Harry Reid, Comeback Kid?

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Disturbing news in Nevada:

Republican Sue Lowden has the best chance of defeating U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, according to a new poll for the Review-Journal that also suggests the Democratic incumbent could beat Tea Party favorite Sharron Angle in the fall, although he remains as unpopular as ever.
For the first time, a Mason-Dixon Polling & Research poll indicates that Reid could win re-election, even over Lowden, the one-time GOP front-runner whom the Democrat most fears and has most attacked. She is seen as moderate and a stronger general election foe than Angle, a staunch conservative now tied for the GOP primary lead.

What does it mean? We don’t know. The important thing always to remember about polls is this: A poll is not a prediction. It is, as pollsters say, a “snapshot” of opinion at any given time. And that’s true, whether we view the poll results as “good” news or “bad” news. (All political polls are “good” news to somebody.)

Especially beware of early polls. Remember that Marco Rubio started out 30 points behind Charlie Crist in the Florida GOP primary and, a month before the Democratic primary in Pennsylvania, Arlen Specter was 20 points ahead of Joe Sestak. When the pollster asks a question about “if the election were held tomorrow,” and the election is still many months away, you can’t exactly take that number to the bank.

Furthermore, candidates and campaigns matter. All through 2007, polls showed Hillary Clintonway ahead of Barack Obama, but Hillary ran a lousy campaign and Obama ran a smart campaign and so he kicked her butt.

Obviously, the Las Vegas Review-Journal is interpreting this poll as telling GOP voters to vote for Sue Lowden, not Sharron Angle. Maybe. Among others, Rush Limbaugh has endorsed Sue Lowden. But what if Lowden is running a lousy campaign? I mean, if she can’t beat a Tea Party candidate, how’s she going to beat Harry Reid?

When I went to Nevada in March, I met Lowden and visited her campaign headquarters. Nice lady, and a very efficient-looking campaign operation. So why has Sharron Angle surged? I don’t know, but here are the numbers now in the GOP primary:

  • Lowden 30%
  • Angle 29%
  • Tarkanian 23%

So, with the June 8 primary just around the corner, it looks like a dead heat. We’ll wait and see on that. I suspect that Reid’s mysterious “bounce” in the polls may actually reflect the intensity of the GOP primary. Right now, Angle’s Tea Party supporters are hating Lowden, and Lowden’s regular GOP supporters are hating Angle, and so this feeling hurts the poll numbers for both Angle and Lowden versus Reid. But when push comes to shove on Nov. 2, will people who hate Harry Reid stay home, rather than vote Republican? We’ll see.

Exit question: Has the Tea Party done anything for the GOP?

UPDATE: Instalanche! Excuse the belated thanks, but I was offline for eight hours while my teenage son fixed my computer.

VIDEO: ‘They Unleashed a Tiger,’ Haley Tells South Carolina Press Conference

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The Republican gubernatorial candidate seemed cheerful and confident in this Friday interview with reporters:

  • About her phone calls with Will Folks: “You can ask any member of my staff. When they work for me, I expect work from them, whether it’s through e-mail or text or anything else. I work my staff hard and I make sure things get done, and so that’s all this is.”
  • Asked if she is contemplating legal action: “I am very focused on this campaign. I am not going to be distracted. . . . Right now, our goal is to get through this election. We will deal with this afterwards in a way that’s appropriate.”
  • Will Folks’ job with her: “He did press communications, he did Web site work, and he also did op-ed material.
  • About Will Folks’ motives: “This is what I will tell you — I was 10 points up in the poll. Y’know, I was ‘Nikki Who?’ before, then I got 10 points up in the poll, then I got 20 points up the poll, then all of a sudden this explodes. I think the people are smarter than this. This came out at the last minute, as it showed that we’re heading into the primary in a very strong way . . . They unleashed a tiger. If anything, I’m more motivated and more focused than I’ve ever been.”
  • Whether the accusations have hurt her campaign: “Not at all. Let me tell you, I am overwhelmed by the support we have had. The phone calls coming into the office have been overwhelming. We have run out of yard signs, we have run out of bumper stickers, and the contributions have been more amazing than ever. I am very grateful to the people of South Carolina for seeing this for what it is and for continuing the support they have given me.”
  • How her husband is handling it: “My husband is great. You know, we have been faithful to each other for 13 years. He is strong. He is my support. He and my kids are going to be with me this weekend, and so we are in a very good place.”
  • Asked if she feels like a victim: “No, I will never call myself a victim. I am somebody who has pushed for good government, and anytime you push the status quo . . . there’s some heat you have to take back. But in the end, it’s going to be the people who win in South Carolina.”
  • Asked about treatment by the media: “I think the media’s doing their job. You know, what I wish is that they would focus back on the fact that the elections of 2010 are really going to matter in an important way. You know, I would ask that they would turn and get back on the issues, but I think the media’s been fine.”

Here is the news report that WCBD-TV did from the press conference, and notice how the editing and the reporter’s descriptions shape the narrative:

A possibly relevant point about those long late-night phone calls. Ask anyone who has ever worked on building a Web site: You try this, update and preview, change that, update and preview, over and over. If Folks was putting together a Web site for Haley, is it possible they were on a call while they experimented with changing the content and appearance of the Web site?

Of course, they could have been having a lover’s quarrel or doing some icky phone-sex thing, but if she was paying him to be a political communications consultant, doesn’t it seem fair to suppose — absent evidence to the contrary — that those phone calls were about politics and communication?

UPDATE: Wow! A poll taken Tuesday, after the Will Folks accusation on Monday, shows Nikki Haley gaining strength — now at 31% compared to 21% for Bauer and 14% for Barrett. According to the Insider Advantage poll, when asked how the allegations affected their views of Haley, 21% said they were less likely to vote for her, while 17% said they were more likely to vote for her. (Call that 17% the “cougar caucus.”) An important note of caution from Bill Davis of the Statehouse News:

Scott Huffmon, a political scientist at Winthrop University who specializes in political polling . . . said the InsiderAdvantage/ Statehouse Report poll may have come too early to accurately gauge the complete effect that the adultery allegations will have on Haley’s campaign. Once the story is fully sunk into the minds of voters, Huffmon said, it may be a different story.
Huffmon added as the story continues to drag out in dribs and drabs, and if no real substantive evidence emerges of an affair, then he expected Haley to benefit from voter backlash, as voters could then become convinced that Haley was the victim.

As always, perception is reality in politics, so if Nikki Haley is perceived as the victim, while Will Folks is perceived as a douchebag (which he is), then it’s a net positive for Haley.

By the way, notice that Bauer is sandwiched between Haley and Barrett in the poll, so if Haley gets taken down a few notches, and Barrett gets the blame — well, cui bono, y’all? Oh, and count me as less-than-amused by the Statehouse News cartoonist’s offering:

C’mon, man. Far be it from me to scream “raaaaacism,” but (a) she’s not that brown and (b) this is South Carolina, besides which (c) the cartoon makes her look ugly, which she’s definitely not. After all, if even the irresistible Will Folks said “I’d hit it” . . .

UPDATE II: Remember how Folks was so totally panicked that Jim Davenport of the Associated Press was asking him questions about the rumor? Well, here is Davenport’s big scary in-depth exposé — all 120 words of it:

COLUMBIA, S.C. — A South Carolina candidate for governor says a blogger is delusional if he thinks records of phone calls between the two support his claim of an inappropriate physical relationship.
Blogger Will Folks claims he had a relationship in 2007 with Republican Rep. Nikki Haley when he was not yet married. Haley is a married mother of two who strongly denies the allegation.
Campaign manager Tim Pearson said Friday that Folks’ phone records showing nearly 700 calls between the two only reflect that Folks was working for the state representative from Lexington.
Haley is one of four Republicans running in the June 8 primary. She has gained recognition and support since being endorsed by former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

This is why Folks’ panic over the AP story never made sense. Folks has a masters degree in journalism. Surely he should know that an established media organization like Associated Press has these people called “editors,” who aren’t going to let their reporters go hog-wild on a rumor about a douchbag blogger. Otherwise, they’d never have time to report real news.

UPDATE III: Thanks to the alert commenter who calls my attention to a longer version of Davenport’s story with this interesting information:

On Thursday, Folks released hundreds of pages of phone records. An Associated Press analysis of them showed at least 693 calls dating to 2006 between Haley and Folks – almost entirely on their cell phones. . . . .
Most are brief, with many lasting 1 minute, the majority lasting less than 10 minutes and two thirds originating from his phone.

Exactly. He’s calling her twice as often as she’s calling him, and most of the calls are short. Of course, that doesn’t disprove anything, just like the long calls don’t prove anything. The point being that the phone records aren’t “evidence” of Folks’ claim. So we’re still at the “he-said/she-said” stage.

More on the Bauer/Shealy Angle in the South Carolina GOP Sex Scandal

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Erick Erickson’s report — indicating that GOP gubernatorial candidate Andre Bauer and his “shrewd” consultant, Rod Shealy, are the sources pushing the Folks-Haley story — has been ridiculed as less-than-conclusive by Allahpundit. 

However, there is more evidence indicating a Bauer connection to the accusations by GOP blogger/consultant Will Folks. A South Carolina blogger suggests that Republican lieutenant-governor candidate Larry Richter — whom Folks previously portrayed as a cockroach — could be funding the Bauer/Shealy attempt to take down Nikki Haley:

The thing is, the guy paying Rod Shealy all the money right now is none other than Larry Richter, who’s running for Lt Governor. Up to this point, Andre Bauer has paid nothing to Rod Shealy while Larry Richter has paid Shealy $31,751 just since he entered the race in February. . . .
Rod Shealy is the guy pulling the strings here. Larry Richter is the guy paying Rod Shealy.

Richter is an attorney who represented Folks’ ex-fiancee in the 2005 domestic abuse case. The possibility that there have been other incidents of abusive behavior by Will Folks is the subject of another post that I currently have queued in draft, awaiting additional confirmation. Those allegations are serious enough that I don’t want to publish them until I’ve made a good-faith effort to verify the accuracy of the information. Legally, I’d be protected by the attribution “sources say” — accurately reporting what they have told me — but from the standpoint of credibility, I’m trying to make sure my sources aren’t wrong.

While I understand the frustration of readers following this story — “Where’s the proof?” and “Put up or shut up!” — the fact is that it was very easy for Will Folks to get this scandal started, whereas pursuing it to a conclusion won’t be so easy. 

That is directly relevant to my hesitation regarding these accusations against Folks. The accusations are real enough, although I am in no position to know if they are true or false.

Once those kinds of accusations are published, however, I can’t un-publish them. Too bad Folks didn’t consider all the possible ramifications before his idiotic “admission” on Monday. I initially treated his accusation as a joke, but there are real people suffering serious consequences — and the consequences for Will Folks could soon become quite serious indeed.

Melissa Clouthier at Liberty Pundits describes this scandal as exposing the “cesspool” of South Carolina politics. As for Will Folks, Dan Riehl’s comment is blunt:

Folks’ conduct in this has been despicable. Someone should simply drive over and coldcock the SOB at this point.

That should not be interpreted as a suggestion to hit my tip jar and send me to South Carolina. The Shoe Leather Fund is strictly for reporting.

Besides, I’m a lover, not a fighter.

UPDATE: Dan Riehl is annoyed with Allahpundit. Bloggers being annoyed with Allahpundit isn’t unusual, and “annoyed” is Dan’s usual mood, but let’s just hope that Dan doesn’t go from annoyed to angry. Dan once got angry at me, and it’s not an experience I’d recommend. Did I mention that Dan’s from New Jersey?

UPDATE II: South Carolina political journalist Wes Wolfe — who co-authored the award-winning 2008 Free Press story on the Folks/Sanford “hit list” — comments on the report that state Sen. Jake Knotts hired a private detective to investigate Will 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.

OK, so my source was right about Knotts hiring a private eye, which as I said would bolster suspicion that Bauer’s supporters were pushing the Folks/Haley story.

The interesting question is, why was Folks so obviously trying to point the finger at Gresham Barrett’s campaign? My own sources tell me that Barrett’s team is furious at this insinuation.

Folks is playing a very cunning game here, and it looks like he planned this very carefully. My guess is that Folks’ text-messages to Haley’s campaign manager Pearson were part of the set-up — either Folks trying to get Pearson to say something incriminating or, perhaps, establishing in advance the pretext for his own “admission.”

Background to the Carolina Scandal:
Will Folks, Jake Knotts and the ‘Hit List’; UPDATE: Who Is Rod Shealy?

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In August 2007, according to the (Columbia S.C.) Free Times, former Mark Sanford staffer Will Folks had an unscheduled meeting with Gov. Sanford in which Folks reportedly proposed a “hit list” to defeat a number of incumbent legislators in the 2008 elections. According to the Free Times, the “hit list” memo that Folks subsequently developed named 27 Republicans and four Democrats who would be targeted for defeat in the 2008 primaries.

This appears to be directly related to the Folks-Haley saga, because one of the targeted legislators was Republican State Sen. Jake Knotts:

Regardless of the importance of this particular proposal and its hard-to-prove links to the governor’s office, one thing is clear — some legislators believe they are being targeted, and they believe the governor is either directly or indirectly involved.
Sen. Jake Knotts, R-Lexington, is a former narcotics investigator and a targeted member of the General Assembly who didn’t need any reporter to tell him his name was on a hit list. He already knew he was being investigated by members of pro-Sanford groups.
Earlier this year when Senate President Pro Tem Glenn McConnell, R-Charleston, first heard about groups possibly investigating Knotts, he was overheard saying in a meeting in a public place, “You don’t investigate an investigator.”
He was right.
Knotts’ own investigations of the governor have led to front-page stories in The State newspaper in past weeks. Knotts, who says Sanford is using numerous political action committees and nonprofits as slush funds, has already once caught him with his hand in the moneybag. In November, Sanford gave back $101,524.14, money that had been left over from a grant that went to pay for a National Governors Association convention in Charleston, and was given to a group called Carolinians for Reform. In response to having to refund the money, Sanford said in a Nov. 20 Associated Press story that he thought moving the cash to the organization made “complete sense.”

Republicans in South Carolina say that Knotts hired a private investigator to dig up dirt on Folks, and Folks told WSPA-TV “he was confronted in early 2009 with a photograph of himself and Haley in what he describes as ‘a compromising position.’ . . . He says the photo was taken by a private investigator who was hired to dig up dirt on him.”

Of course, there may have been a lot of people, not just those on the “Hit List,” who had motives to investigate Folks, but I’m told that South Carolina Republicans know that Knotts hired a detective. It can’t be known if this “compromising” photo was taken by that investigator and, in point of fact, for all we know Folks may be making the whole thing up.

What this reveals is the complex Web of political forces involved in this scandal. Sanford was Folks’ original political connection. By his own account, Folks was playing bass in a “moderately successful” alternative  rock band when he was “plucked out of mid-air” as spokesman for Sanford’s 2002 gubernatorial campaign. After several controversies, Folks resigned as Sanford’s communications director in July 2005 and, in August 2005, pleaded guilty to domestic violence charges.

The “hit list” proposal shows that Folks was still able to use his Sanford connection two years after leaving the governor’s staff, but the exposure of the list naming Knotts put both Sanford and Folks squarely in Knott’s crosshairs and, as Glenn McConnell said, “You don’t investigate an investigator.”

Now, fast-forward to Erick Erickson’s story at Red State today:

A campaign consultant for one of the campaigns for Governor of South Carolina began approaching groups [in spring 2009] that were viewed as likely to be influenced by Governor Mark Sanford. Why? Because South Carolina politicos knew Rep. Nikki Haley was viewed as Sanford’s choice to replace him.
This campaign consultant began informing groups that a blogger named Will Folks was peddling a story that he had a relationship with Rep. Haley.
Multiple sources in South Carolina confirm that the political consultant in question denied his campaign would be responsible when the story came out, but the consultant was also adamant that if Haley was in the lead before the primary, Folks would drop the story.

OK, so whose campaign was pushing this story? Folks has hinted that it was Gresham Barrett’s supporters, including Wes Donehue and B.J. Boling. But if Knotts was the guy whose detective got the (alleged) “compromising” photo — as is “pretty widely known” among South Carolina Republicans, one source told me — the most likely gubernatorial campaign to be pushing this story would be . . .?

Andre Bauer, an ally of Knotts. However, Bauer yesterday told South Carolina Radio Network, “I heard that rumor for over a year, but we did not have a thing to do with it.”

Plausible deniably? If Knotts was trying to take down Haley to benefit Bauer, it’s possible that Bauer himself wouldn’t have been informed of it. (Remember that Nixon didn’t know about the “Plumbers” plan to break into DNC headquarters at the Watergate Hotel until after the burglars had been arrested.)

Nobody knows exactly what Folks’ motives are, but there is something extraordinarily fishy about his own explanation of his decision to “admit” the alleged affair on Monday. Folks himself was the primary source of the affair rumor, and is also the primary source about the alleged “compromising” photo.

Folks has written the script of this drama, putting himself at center stage, and that may be his only motive — to make himself the star of the show. But reporters in Carolina should be asking Jake Knotts if he had anything to do with this sleazy attempt to take down Nikki Haley.

And, just to show you how sleazy GOP politics can get, last fall, Andre Bauer was forced to deny rumors that he is gay — rumors that were blamed on Mark Sanford.

One final point: The GOP primary is June 8 and if no candidate gets 50% of the vote — as is likely, with multiple candidates — there would be a runoff June 22. And Bauer is reportedly now in second place.

UPDATE: Dan Riehl doesn’t like the way Erick Erickson is handling this. In Erick’s defense, Red State endorsed Nikki Haley early and is therefore “invested” in the success of her campaign. So out of the clear blue sky on Monday, Folks drops this sex rumor, putting a burden on Haley’s supporters — including Erick — to attempt to disprove the rumor or, in other words, to prove a negative.

As I’ve said, I don’t care who wins a gubernatorial primary in South Carolina and frankly don’t care whether or not the rumor is true, but there’s got to be a limit to this kind of sleazy tactics. Nikki Haley may win, or she may lose, but she shouldn’t be defeated by mere gossip.

Erickson and other Haley supporters are in a very difficult position trying to beat this Folks rumor, and have my sympathy.

UPDATE II: Erick Erickson pulls the trigger:

The consultant who last year was telling people about Will Folks’ story worked or works for Andre Bauer. Bauer himself admitted this week he has known about the rumor for a year.
In 2006, Rod Shealy hired Will Folks to do something called “counter-negative consulting services” for Andre Bauer and a couple of other campaigns.
Sometime after 2006, Will Folks turned decidedly hostile toward Andre Bauer. He was very much part of the Sanford reform crowd that included Nikki Haley. Starting in June of 2009, around the time Bauer’s consultant is pushing out the Will Folks story, Folks starts to change his tune on Bauer.
About the same time last year, another blogger notes this: “Bauer seems to have cut some kind of deal with blogger Bill Folks.”
Three days before the Palin endorsement, Folks is singing the Bauer campaign’s praises. By the way, I was told though know of no public polling from that time, that internals showed Haley was already starting to track upward before Palin’s endorsement, which just sealed the deal and added momentum. Andre Bauer is pushed from second place to third place, cutting him out of a runoff . . .

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE III: Rod Shealy has been called “South Carolina’s shrewdest political consultant,” and he knows a thing or two about dirty tricks:

“Shealy is diabolically clever and a master of dirty tricks, but very effective,” Will Folks, a political consultant and blogger who has worked with and against Shealy, told me.
Shealy gained a bit of national notoriety in 1990, when he was running the campaign of his sister, Sherry Martschink, a candidate for Lieutenant Governor. Shealy was looking to increase the turnout of racially conservative low-country voters, a group largely sympathetic to Martschink, in the overall Republican primary. To do so, he recruited Benjamin Hunt, Jr., an unemployed black fisherman, to run for congress in the Republican primary against incumbent Arthur Ravenel, Jr., even paying Hunt’s filing fee. When the ploy was revealed, Shealy was convicted and fined for violating campaign laws.

UPDATE IV: Sources are now contacting me with accusations against Will Folks that could be very damaging. I’m now attempting to check out those accusations. Meanwhile, there are increased suspicions about the role of former Bauer consultant Chris LaCivita in the Folks scandal. Here is a very interesting item FITSNews reported in March:

S.C. Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer has parted ways with his top gubernatorial campaign consultant and replaced him with a controversial GOP activist from Tennessee.
Chris LaCivita – who gained fame during the 2004 presidential election by running the “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” campaign – is no longer affiliated with Bauer’s campaign team. Instead, the lieutenant governor has turned to former Tennessee GOP Chairman Chip Saltsman to serve as his top political strategist.
Sources in Bauer’s office refused to comment on the split with LaCivita, but a source close to Bauer’s campaign called the decision “mutual.” The source also confirmed Saltsman’s hiring.
In addition to Saltsman, Bauer is currently being advised by longtime confidant Rod Shealy, Sr. and Columbia lobbyist/ consultant Larry Marchant. He does not have a day-to-day campaign manager.
Saltsman, FITS readers will recall, landed in hot water during the 2008 campaign for chairman of the Republican National Committee when he sent several fellow Republicans a Christmas CD that included a racist parody song entitled “Barack the Magic Negro.”
Within a month, Saltsman was forced to withdraw from the race for RNC Chairman.

The world of South Carolina GOP politics is Byzantine, and Folks appears to be a free agent in this complex pattern of intrigue. One source suggests that Folks is trying to get “back into the game” — to be more a consultant than a blogger — while another source points out that having the top political blog in South Carolina is a very valuable asset to Folks’ consulting business.

EXPECT FURTHER UPDATES . . . .

Does Dan Riehl Project Much?

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by Smitty

Dan insists on driving for deeper irony in a reply to my post asking about the guilt card in support of Cynthia. He calls attention to the passage:

Think of it as sort of a dispensation for all Right wing homophobes. We will resume our guilt free fag hating again tomorrow; maybe we’ll even kick some sand at Andy Sullivan for good measure. Carry on.

I had hoped that when I mentioned “the wretched excess of a Fred Phelps” in my reply, the mail was answered on “guilt free fag hating”. Of the really cool people you know and admire, how many of them expend significant energy hating specific people? Even though Stacy McCain has essentially turned the balance of this blog into a Will Folks free-for-all, I’d fall well short of saying McCain affords Folks any proper ‘hatred’.
Dan titles his post “Is Smitty A Self-Loathing Homophobe?”, and then laments:

Alas, my life has come done to casting pearls before swine and Smitty, hackles, or no.

  • Might Dan be the one managing a self-loathing problem?
  • Is he calling me a pig?
  • Does he suffer from ZZ Top envy?


While I will go on record as suffering from facial foilage envy, I categorically deny problems with self-loathing, or fear of sexal orientation. The question is: can Dan Riehl effect a ‘top kill‘ on his ‘inner Sullivan’? Because really, all of these ‘junk shots’ could land an explorer in deep water. Over to you, Dan.

Rumor: Justice Ginsburg to Retire

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That’s the buzz among Senate staffers:

The plan reportedly is this: If Elena Kagan’s nomination to the court can be confirmed early this summer, Ginsburg would then announce her retirement, so that confirmation for Ginsburg’s replacement could be finished before the end of the year.
Those who believe the rumor see the Ginsburg retirement scenario as a signal that the Obama administration fears Democrats may lose enough Senate seats in the mid-term election to make it more difficult to confirm a liberal appointee after the next Congress convenes in January 2011. . . .

Read the rest at The American Spectator. Note that this is merely a rumor. No word yet on whether Will Folks has claimed to have had “inappropriate” contact with Justice Ginsburg.

VIDEO: Will Folks, Boy-Man

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“I don’t look at what I do as being angry and mean, and if it comes off like that, then I think maybe some people who are being criticized, maybe I’m hittin’ a nerve with ’em.”
— Will Folks, Republican douchebag

And I mean “douchebag” in the most respectful and affectionate way.

What’s weird is when Folks says, “I’ve got a little girl who’s 7 months and a little boy who’s six year old” — and he’s dressed like a teenager.

Really. What’s up with this 30-something GOP political operative doing the sports jersey-and-ballcap look? OK, the cap is useful for hiding early-onset male pattern baldness. However, when you add in the grunge-rocker scruffy facial hair, isn’t the overall effect that of the guy who’s always hanging around campus pubs in college towns, hitting on 20-year-olds?

Video totally poached from Melissa Clouthier.

Nikki Haley Interview: ‘Will Folks? Complete Douchebag! No Way, Jose!’ UPDATE: Team Romney Double-Cross?

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Actually, the video clip of the interview at Charleston’s WCIV-TV was screwed up, so I can’t be sure that those were her exact words, but the station does report that she’s denying the whole thing:

Haley, who is still determined, says it’s nothing more than politics.
“It worries me because I think this is what keeps good people from running for office. I’m strong focused and very motivated and this is why we focus on the issues of the people of this state and not let these last minute distractions get in our way,” said Haley.
Haley flat out denies these claims on several occasions during recent stops. She says the hardest part, not the questions, but the effect on her family.

David Weigel at the Washington Post writes:

The surreality of this aside, obviously a confirmed story from Folks is going to be more damaging than any back story on why he came out with it.

Yeah, Dave, and if Will Folks had a “confirmed story,” he wouldn’t be playing these lame-ass games. Nikki Haley is not the defendant in a sexual harassment suit and she hasn’t testified before a grand jury, so there is no “perjury trap” risk, nor is there a special prosecutor to subpoena a blue dress for a DNA test.

If anybody thinks Will Folks is going to produce smoking-gun proof, they’re deluded. He’s an amateur gadfly who got in over his head, and is now trying to fake his way through it, just like he faked his way into a job as communication director for Mark Sanford at which he proved incompetent. In other Douchebag News Updates:

Stay tuned for the latest updates as Will Folks strives to earn the coveted Golden Douchebag Award from the American Academy of Advanced Douchebaggery.

UPDATE: Melissa Clouthier points the finger at Team Romney:

Who is paying the consultant Wesley Donahue, who is leaking all this? Also, who is paying Will Folks?
Oh wait, lookie here, Wesley Donahue is a consultant, or has been, for Mitt Romney. . . .
Could it be that Mitt Romney is deep-sixing Nikki Haley in anticipation of his presidential run? This, of course, is pure speculation, but there is no question that the Palin endorsement of Nikki Haley helped her and that Haley being governor would help Palin and whomever Palin endorses.

But Romney endorsed Haley first, so that doesn’t make sense. Political consultants are hired guns who have multiple clients and if Wes Dohanue is behind this take-down operation against Haley, it doesn’t mean that Romney’s money is paying for it.

BTW, I noticed that Dr. Melissa didn’t hat-tip me for the Will Folks TV interview, but I’m sure that’s just an oversight. (1o:45 p.m. ET **See special note below**) Or maybe she doesn’t like the word “douchebag.” (My wife hates it, too.)

More at Memeorandum. Stay tuned for more Douchebag News Updates.

UPDATE II: The incredible effrontery of Will Folks:

Asked by a South Carolina CBS affiliate on Wednesday if he intends to release any additional information on Haley prior to the June 8 primary, Folks responded: “That ain’t up to me, really.”

Wait a minute, douchebag: It ain’t up to you whether or not you release additional information? Like you’re the helpless victim in all this?

UPDATE III: Ahhhhh, now I see:

[Will Folks] says he was confronted in early 2009 with a photograph of himself and Haley in what he describes as “a compromising position.” He says Haley also knows about the photo.
“The picture that I made her aware of, I discussed it with her on numerous occasions. I discussed it more recently with her campaign manager, who I am told is aware of it and may have even seen it, I don’t know. Will it ever be released? I’ve got no idea about that. I don’t own it,” Folks told News Channel 7 by phone Thursday.
He says the photo was taken by a private investigator who was hired to dig up dirt on him, not Haley. He says his website is very influential politically and it’s not surprising that someone he criticized might want to have dirt on him.
He says he and his legal team are “gearing up” for the possibility of filing lawsuits against anyone who has called him a liar because of his postings about this allegation. . . .
The cell phone records do show numerous calls between Folks and Haley beginning in January of 2007. Many of the calls are one minute long, while one on January 9, 2007 is 65 minutes long.
But the records simply show the phone numbers, time of day of the call and the length of the call. Folks was doing political work for Haley at the time so the calls could have been strictly business.

OK, let’s take these things in order:

  • One of my sources told me Tuesday that one of Folks’ political enemies had hired a private detective (which is what I meant by Folks being “an object of intense scrutiny“) and Folks thus confirms my source. Perhaps the identity of the private detective’s client might have something to do with this; perhaps not.
  • Why doesn’t Will Folks describe the photo in more detail? Now that he has claimed to have had an affair with Haley — conveniently, two weeks before the GOP primary — why not just put it all out there? Were they hugging? Kissing? Knocking boots? He doesn’t say.
  • The threat of Will Folks “gearing up” for legal action against his critics is a freight-trainload of unadulterated bullshit. He has made a damaging accusation against a public official, which she has denied, an accusation for which Folks has offered no proof. Anyone who believes her and not him is entitled to believe he is a liar, and to say so. Furthermore — and perhaps Will Folks is such a fool as not to realize this — he is arguably as much a “public figure” as Nikki Haley, which imposes upon Folks the high standards of the Sullivan precedent, making it almost impossible for him to win as a plaintiff in a libel suit.
  • Of course, Folks proves nothing with phone records showing that he once spent a lot of time talking to Haley when he was her political consultant. I sometimes have long phone conversations wih Dan Riehl. Does that mean I can claim that Dan’s gay for me and then demand he prove that he’s not?

As I said yesterday, what Folks has yet to explain is why he freaked out because a couple of reporters were asking him about a rumor of an alleged affair that he says happened when he was a bachelor. If Wes Donahue or anybody else actually had any proof of the affair, wouldn’t we have seen it by now?

It doesn’t take an advanced degree in psychology to perceive that Folks is a sociopathic personality who realized that he was about to be exposed as having backstabbed Nikki Folks by spreading rumors about his former client. His behavior — including threats against his critics — is typical of the sociopath fearing exposure.

SPECIAL NOTE 10:45 p.m.: In a comment below, my friend Melissa Clouthier says she found the video through other means, which I’m sure she did. It is a common but erroneous assumption that because Blogger A posted something on Wednesday and Blogger B had the same thing on Thursday, that Blogger B got it from Blogger A. I know one blogger who is notorious for making such accusations (“So-and-so stole that from me!”) and it’s unfair.

I found the WCBD-TV interview shortly after it went online by doing a Google News search. Seeing that it hadn’t yet been posted at Hot Air — or at any other political blog that I know of, not even FITSNews.com — I subsequently cross-posted the video at the Green Room.

Having invested the effort to find the video and post it at two separate sites, and then to promote it via Twitter, I kinda hoped that maybe someone had noticed. Wrong again.

So Melissa Clouthier is not guily of failure to hat-tip a source. Rather, I am guilty of being too insignificant for Melissa Clouthier to notice.

Now I feel like a complete douchebag.