Haley's Comeback

I've described before the charming peculiarities of my home state, South Carolina, notably here and here. Philip Roth waxed eloquent on the "American berserk," setting it typically in New Jersey, and, having seen both Jersey Shore and the Real Housewives of New Jersey I won't quibble with his psychic geography, except maybe to press for a sandlapper sidecar.

Tonight, me boys have done it again, and I don't mean, gone shaggin' or cloggin'. Mark Sanford hasn't even left office, and the GOP has nearly (save for the now predictable runoff) nominated yet another hard right, libertarian cum states' rights extremist and serial philanderer to hold their highest office. Don't get me wrong, I'll take the latter sin so long as it breathes free of the former. Public and private virtue aren't the same after all, props to Machiavelli. But Madame Haley lacks for either, so she gets no love from this blogger. How odd, though, that the SC GOP should so passionately rally around her in her moment of greatest implausibility, allowing a mere state senator to lap an MC, an AG, and an LtG. It's as if the very transparency of her bedroom lies made them love her more. The Tea Party has thrived upon its willful embrace of the paradoxical, the hypocritical, and the patently ludicrous. A test of faith? In The True Believer, the great Eric Hoffer wrote that, for the Kool-Aid inclined, big lies were better motivators than small ones, since they created both a more powerful sense of in-group identification and a more intense sense of grievance against that pesky and persecuting "reality." Maybe, but it could also be that defending Darling Nikki--notably against the caddish Jake Knotts--gave them a chivalrous shiver, especially when it let them flatter their Rand-Paulian fantasy of racial indifference. A lady's "virtue" must be preserved, especially if she's fixin' to cut taxes and repeal health care.

Overlooked almost entirely, my home district (SC-04) has likely (again, runoff pending) defeated the hard right incumbent Bob Inglis with the holy-shit-that's-hard right of Trey Gowdy (28%-39%). Inglis committed the sin of telling the Tea Partiers that they were delusional, hoping his rock solid conservative voting record would save him. No such luck. Amazing to think that, growing up, my rep in that district was a liberal Democratic woman. But that was the golden age of Gamecock progressivism, a halcyon time when Gov. Dick Reilly (D!) was inspiring young Bill Clinton with his New South savoir faire, visions of technocratic policy wonks dancing in their heads. Looking back, and having seen SC's political exhibitionism stripped barer and barer over several decades, I now think that dreamy interregnum must have been the real South Carolina berserk--between the reign of Thurmond the restoration that was Reaganism. Ah, South Carolina! Good times there are not forgotten.