Waldo Lydecker's Journal.: Palmetto Morning owes The Hill a royalty check; Mrs Haley stiff-arms her gender

Palmetto Morning's got some interesting stuff going today.

First, PM says Hillary Clinton will run against the President but lose in 2012, not before weakening the President to the point that he loses the general election. PM knows this is so because it's being floated by The Garnet Spy, who got it from Pete DuPont's op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, all of which PM got from an item in The Hill last night, quoting it word for word without atttribution:

VIEWPOINT III — 2012 WATCH — ““Hillary vs Obama in 2012?” asks Charlie Speight, the perceptive South Carolina blogger at The Garnet Spy who brought Nikki Haley to national attention. Pete DuPont said last week in the WSJ she could mount a formidable challenge to Obama. Have always felt she would bring a challenge. The Clintons can’t help themselves. But it will fail, as Ted Kennedy’s challenge to Jimmy Carter failed. It will weaken Obama and he will lose in 2012.”

Here's the original article in The Hill:

“Hillary vs Obama in 2012?” asks Charlie Speight, the perceptive South Carolina blogger at The Garnet Spy who brought Nikki Haley to national attention. Pete DuPont said last week in the WSJ she could mount a formidable challenge to Obama. Have always felt she would bring a challenge. The Clintons can't help themselves. But it will fail, as Ted Kennedy's challenge to Jimmy Carter failed. It will weaken Obama and he will lose in 2012.

As for DuPont, he, of course, is a famous expert on running for president:

With his term as Governor forced by law to end in 1985, du Pont, as the dominant Delaware politician, was widely expected by many to challenge for the U.S. Senate incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator Joseph R. Biden, Jr. But du Pont never found much interest in legislative politics and declined to run, preparing instead for a long shot bid for the Republican U.S. Presidential nomination in the United States presidential election, 1988. He declared his intent on September 16, 1986, before anyone else. Coincidentally, Biden was also seeking his party's nomination.

Running in earnest through the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, du Pont presented an unconventional, but thoughtful program. As described by Celia Cohen in her book,Only in Delaware, du Pont, "wanted to reform Social Security by offering recipients private savings options in exchange for a corresponding reduction in government benefits. He proposed phasing out government subsidies for farmers. He said he would wean welfare clients off their benefits and get them into the workforce, even if government had to provide entry level jobs to get them started. He suggested students be subjected to mandatory, random drug tests with those who flunked losing their drivers [sic] licenses." ^[1] These ideas were unusual enough that they left plenty of opportunity to paint du Pont as a novice and an oddity. In one of the debates future U.S. President George H. W. Bush made gentle fun of du Pont's first name, and called it "nutty to fool around with the Social Security system." After finishing next to last in the New Hampshire primary, du Pont left the race.

In PM's other item, Nikki Haley, the GOP candidate for SC governor, assumes the title "Mrs Haley" as the also assumes the role of traditional female Republican conservative:

2010 WATCH — NO SIGNATURE — And you thought Nikki Haley was going to shake up South Carolina’s good ol’ boys club. The South Carolina Gubernatorial Appointments Project, a nonpartisan group dedicated to getting more women involved in state government, asked Haley and Democratic governor nominee Vincent Sheheen to sign a pledge to commit to try to recruit more women for state boards and agencies. Sheheen signed immediately. Haley said no.