Why South Carolina Gov Nikki Haley has to go

From US News

From time to time, I like to think back on columns I’ve written or re-ponder theories I’ve come up with as I’ve walked through the last 46 years on this small planet. There have been many and I assume many more to come if the good Lord is willing and the creek doesn’t rise (we say funny things like that down in South Carolina).

Back in December 2013, I was home for the holidays and wrote this blog post on South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley. Some of my conservative friends and family weren’t pleased. Now, none of them disputed a single point I made or even offered to defend her record. I guess they just didn’t like that, as an opinion journalist, I painted a realistic picture of yet another politician saying one thing but doing another. Hypocrisy sends me over the edge. Seriously. I really hate saying one thing and doing another for political convenience or to get re-elected. I also hate people who litter and I really deplore split infinitives. But hypocrisy? It’s the real killer for me.


There’s a little bit of this hypocrisy going on down in South Carolina. Don’t be shocked by this pronouncement. Let’s look specifically at the issues of poverty, Medicaid and Obamacare. Haley has made it clear she will “not expand Medicaid. Ever.” Glad she’s emphatic. However, someone should clue the good governor in to the fact that South Carolina Medicaid roles are already expanding thanks to “Obamacare” aka the Affordable Care Act. Horrors! Shock! She must be outraged by this travesty!
According to South Carolina's Medicaid director, 162,000 more South Carolinians – many of them children – will enroll in Medicaid by the end of June 2015 thanks to the fact that the ACA has made them aware that they are eligible. If the state had accepted the Medicaid expansion, an additional 340,000 would have gotten coverage, but thanks to Haley's refusal, they are out of luck.
Groups like the South Carolina Hospital Association strongly support the expansion. They should, since they’re bearing the costs of fly-by health insurance coverage, also known as emergency room care. If you don’t have insurance, you go to the emergency room. Everyone should really just come out of the closet on this one. It’s a crappy way of taking care of the sick and doing business frankly.
So just yesterday, the Republican Governors Association released this political advertisement against state Sen. Vincent Sheheen, who’s running again against Haley. It accuses Sheheen of supporting Medicaid expansion in South Carolina. Sheheen indeed supports expanding health care to the neediest in our society. That’s not my problem with the RGA ad. My beef with the RGA is that its very own chairman, that would be New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, accepted Medicaid expansion in his state. I applaud him for that. While he may not give a damn about traffic jams in Ft. Lee, he clearly cares about the neediest children in New Jersey, right?
Cue the Sheheen campaign, which just released this video this morning, morphing the embattled Christie’s record and image all over a follow-up political advertisement to the Christie RGA ad. To be clear, I support Christie’s expansion of Medicaid in New Jersey. It helps the neediest in that state and it’s the moral thing to do. The question is, does Nikki Haley?

Her rabid declaration that she’ll never expand Medicaid in South Carolina makes me wonder if she actually gives a damn about anyone in her own state other than her donors? While the RGA was releasing this attack ad on Sheheen, Haley was next door in Georgia again raising money for her re-elect. I don’t begrudge her ability to raise money but I do have a problem with her politicization of that fundraiser at the expense of South Carolina’s ports and people.

And so this is my problem with Nikki Haley: I don’t think she actually has a clue about the impacts her decisions have on her own constituents. She stands by Chris Christie while my home state of South Carolina has a poverty rate of nearly 20 percent and a child poverty rate of nearly 30 percent. In her State of the State address a short time ago, Haley proposed tax cuts while doing nothing to address the biggest problems in the state: health care costs and poverty. It’s time for Haley to visit the poorest of the poorest in South Carolina. She should go to Timmonsville or maybe Allendale where nearly 70 percent of that town’s residents are below the poverty level. Or maybe she should visit Marion County where my family has lived since the 1700s. Bottom line: She doesn’t have a clue who’s hurting and who’s thriving in the state where she’s the chief executive officer.

I’m reminded of that line from Oliver Twist that sums this all up so well: “There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.” If she keeps this up, Nikki Haley might well go down as the modern day Mr. Bumble of South Carolina, a reference to the Dickens character of whom Oliver Twist asks “Please, sir, I want some more.”

Just no “more” hypocrisy please, Governor Haley. No more hypocrisy.

Nikki was also endorsed by the brawler Sarah Palin back in 2010.