God bless Nikki Haley. She thinks she’s people.
And by people, I mean important people. And Nikki is most assuredly not that.
For one, she seems to think that the governor’s office of South Carolina is something other than an ceremonial position in a state where the legislature holds all the power. And two, she seems to have fallen for her own narrative — the one where she rose from a playground peacemaker in Bamberg, S.C., to a politician who picked up Sarah Palin’s endorsement off of the discount rack at Kohl’s and wore it all the way to an Election Day victory in 2010.
By now, you’ve heard about Haley’s disastrous re-election rally, a sparsely attended affair that was one bad egg salad away from being a Zen koan — “If a politician holds a press conference and no one attends it, did it happen?”
Now, a lot of folks are drawing the wrong conclusion from this. This is not a sign that Haley is weak — South Carolina is a red state that won’t elect a Democrat to the Governor’s Mansion unless he or she runs on a platform of free grocery store scooters for everyone. And it’s certainly not a sign that her Democratic opponent Vincent Sheheen has a chance of winning in 2014. A jar of mayonnaise left out in the sun has more charisma.
The thing is this was just a glorified press conference in which Haley announced that she was going to seek re-election, and anybody who is anybody knows that this kind of stuff is normally held outside the state election office or at a campaign BBQ fundraiser. Either Haley was deluded by her own oversized ego to believe she could pull off a packed rally in the concrete desolation in front of the Bi-Lo Center in Greenville or her handlers got high off of the same smoke they blow up their boss’ ass every day and misinterpreted their sycophancy for a public mandate.
However, as much as the Haley camp over-estimated her fanbase, if this rally told us anything it’s that Rick Perry, Bobby Jindal, Scott Walker don’t have a chance in hell at winning the GOP nominee for president. If this is the biggest crowd that these three governors can muster together, then their campaigns are doomed before they’ve even started.
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