Slate's picked up the scent, too.
Uber-conservative website The Daily Caller disses Folksie: "Folks says his Web site, where he posted the allegations, was “conceptualized out of sheer boredom and an insatiable lust for attention” and “covers politics, sports, pop culture and everything in between with a simple commitment to the truth and to keeping it real.”
From key to quire has a depressing summary of the sex club that is the Republican administration in Columbia.
The Atlantic's on the tale now.
Michael Brendan Dougherty takes a big ol' can of whoop-ass to Folks and Haley at Patrick J. Buchanan's American Conservative. Must read.
You know a story's gone viral when even SC ETV radio makes it the lead.
Savonarola's silence is interesting.
Lending credence to suggestions by some analysts that Will Folks' Nikki Haley hit was planned, Folksie's been busy today "earning media" and lovingly tracking it. At the same time he's feeling sorry for himself...NOT. And he's really peeved Sarah Palin called him a "liberal"blogger. That's like accusing him of having a tiny penis.
Wolfe Reports says Folksie's a hit item in the search engine universe:
Sarah Palin comes down on all fours behind Haley, says Folks is full of it. Whinges about MSM running with Folks' claim he had an affair with Haley.
A longtime political analyst thinks the story is a pre-primary kneecapping for another candidate.
The Discust says, "Ironically, candidates around the state have been claiming to be screwed by Folks’ website Fits News for years, but this is the first time Folks has come forward claiming to have screwed one of them personally."
Ben Domenech wonders if this is all part of Folks' alleged anti-Sanford set of issues.
FITS has sent out an email blast repeating the message of the "president."
Politico says Folks was on Haley's campaign payroll in 2008.
FITSNews has rolled out a co-founder and president who waved her poms-poms and sang a commercial plug for the site.
CBS is on the story.
Folks has managed to score two posts by Politico's Ben Smith and an AP story.
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0510/Sanfords_shadow.html?showall
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0510/The_Haley_story.html?showall
Rep. Haley says it ain't so.
Wolfe Reports says Attorney General Henry McMaster will benefit.
The Amen Corner at NRO is doing damage control. For Haley.
WaPo's Weigel's on it, too.
Columbia's Free Times says it's been an open secret for a year or more.
The State can't resist getting the boot in after years of slagging by Folks:
Folks is a controversial figure in South Carolina politics. He pleaded guilty to criminal domestic violence in 2005, and then built FITSnews.com into a an influential blog among South Carolina's political community. The site often relies on anonymous sources, and Folks shrugs off accusations that he is paid to publish certain stories.
Neither could HuffPo:
Folks, a former Sanford spokesman, is a political consultant who now runs FITSNews.com, a conservative site that features occasionally insightful commentary, thinly sourced stories of state political intrigue and photos of women in bikinis. It refers to him as "Sic Willie," sports the tag line "Unfair. Imbalanced," and often promotes Haley's campaign.
Haley is one of four Republicans seeking the party's gubernatorial nomination and the one whose views most closely reflect the tea party movement's. The primary is June 8.CNN finds Folks uncharacteristically silent:
After Haley issued her denial Monday, an associate of Folks told CNN: "He has nothing to add to his comments regarding this matter and will not be conducting any further interviews on the subject."The Hill doesn't:
Folks justified making public his allegations because, he said, other media outlets were preparing to report on it.
"I refuse to play that game," he wrote. "I refuse to have someone hold the political equivalent of a switch-blade in front of my face and just sit there and watch as they cut me to pieces."Americablog sums up the rather Byzantine quality of the interpersonal relationships of the SCGOP.
TPM is being mean about it all:
I Did Not Have Sexual Relations With That Man!
A year ago South Carolina wouldn't have even been in the top half of my list of states with the craziest politics. But in the interim a lot has happened, and South Carolina is now in my top 10 and after this morning's developments it's making a strong bid for top 5.
The day started with a prominent South Carolina politics blogger named Will Folks confessing on his blog to having had an "inappropriate physical relationship" with state Rep. Nikki Haley, who happens to be seeking the GOP nomination for governor. The affair took place before Folks was married, he says, but apparently while Haley was married. She remains married to this day, and Folks subsequently married.
Before becoming a blogger, Folks was a press aide for Gov. Mark Sanford, he of Appalachian Trail fame. But Folks had a falling out with the governor, left the governor's office, and in the course of Sanford's meanderings last year Folks was one of the most aggressive and relentless chroniclers of the Sanford saga.
The story might end there, outside of South Carolina: a married state legislator and mother of two aspires to be governor had an affair with a Republican political operative. But Haley is emphatically denying that any such thing ever happened. "I have been 100% faithful to my husband throughout our 13 years of marriage. This claim against me is categorically and totally false," Haley said in a statement released a short time ago.
Haley blames what she calls "these attacks" and "this disgraceful smear" on her political opponents and the fact that she is leading in the most recent poll of the Republican gubernatorial primary. But what makes her blistering denial so odd is that Folks is a Haley supporter and says as much in the same blog post in which he admitted to the affair, calling her "the one S.C. gubernatorial candidate who, in my opinion, would most consistently advance the ideals I believe in." So it doesn't stand to reason that Folks would be attacking her. But this is South Carolina, so just because it stands to reason doesn't make it so.
They don't call themselves the Gamecocks for nothing.
____________________________________________
Will Folks, proprietor of the website FITS News.com, loves breaking other people's mistakes and scandals. Especially if they involve sex.
Now he's breaking one about himself:
Several years ago, prior to my marriage, I had an inappropriate physical relationship with Nikki."Nikki" is State Rep.Nikki Haley, the leading GOP candidate for governor. She's the protege' of outgoing Governor Mark Sanford, who has his own issues extramarital affairs. Folks was Sanford's first press secretary.
It all gets confusing, but that's life in the sandbox that is a small state capital.
Folks is, by his own account, now happily married and has a young daughter upon whom he dotes. We hope he and his family manage to pull together and through the media shitstorm he probably rightly predicts is about to break. And maybe he'll draw some useful lessons about the blood sport culture of SC politics he alternately decries and participates in.
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