This week, more unseemliness: Some of Haley's critics--including at least one county GOP chairman and two pastors--are questioning whether the candidate, a first-generation Indian-American who was raised in the Sikh tradition, is really a Christian, as she says she is. It's a touchy topic for South Carolina, where race, religion and negative campaign tactics have a long, uncomfortable history in politics. It's also touchy for Republicans, who are trying to get past their image among many Americans that theirs is the less tolerant party.
"This is the sad truth in politics: If you want to really make something stick on somebody, you make it very negative and you whisper it," said South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster, who ran against Haley in the primary for governor but is supporting her in the runoff. "That's what's happening to Nikki right now. There's no basis for it. There's no reason for it. It's politics at its worst. I wish we could eliminate it from the scene, and I hope that voters will understand that that's what's going on."
He wishes. They're worried about the GOP seeming "less tolerant."
But people like McMaster- who belongs to an all-white country club- know who's doing it. Their consultants know who's doing it. They like being an intolerant party: the next best thing to sneaky whispering campaigns is having plenty of targets- lots of Others- to link their opponents to. They even do it to each other when there's an advantage to be gained.
And where are the churches on this sort of thing? If the SC GOP is, in fact, the Christian party its candidates and elected officials make it out to be in their speeches, votes and campaign ads, where are their spiritual advisers. Shouldn't the minister at McMaster's Presbyterian Church in Columbia be calling for the GOP to run more Godly campaigns? Helping McMaster find the inspiration to lead his party out of the gutter it has wallowed in so long while claiming it wishes it could claw its way out?
SC Republican candidates advertise how Christian they are. Yet there are even ministers willing to take part in the whispering themselves.
And where is the party base? Why aren't they leaning on their elected officials to do better? Why aren't people running for office campaigning against the gutter practices of their party and then dogging the issue when they take office?
Where's SC's Republican Robert LaFollette?
It is absurd that whispering campaigns suggesting that a candidate is of a non-Christian faith can affect elections. That having been said, I've seen the numbers on Ms. Haley's financial disclosure, showing charitable donations of less than $1000 on an income of over $197,000. This falls far short of the charity normally expected of people of either the Christian or the Sikh faith. Her religion, whatever it might be, is insufficient to prompt her to even modest charity to the less fortunate. I have concluded that her problem is not that she has the wrong religion, but that she has none at all, outside pious platitudes thrown out to get elected.
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