"And if she floats? 'She's a wiiiitttcchhh!'"

The esteemed blogger Cotton Boll Conspiracy disagrees with the conclusion of many- including me- that Will Folks and Larry Marchant are just trying to keep their names in the game by producing self serving affidavits for the use of a splinter GOP group that doesn't like Nikki Haley, the party's candidate for governor:

Methinks the lady doth not protest enough. 

If somebody accused me of sleeping with a blogger with a Folks' reputation and a lobbyist with Marchant's reputation, I might want to take every opportunity I had to stand up for myself, provided the allegations weren't true. 

Folks, love him or hate him, has done a decent job putting out corroborating evidence in the form of emails, texts, etc. Marchant, not so much. Haley isn't who she claims she is, and it becomes more obvious every day.

It's hard to imagine how one protests more than to say, "It's not true" and dare the accuser to prove it to prove it. Even in South Carolina the accused is not required to prove innocence.

Moreover, all Folks has done is repackage the same set of claims with little teasers added from time to time. Where are all the neighbors he claims saw her car in front of his place late at night? In the latest version, Folks says they were meeting in parking lots.

The most damning element of this latest farce, however, is that an affidavit not subject to cross- examination in some form is worthless. Slapping a notary seal on it just says "this guy showed up with this, identified himself, said it was true, and signed it in front of  me."

An affidavit isn't true just because the maker says so. I could draft one up claiming that I know the Earth is flat and any notary in town will sign it.

Late night phone calls? Long ones? I often have them- at length- late at night with friends on the west coast and in Europe because of the time change. Proving two people are gabhounds don't mean squat in terms of an adulterous affair.

I've got no water to carry for Nikki Haley. To me she's just another grasping, bought and paid for GOP business candidate who wants to demonize and reduce support for the poor in this state because poor people don't make political contributions.  She's the sort of partisan hack who brands her opponent as a Columbia insider for serving in the state senate while she was at the same time serving in the state house. And both want to be governor- not exactly an outside gig.

So all that's that. But I don't like seeing people smeared on such thin grounds, regardless of party. Maybe it's a job for the crack reporter team at The Nerve.