South Carolina State Representative Nikki Haley handed Congressman (and fellow gubernatorial candidate) Gresham Barrett his own head yesterday when she accepted his call to ” sign a letter to President Barack Obama opposing the transfer of any of the more than 200 terror suspects housed at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to a naval brig outside of Charleston.” [The State newspaper]
In a letter to Barrett, Haley wrote:
Because your position is right, I will be happy to sign your letter. However, calling on candidates for Governor to join you in a letter to President Obama, rather than asking your colleagues in Congress — who are actually in a position to prevent this potentially dangerous situation — to do the same, strikes me as little more than political grandstanding.
But she wasn’t finished. The head-handing part came when Haley pretty much told Barrett how to do his job:
I would suggest writing another letter to President Obama that might do even more good. Please ask the President to stop using taxpayer dollars for the TARP bailout. As you were a supporter of the $700 billion Wall Street bailout, adding your voice to the chorus of conservative opposition to that continuing waste of tax dollars might actually prove helpful. South Carolina taxpayers are already overburdened without having to foot the bill for bailing out Wall Street’s failed corporate giants.
Now, compare Haley’s response to that of Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mullins McLeod;
No one wants suspected terrorists on our soil while they await their richly-deserved punishment, but when the President asks us to do our part in the international war on terrorism, the only appropriate response from this or any state’s Governor is “Yes Sir, Mr. President.”
Now, there are a couple of things wrong with McLeod’s response. First, YEAH – like the Democrats saluted George Bush and said “Yes Sir, Mr. President.” when Congress was asked to do its part in the latter part of his administration.
And, second, this isn’t military strategy, it’s policy. Leave ‘em in Gitmo. That solves it. If South Carolinians don’t want a couple of hundred terrorist combatants incarcerated in their state, the governor has the right to say so.
She probably didn’t know she was doing it, but Haley was also giving young Mullins McLeod a lesson in executive leadership. It is NOT the function of a governor to cower to the president or congress and simply say “Yes, Sir” when that governor does not believe it is in the best interests of his or her state.
I’m not trying to be overly dramatic or beatify Nikki Haley to the Realm of Greatest Conservatives, but her response to Barrett had a definite Ronald Reagan quality to it.
I can almost hear the Gipper saying to Congressman Barrett:
“Well … Gresham…. I’ll sign your letter because I think you’ve got the right idea, but an even better idea is if you would do your job as a representative and do something more manly – introduce legislation yourself. But…. if you wanna write letters, that’s fine… go ahead… and while you’re at it, send one to President Obama
(and here his voice gets very resolute, his jaw tight and his brow firm)
and tell him to STOP using taxpayer dollars to bail out failed businesses. Stop trying to turn our economy into a socialist welfare state and RETURN TO THE FREE MARKET.”
Great Googly Moogly. There are actually people out there who don’t think Nikki Haley can be governor.
In these times, how can she NOT?
Perhaps she can amend that second letter a little bit.
Say, “Hey, you should have stood up and voted against the TARP bailout when the Bush Administration proposed it or stopped his Treasury Secretary from strongarming all the big banks into accepting it.”
Some like that would just SING!
Nikki Haley is truly a bold and refreshing leader. She would be the kind of governor in whom we could trust, and of whom we could all be proud.
I think the Congressman Barrett’s request was one not as a congressman or even a candidate, but more as a fellow South Carolinian. I for one wouldn’t want to give a reason for some would be terrorists to be a martyr and kill innocent people. Look at what just happened in Texas. Nikki Haley needs to make a name for her other than being tied to Sanford, so I guess that’s the reason for her response.
Good thought, Carl, but Barrett made the appeal for signatures to the other nine gubernatorial candidates, not the general public. And Rep Haley said she would sign because she thought it was the right sentiment. The rest was a beautiful political counterpunch expertly executed. Barrett left himself wide open for the shot and Haley was the only one smart enough to see it and bold enough to take it.
And regarding the tired old Sanford argument, read my post “Whose Cup O’ Tea” in which I point out “… the “Sanford candidate” tag won’t work on Haley. She may well have been the governor’s “preferred” candidate, but what has that to do with anything relative to next year’s election? Her refusal to demonize Sanford’s politics in the wake of his personal failings testify much more positively to her character than that of politicians who have considered everything Sanford to be toxic. Supporting Nikki Haley isn’t supporting Mark Sanford any more than loyalty to your pastor equates to loyalty to Jimmy Swaggart or Jim Bakker.”
I would like to remind people of two important facts. First, Congressman Barrett HAS co-sponsored three pieces of legislation in Congress that would keep the terrorists out of South Carolina, and secondly he has asked all South Carolina residents to join him in signing a petition, http://www.keepterroristsoutofsc.com , to keep the terrorists out of our state. This is an issue that should be a top priority for anyone attempting to become the the top executive of this or any other state. Congressman Barrett is completely in the right, this is an issue in which we should all stand together.
Nikki Haley is intelligent, energetic, principled, and will actually treat the office of governor as a JOB rather than a reward or promotion.
Sanford turned out very badly mostly because he was very lazy and apparently putting his energy into something else besides making a positive difference in this state.
The other candidates think that getting to be governor is a “promotion” or a “reward” for long years of public corruption. They don’t intend to do anything other than being a very comfortable caretaker.
Nikki Haley is of upstanding character which stands in stark contrast to the others, especially “Foghorn Leghorn” McMastah’s taking money from lawyers he hired for a state job just because a buddy of his who is a judge told him it was okey-dokey.
Then there’s Andre Bauer whose judgement and recklessness is best exemplified by his landing on an airstrip too short to take off from again for his type of plane. He then attempted to take off again anyway with disastrous and nearly fatal results: http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/GenPDF.asp?id=ATL06LA083&rpt=fa
Gresham Barrett voted for TARP to bail out rich, elitist bankers with taxpayer money. No doubt, that’s how he financed his campaign for governor along with his selling many other votes while in Congress.
Nikki is a fighter. She’s got guts. She comes from the same place we do. She got into the general assembly and saw the corruption there and was outraged as you or I would have been.
Nikki didn’t just go along with the crowd however. She fought it. NO OTHER CANDIDATE approaches this sort of record of risk taking for the hard working people of this state.
Personally, I’m sick and tired of good ol’ boy corruption as usual. It’s time we got up and did something about it. Nikki Haley will be a leader in that regard.
We only have ourselves to blame if we don’t do everything we can to stop the government corruption in S.C. when we have a chance to put a like-minded individual like Nikki Haley in as governor.