Progressive activists put Dems on notice about watering down Financial Services Reform bill in conference committee.
As the ban on gays in the military goes into its death throes, the dead-enders are getting increasingly creative with new scare tactics. We’ve heard in the past that gays are too effeminate or too easily blackmailed or simply too disruptive to serve openly in the Armed Forces. But Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association says that, quite the contrary, gays are simply too brutal and ferocious to be safe to use as soldiers and uses the rather historically iffy claim that Hitler used gay soldiers as his top enforcers because straights couldn’t be sufficiently brutal.
It’s been about 12 hours now since those purported text messages were published by Will Folks, and so far no one who was allegedly a party to those texts has come forward to deny their authenticity. In fact, the only ones to come forward so far have confirmed their authenticity.
Wes Donehue, a GOP consultant who did work on the campaign of one of Nikki Haley’s rivals says the texts of his that were published are the real deal. Most significantly, Haley’s campaign manager says his texts are authentic, but maintains his denial that there was an affair between Folks and Haley. More on that tricky position in a moment. Read More
Our Brian Beutler and Christina Bellantoni go behind the scenes to explain how the DADT deal got done.
Do NOT have written communications with the alleged lover of your candidate.
The zaniness keeps coming from South Carolina. Overnight, the blog of the GOP political consultant turned blogger turned alleged paramour of the leading Republican candidate for governor published what it claims are a series of texts exchanged in the days before Will Folks went public with his claim/admission that he’d had an affair with state Rep. Nikki Haley.
Haley has strenuously denied Folks’ allegations, but the texts, if accurate, show Haley’s campaign manager scrambling to contain the story in multiple exchanges with Folks himself, game planning how to keep the affair under wraps as reporters from the local alt weekly and the AP poke around.
Late Update: Here’s our report.
AZ Gov. Brewer (R) writes to Obama: “I would also ask you, as overseas operations in Iraq and Afghanistan permit, to consider wider deployment of UAVs [Unmanned Aerial Vehicles] along our nation’s southern border. I am aware of how effective these assets have become in Operations Iraqi and Enduring Freedom, and it seems UAVs operations would be ideal for border security and counter-drug missions.”
The McCain and Hayworth fistfight continues, with this press release just put out by the Hayworth campaign …
SHAMEFUL McCAIL (sic) WEB BLASTED BY HAYWORTH CAMPAIGN
Phoenix, AZ (May 25) – U.S. Senate J.D. Hayworth spokesman’s Mark Sanders said, in response to the McCain web ad, regarding Congressman Hayworth’s statement:
(or Get on That Horse and Ride)
As we keep up to date on the bizarre story of the alleged affair between South Carolina gubernatorial frontrunner Nikki Haley and South Carolina insider political blogger Will Folks, there’s another interesting part of the story. Remember that South Carolina is quickly becoming the pivotal early GOP primary state. And if all goes according to plan and these affair allegations don’t do her in, Haley could be the Republican Governor of the state in 2011/2012. And that would make her a critical kingmaker for the Republican presidential hopefuls. So if you want to succeed Barack Obama in 2013, you want to be her friend.
Sarah Palin already pledged her support for Haley against the adultery allegations. And today, apparently not to be outdone, Mitt Romney came out on Haley’s side, stating, “I stand four square by Nikki Haley.”
Another interesting thread of the story is that Haley was seen as a long shot in the campaign until just a couple weeks ago when Sarah Palin came to the state, endorsed Haley and rocketed her into the Tea Party stratosphere and a big lead in the polls.