Cat Fight! South Carolina Redux

By Miss Kubelik

South of the 49th Parallel, there's very little that's more exciting than the upcoming William Shatner-directed documentary on.... William Shatner, and the news that Leonard Cohen has been inducted into the Songwriters' Hall of Fame.

Except, of course, for South Carolina.

The Palmetto State offers the rest of North America unceasing entertainment. Case in point: The fracturing of the state Republican Party over its gubernatorial front-runner, Nikki Haley. Seems that the GOP party establishment is not enamored of the Sikh-cum-Methodist who didn't quite garner 51 percent to avoid a runoff on June 22.

This is good news to Democrats across the land. Not because we're going to win the state in a Presidential election any time soon, but because it's a nearly perfect microcosm of the problems the Grand Old Party is having within itself. Problems, by the way, that the lazy national media generally have not chosen to focus on.

Here's what we all need to realize as the national press coos over Ms. Haley's rising Republican star. It's a runoff. Nobody votes in runoffs except the party's hard core. And many of those hard core 1) are beholden to the party establishment, and 2) hate Haley's mentor, Mark Sanford. We cats want to know how many of Haley's teabagger supporters are going to vote next Tuesday versus folks who owe their livelihood to the state GOP machine. It'll be an interesting spectacle to watch.

Also, the implications for 2012 are growing increasingly fascinating. We cats wonder how many members of the state GOP apparatus will forgive national figures like the Mittster and the famous quitter from Alaska for backing Nikki Haley. We also think it's potentially significant that Fat Mike Huckabee hasn't rushed to jump on the Haley bandwagon. Maybe he thinks if he bides his time, it'll help him in the next Palmetto State primary.

And finally, here's a question that will resonate with Democrats: Who controls the voting machines in South Carolina? The political consulting class aligned against Haley? Or the Governor's office? We don't know the answer, but we suspect it's vitally important.

More internecine Republican fights, please. We cats PURR.