye of the storm.

As we’ve said before, it’s one thing to make an educated guess, but it’s quite another to spend 30 minutes on Google and think you’ve solved the mystery behind a political scandal. Just about every political insider in Columbia thinks Erickson has no fucking idea what he’s talking about. Might be a clue.

Oh, this is rich. RedState‘s Erick Erickson, the Viking lord of the interwebs, wrote yesterday that he had talked to a lot of people and that he definitively knew that Will Folks got paid to out his relationship with Rep. Nikki Haley. Today, at the grand unveiling, he had a whole bunch of nothing, part of which was predicated on a post by, of all people, Wheels and his defunct blog. The whole post is a miasma of educated guesses, which is a lot of what we do over here. The difference is that Erickson is viewing the situation from afar, which means, as one tweet put it, that he’s clueless.

He’s laying the whole thing at the feet of Lt. Gov. André Bauer, because of Rod Shealy and Jake Knotts, the end. Really. No talk of when Folks was paid, how he was paid, how much he was paid and who did the paying. Erickson did lay this bit of knowledge:

Then there is Jake Knotts who allegedly hired a private investigator to dig into Will Folks and who is rumored to be responsible for the rumored picture. Knotts also helped in the Bauer Palace Coup. Note that in the same blog post at the Palmetto Scoop about Knott’s involvement to help Bauer, Adam Fogle wrote the quote, “Bauer seems to have cut some kind of deal with blogger Bill Folks.”

Pfft. No shit Knotts hired a guy. In the process of running down the hit list story, he said things about knowing about meetings at certain locations, among other information, that could only be gleaned by a private dick. We think it had a lot more to do with Gov. Mark Sanford and the political machinations going on there, though. The man said it himself, “You don’t investigate an investigator.” He was a top-notch narcotics cop for years. You think he doesn’t have a wide network of pals and resources to draw on? Whether there was a guy scoping out Folks’ residence and catching Folks and Haley in flagrante delicto can only be borne out if such information comes to light.

Erickson’s post, in its entirety, though, just reeks of someone trying to talk about the dark corners of S.C. politics that guys like us live in, while not really knowing anything about them. It’s like Bill Plaschke discussing Southeastern Conference football. And worse, he promised and didn’t deliver. Try again next time.

The past couple days, Will Folks and RedState.com‘s Erick Erickson (he’s a viking — A VIKING I TELL YOU!) have been in a bit of a war of words. See, Erickson, like a lot of other people outside South Carolina, have been a bit fooled by Rep. Nikki Haley. Really, if she was a white dude in his late 30s, we really doubt the Ericksons of the world would be doing “moneybombs” for her. Anyway, he’s taken Folks’ revelation like somebody insulted his mother and kicked his dog while beating his favorite sports team.

Today, topped by the silliness that is the red flashing light .gif, we get this noise:

Who paid Will Folks? He was alleged offered money. A LOT of money. In fact, RedState now confirms through a whole heap of sources that he’s been trying to sell this story for a year.

We know who bit.

We know who didn’t bite.

We know who paid Will Folks to push this story out there.

Oh, and you guys in the media, you’ve let Folks string you along. We’re going to string you along.

Tune in later for the answer.

“A whole heap.” Quantifiably, that’s more than “a lot,” and less than “a shit-ton.” Regardless, this should be good.