ICouldBeMitt
2011-12-17 01:01:03 UTC
The farther Nikki Haley goes in her political climb, the more her
alleged affairs will be vetted. Judging from images of her husband,
and one of her possible lovers, we'd say yeah, she probably did ...
Haley & hubby ...
http://postandcourier.media.clients.ellingtoncms.c...
Possible lover Will Folks ...
http://img2-cdn.newser.com/image/357211-6-20100528...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/27/nikki-hal...
=====================
"Nikki Haley picks Romney, but can they help each other?"
By Ned Martel
Friday, December 16, 2011
COLUMBIA, S.C. — On a recent morning, cheers echoed inside a small gym
as Nikki Haley bounded before Orangeburg middle-schoolers and quizzed
boisterous students on the state bird. She was more like a fun mom
than a governor, until she got quiet. Fallen from favor after 11
months in office, Haley let the group of mostly African American
students know that she understood politics at the playground level.
She widened her brown eyes when describing her childhood in nearby
Bamberg as the daughter of a Sikh businessman who wears a turban.
“Every one of you has seen someone who has been made fun of for the
way they look, for the way they dress, for the way they talk,” the
governor said. In third grade, she said, her peers told her to make a
choice: “We’re not going to play with you until you pick one.” A side,
they meant: Was she black, or was she white?
On Friday morning, Haley revealed she would back former Massachusetts
governor Mitt Romney’s candidacy, as she did in 2008. But the question
remained whether her endorsement will matter in her own state.
Within her party, Haley eludes factions, slips confines — to the point
that former allies wonder whether her main agenda is her own
advancement. Tea party activists, who helped her get elected, and
business-first pragmatists, who helped her get staffed up as governor,
doubt that she’s one of them. Instead, Haley promotes herself as a
party of one, yanking her stubborn state toward new days and new ways.
Her ways.
In person, she cuts an indefatigable and glamourous figure. She
eschews a Church Lady mien for something more Real Housewife: fit,
attractive and encased in suits that stop just below the elbow and
just above the knee. And she says often how her job is sales, selling
corporate chief executives on South Carolina with many lures.
The morning after her Orangeburg school visit, Haley sat upright with
legs crossed in her ornate Statehouse offices as she boasted that her
state is different simply because she’s running it. The Confederate
battle flag still waves outside the building, and yet she doesn’t want
it taken down and doesn’t worry that any CEO she solicits to hire
South Carolinians will balk at this Civil War vestige.
“They don’t have to ask that question because you are looking at a
state that just elected a 38-year-old Indian female,” she said. “That
says everything we need it to say.”
Haley rat-a-tatted through her seductive pitch: “What I’m saying is,
if you come to South Carolina, the cost of doing business is going to
be low here. We are going to make sure that you have a loyal, willing
workforce and we are going to continue to be one of the lowest union-
participation states in the country. And, by the way, here’s my
personal cell number, and the second that something goes wrong, call
me directly.” And they do.
Early in Haley’s underdog campaign last year, no one was returning her
calls, she said. She faced three opponents. She was yoked to a sullied
ex-governor (“I was seen as ‘Sanford in a dress,’ ” she said of the
comparisons to Mark Sanford, who didn’t seek reelection after
admitting adultery). Her own semi-scandalous sideshow erupted and
abated in the summer of 2010, when her onetime campaign consultant
alleged (and never proved) that years before, the two had had a messy
affair.
Now, a year after her narrow win, the South Carolina governor is
withering in the polls, with only one-third of voters surveyed
approving of her job performance — and barely half of all Republicans
polled. And yet Haley sees the Republican Party’s top presidential
prospects bounding to her doorstep with the same ardor once reserved
for then-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, whose backing was crucial in Haley’s
election. Haley has played “hostess” (her word) as she welcomed for
overnight visits Rep. Michele Bachmann, Newt and Callista Gingrich and
Ann Romney.
To be a player in the presidential derby could raise her above the
state-level fracas. But Romney will now embark on a tour of South
Carolina beside a governor whose popularity has cratered. “If I were a
candidate for the Republican primary,” said state Democratic Party
Chairman Dick Harpootlian, “based on those poll numbers, I’d rather
get the flu than get her endorsement.”
* * *
South Carolina politicians can be mean — envy mixed with hunger, as
the state’s financial woes turn simple conflicts into dogfights for
scraps.
In July, Haley received a tongue-lashing on the floor of the state
Senate from the majority leader (a fellow Republican) over public
television budgeting. The dispute was over some rethinking of
procedure, but it sounded like plain ol’ pique.
Mostly, Haley is wresting back power for her office, when the balance
has long favored the state lawmakers. Haley started a full-on fracas
with Darla Moore, a philanthropist whom the governor bounced from the
University of South Carolina board. The reason: unreturned phone
calls, postponed meetings and a distinct sense that the governor
needed to show who worked for whom. To regain the upper hand, Moore
offered $5 million for a new building if the state ponied up matching
funds. No, thank you, said Haley.
Was the new governor petty to cast aside a key donor? Or was she
showing that pay-to-play was no longer the way to gain status or favor
in her administration? The naive-or-shrewd debate persists.
Haley has appointed loyalists to other boards, most notably a business
development panel that recently approved a plan for Savannah to deepen
its port. Haley accepted donations from Georgia lawyers connected to
the dispute, and thus cries of cronyism echoed in the Palmetto State,
where a rivalry between Charleston and Savannah over Southeast
shipping is seen as a fight for the future. Savannah won this round,
but Haley said she won environmental protections for the river the
states share. And that Charleston needs to compete as a port, not
merely undermine its rival.
A fellow Republican, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham, applauded her handling of
the port dispute as forward-thinking. Deal, the senator noted, is the
operative word: It’s the surname of Haley’s Georgia counterpart,
Nathan Deal, and as Capitol Hill earmarking ends, state executives are
going to have to wheedle in the way that senators long have.
“She’s had everything but the kitchen sink thrown at her,” Graham
said. “And she’s very good at not getting distracted.”
Haley’s immediate task is to push down the number of unemployed, 11
percent of the state’s residents. It’s clearly her chosen measurement
for her own job performance, and her prospects brighten as employment
climbs. She trumpets 9,000 as the total number of jobs announced since
she took office, though many positions won’t be filled just yet.
In her many pep talks to voters (and cameras), Haley notes that in her
teen years, she did the books for her family’s clothing company in
tiny Bamberg. Her bottom-line focus continues with bigger enterprises,
as the governor repeatedly drops the names of companies now in South
Carolina: Boeing, Bridgestone, Continental Tire, TD Bank, even the
maker of an asthma medication. Her business development team, led by
the Charleston newspaper’s former managing editor, has done good work,
even Harpootlian, her Democratic detractor, acknowledged.
Haley knows how to play down her high-flying job creation role, as
South Carolinians tend to appreciate down-home leaders. At a Kiwanis
luncheon in Summerville, a businessman lobbed a question that she gets
a lot: Why did she spend state money to attend the Paris Air Show last
summer? She explained that she and her husband each had a full slate
of meetings with business leaders who could bring jobs to South
Carolina, as aviation giant Boeing has recently done. “I did not see
the Eiffel Tower,” Haley told her questioner, using a well-trod
dismissal. “I think I bought a snow globe back for my child and that
was it.”
Her allies credit her for going wherever she can appeal to the T-Rexes
of the business world, be it Paris or any other destination. “Listen,
you’re not going to take ’em to the Waffle House to close the deal,
okay?” said GOP state Sen. Greg Ryberg, “Any time she gets attention
because of being in New York or in Washington or wherever, that sheds
positive light and it’s great for the state of South Carolina, where
we have had enough bad press.”
* * *
Even in a small town in South Carolina, Haley’s persona has a kind of
international clout. Recently, state Rep. Ralph Norman, a fellow
Republican, asked Haley to visit a tiny family business that exported
elastics from a tiny town called Clover. “You name the time and date”
came the reply. “The family, ironically, was doing some business in
India and took her picture and sent it on to their clients,” Norman
recalled. “That’s the kind of girl she is: If it’s economic
development, she’s there.”
She’s also the kind who doesn’t mind that she still gets called girl.
“It’s okay because they truly mean well,” she drawled. “What you have
to look at is the fact that this is a Southern culture that has great
people that just allowed me to do a job I love. . . . They can call me
girl, lady, Indian, whatever.”
Her Indian heritage is crucial to her ambition; she solicits donations
from Indian American groups nationwide, including in Washington. But
she plays up her complexity: She talked movingly about her conversion
to Christianity and next, about her passion for Joan Jett. She has
jumped on the national anti-bullying bandwagon, but insisted that her
efforts are separate from those of gay activists promoting tolerance
among kids. In the same discussion of the hustle of business
development, she talked up her maternal duties: Friday nights are off
limits to politics, she said, so her two children can choose pizza or
whatever for the evening meal, which recently was followed by a Taylor
Swift concert.
Haley is unabashed about using her identity to push herself higher,
above the muck of the usual conflicts and toward more national
debates. Haley recruited a savvy adviser — Christian Soura, who has an
eyebrower-raiser on his résumé: He served under Pennsylvania Gov. Ed
Rendell, who once ran the national Democratic Party.
“I call him Mr. Fix-It,” Haley said, who has made Soura her deputy
chief of staff. “Whether we’re dealing with pensions or whether we’re
dealing with the budget or whether we’re dealing with certain
legislation, we go and we sit down and go okay, how do we get there?”
It’s Soura’s skills that are most often cited among lobbyists and
activists in the capital when noting Haley’s staunchness, especially
during her many news conferences. On Fox News, she has talked tough on
Boeing’s behalf in its now-resolved labor dispute. In firm tones
reminiscent of New Jersey’s Chris Christie or New York’s Rudy
Giuliani, she ordered police to clear the encampments of Occupy
Columbia protesters while insisting that she welcomed their ideas,
only in the daylight hours and without public urination. “Bring your
sign. Bring your voice. But don’t bring your mattress,” she declared.
Each national party is grooming political talent who can represent
youth and diversity for national roles in Cabinets and even on
presidential tickets, and Barack Obama’s electoral success so early in
his career suggests that no time is too soon to capitalize on a
national profile. The fast track has never moved faster.
And with a book launch planned for April, Haley carefully associates
herself with the GOP’s other emerging leaders. “If you look at the
governors, it’s such a cool group of governors because they all
understand that this is not about reelection; it’s about results.
We’re trying to prove to the people that things can be done when
Washington’s in chaos,” Haley said, citing Govs. Bobby Jindal of
Louisiana, Susana Martinez of New Mexico, Robert F. McDonnell of
Virginia and Rick Scott of Florida. “All these people that are doing
great things. And yes, we do talk.” Haley has even challenged the
latter two to cheerful bets over the outcomes of college football
games.
Haley mentioned in passing her recent phone call to Florida’s former
governor, Jeb Bush, whom she has often rung up “for personal advice”
since she met him in Idaho at a Republican Governors Association
meeting.
Bush recalled their first meeting, over coffee in Sun Valley, and how
“I was impressed with her for sure.” He knew, if she prevailed, she
would then encounter “a crazy legislative system” and “the weakest
form of governorship constitutionally in the country.” But he assured
her that governors can learn to speak plainly and “create strategies
around a set of ideas” — in her case job growth, in the face of a
jobless rate that is worse than the national average. His advice is
occasional, and she’s not the only candidate he counseled that day,
but he did foresee a bright future. “I think Nikki Haley will prove to
be an effective governor,” he said. “And effective governors have a
chance to move on to other things if they want to.”
Haley tells reporters that she has no intention of being anyone’s
running mate. In fact, the carping has become boring, she sighed.
“Look, the press this past weekend said I don’t talk on my cellphone
long enough. It’s like, ‘STOP,’ ” Haley said. It reminded her of a
conversation she had with Sarah Palin, who came to South Carolina on
Haley’s behalf at a crucial campaign juncture.
“The best lesson I learned from her was just in a car after leaving
the rally,” Haley recalled. “She said, ‘You’re going to do well. And
when you do, they’re gonna come after you.’ And she said, ‘It’s never
gonna stop.’ ” Indeed, her ex-consultant hounds her daily with
critical posts on a widely followed news-and-sports Web site. Asked
about whether the days when sex allegations overtook the campaign were
her darkest, she shook her head vigorously: “I will tell you: The more
they came at me, the more they motivated me to fight.”
And as a dealmaker who must get past local underminers before she gets
any political promotion, Haley has decided on a governing style.
“Forceful with a smile. Forceful with a smile,” she said, describing
her mantra under fire. “They always laugh because I can undercut
somebody and smile the whole way doing it.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/nikki-haley-south-carolinas-hard-charging-gop-governor/2011/11/28/gIQA10vhwO_story.html#weighIn
alleged affairs will be vetted. Judging from images of her husband,
and one of her possible lovers, we'd say yeah, she probably did ...
Haley & hubby ...
http://postandcourier.media.clients.ellingtoncms.c...
Possible lover Will Folks ...
http://img2-cdn.newser.com/image/357211-6-20100528...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/27/nikki-hal...
=====================
"Nikki Haley picks Romney, but can they help each other?"
By Ned Martel
Friday, December 16, 2011
COLUMBIA, S.C. — On a recent morning, cheers echoed inside a small gym
as Nikki Haley bounded before Orangeburg middle-schoolers and quizzed
boisterous students on the state bird. She was more like a fun mom
than a governor, until she got quiet. Fallen from favor after 11
months in office, Haley let the group of mostly African American
students know that she understood politics at the playground level.
She widened her brown eyes when describing her childhood in nearby
Bamberg as the daughter of a Sikh businessman who wears a turban.
“Every one of you has seen someone who has been made fun of for the
way they look, for the way they dress, for the way they talk,” the
governor said. In third grade, she said, her peers told her to make a
choice: “We’re not going to play with you until you pick one.” A side,
they meant: Was she black, or was she white?
On Friday morning, Haley revealed she would back former Massachusetts
governor Mitt Romney’s candidacy, as she did in 2008. But the question
remained whether her endorsement will matter in her own state.
Within her party, Haley eludes factions, slips confines — to the point
that former allies wonder whether her main agenda is her own
advancement. Tea party activists, who helped her get elected, and
business-first pragmatists, who helped her get staffed up as governor,
doubt that she’s one of them. Instead, Haley promotes herself as a
party of one, yanking her stubborn state toward new days and new ways.
Her ways.
In person, she cuts an indefatigable and glamourous figure. She
eschews a Church Lady mien for something more Real Housewife: fit,
attractive and encased in suits that stop just below the elbow and
just above the knee. And she says often how her job is sales, selling
corporate chief executives on South Carolina with many lures.
The morning after her Orangeburg school visit, Haley sat upright with
legs crossed in her ornate Statehouse offices as she boasted that her
state is different simply because she’s running it. The Confederate
battle flag still waves outside the building, and yet she doesn’t want
it taken down and doesn’t worry that any CEO she solicits to hire
South Carolinians will balk at this Civil War vestige.
“They don’t have to ask that question because you are looking at a
state that just elected a 38-year-old Indian female,” she said. “That
says everything we need it to say.”
Haley rat-a-tatted through her seductive pitch: “What I’m saying is,
if you come to South Carolina, the cost of doing business is going to
be low here. We are going to make sure that you have a loyal, willing
workforce and we are going to continue to be one of the lowest union-
participation states in the country. And, by the way, here’s my
personal cell number, and the second that something goes wrong, call
me directly.” And they do.
Early in Haley’s underdog campaign last year, no one was returning her
calls, she said. She faced three opponents. She was yoked to a sullied
ex-governor (“I was seen as ‘Sanford in a dress,’ ” she said of the
comparisons to Mark Sanford, who didn’t seek reelection after
admitting adultery). Her own semi-scandalous sideshow erupted and
abated in the summer of 2010, when her onetime campaign consultant
alleged (and never proved) that years before, the two had had a messy
affair.
Now, a year after her narrow win, the South Carolina governor is
withering in the polls, with only one-third of voters surveyed
approving of her job performance — and barely half of all Republicans
polled. And yet Haley sees the Republican Party’s top presidential
prospects bounding to her doorstep with the same ardor once reserved
for then-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, whose backing was crucial in Haley’s
election. Haley has played “hostess” (her word) as she welcomed for
overnight visits Rep. Michele Bachmann, Newt and Callista Gingrich and
Ann Romney.
To be a player in the presidential derby could raise her above the
state-level fracas. But Romney will now embark on a tour of South
Carolina beside a governor whose popularity has cratered. “If I were a
candidate for the Republican primary,” said state Democratic Party
Chairman Dick Harpootlian, “based on those poll numbers, I’d rather
get the flu than get her endorsement.”
* * *
South Carolina politicians can be mean — envy mixed with hunger, as
the state’s financial woes turn simple conflicts into dogfights for
scraps.
In July, Haley received a tongue-lashing on the floor of the state
Senate from the majority leader (a fellow Republican) over public
television budgeting. The dispute was over some rethinking of
procedure, but it sounded like plain ol’ pique.
Mostly, Haley is wresting back power for her office, when the balance
has long favored the state lawmakers. Haley started a full-on fracas
with Darla Moore, a philanthropist whom the governor bounced from the
University of South Carolina board. The reason: unreturned phone
calls, postponed meetings and a distinct sense that the governor
needed to show who worked for whom. To regain the upper hand, Moore
offered $5 million for a new building if the state ponied up matching
funds. No, thank you, said Haley.
Was the new governor petty to cast aside a key donor? Or was she
showing that pay-to-play was no longer the way to gain status or favor
in her administration? The naive-or-shrewd debate persists.
Haley has appointed loyalists to other boards, most notably a business
development panel that recently approved a plan for Savannah to deepen
its port. Haley accepted donations from Georgia lawyers connected to
the dispute, and thus cries of cronyism echoed in the Palmetto State,
where a rivalry between Charleston and Savannah over Southeast
shipping is seen as a fight for the future. Savannah won this round,
but Haley said she won environmental protections for the river the
states share. And that Charleston needs to compete as a port, not
merely undermine its rival.
A fellow Republican, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham, applauded her handling of
the port dispute as forward-thinking. Deal, the senator noted, is the
operative word: It’s the surname of Haley’s Georgia counterpart,
Nathan Deal, and as Capitol Hill earmarking ends, state executives are
going to have to wheedle in the way that senators long have.
“She’s had everything but the kitchen sink thrown at her,” Graham
said. “And she’s very good at not getting distracted.”
Haley’s immediate task is to push down the number of unemployed, 11
percent of the state’s residents. It’s clearly her chosen measurement
for her own job performance, and her prospects brighten as employment
climbs. She trumpets 9,000 as the total number of jobs announced since
she took office, though many positions won’t be filled just yet.
In her many pep talks to voters (and cameras), Haley notes that in her
teen years, she did the books for her family’s clothing company in
tiny Bamberg. Her bottom-line focus continues with bigger enterprises,
as the governor repeatedly drops the names of companies now in South
Carolina: Boeing, Bridgestone, Continental Tire, TD Bank, even the
maker of an asthma medication. Her business development team, led by
the Charleston newspaper’s former managing editor, has done good work,
even Harpootlian, her Democratic detractor, acknowledged.
Haley knows how to play down her high-flying job creation role, as
South Carolinians tend to appreciate down-home leaders. At a Kiwanis
luncheon in Summerville, a businessman lobbed a question that she gets
a lot: Why did she spend state money to attend the Paris Air Show last
summer? She explained that she and her husband each had a full slate
of meetings with business leaders who could bring jobs to South
Carolina, as aviation giant Boeing has recently done. “I did not see
the Eiffel Tower,” Haley told her questioner, using a well-trod
dismissal. “I think I bought a snow globe back for my child and that
was it.”
Her allies credit her for going wherever she can appeal to the T-Rexes
of the business world, be it Paris or any other destination. “Listen,
you’re not going to take ’em to the Waffle House to close the deal,
okay?” said GOP state Sen. Greg Ryberg, “Any time she gets attention
because of being in New York or in Washington or wherever, that sheds
positive light and it’s great for the state of South Carolina, where
we have had enough bad press.”
* * *
Even in a small town in South Carolina, Haley’s persona has a kind of
international clout. Recently, state Rep. Ralph Norman, a fellow
Republican, asked Haley to visit a tiny family business that exported
elastics from a tiny town called Clover. “You name the time and date”
came the reply. “The family, ironically, was doing some business in
India and took her picture and sent it on to their clients,” Norman
recalled. “That’s the kind of girl she is: If it’s economic
development, she’s there.”
She’s also the kind who doesn’t mind that she still gets called girl.
“It’s okay because they truly mean well,” she drawled. “What you have
to look at is the fact that this is a Southern culture that has great
people that just allowed me to do a job I love. . . . They can call me
girl, lady, Indian, whatever.”
Her Indian heritage is crucial to her ambition; she solicits donations
from Indian American groups nationwide, including in Washington. But
she plays up her complexity: She talked movingly about her conversion
to Christianity and next, about her passion for Joan Jett. She has
jumped on the national anti-bullying bandwagon, but insisted that her
efforts are separate from those of gay activists promoting tolerance
among kids. In the same discussion of the hustle of business
development, she talked up her maternal duties: Friday nights are off
limits to politics, she said, so her two children can choose pizza or
whatever for the evening meal, which recently was followed by a Taylor
Swift concert.
Haley is unabashed about using her identity to push herself higher,
above the muck of the usual conflicts and toward more national
debates. Haley recruited a savvy adviser — Christian Soura, who has an
eyebrower-raiser on his résumé: He served under Pennsylvania Gov. Ed
Rendell, who once ran the national Democratic Party.
“I call him Mr. Fix-It,” Haley said, who has made Soura her deputy
chief of staff. “Whether we’re dealing with pensions or whether we’re
dealing with the budget or whether we’re dealing with certain
legislation, we go and we sit down and go okay, how do we get there?”
It’s Soura’s skills that are most often cited among lobbyists and
activists in the capital when noting Haley’s staunchness, especially
during her many news conferences. On Fox News, she has talked tough on
Boeing’s behalf in its now-resolved labor dispute. In firm tones
reminiscent of New Jersey’s Chris Christie or New York’s Rudy
Giuliani, she ordered police to clear the encampments of Occupy
Columbia protesters while insisting that she welcomed their ideas,
only in the daylight hours and without public urination. “Bring your
sign. Bring your voice. But don’t bring your mattress,” she declared.
Each national party is grooming political talent who can represent
youth and diversity for national roles in Cabinets and even on
presidential tickets, and Barack Obama’s electoral success so early in
his career suggests that no time is too soon to capitalize on a
national profile. The fast track has never moved faster.
And with a book launch planned for April, Haley carefully associates
herself with the GOP’s other emerging leaders. “If you look at the
governors, it’s such a cool group of governors because they all
understand that this is not about reelection; it’s about results.
We’re trying to prove to the people that things can be done when
Washington’s in chaos,” Haley said, citing Govs. Bobby Jindal of
Louisiana, Susana Martinez of New Mexico, Robert F. McDonnell of
Virginia and Rick Scott of Florida. “All these people that are doing
great things. And yes, we do talk.” Haley has even challenged the
latter two to cheerful bets over the outcomes of college football
games.
Haley mentioned in passing her recent phone call to Florida’s former
governor, Jeb Bush, whom she has often rung up “for personal advice”
since she met him in Idaho at a Republican Governors Association
meeting.
Bush recalled their first meeting, over coffee in Sun Valley, and how
“I was impressed with her for sure.” He knew, if she prevailed, she
would then encounter “a crazy legislative system” and “the weakest
form of governorship constitutionally in the country.” But he assured
her that governors can learn to speak plainly and “create strategies
around a set of ideas” — in her case job growth, in the face of a
jobless rate that is worse than the national average. His advice is
occasional, and she’s not the only candidate he counseled that day,
but he did foresee a bright future. “I think Nikki Haley will prove to
be an effective governor,” he said. “And effective governors have a
chance to move on to other things if they want to.”
Haley tells reporters that she has no intention of being anyone’s
running mate. In fact, the carping has become boring, she sighed.
“Look, the press this past weekend said I don’t talk on my cellphone
long enough. It’s like, ‘STOP,’ ” Haley said. It reminded her of a
conversation she had with Sarah Palin, who came to South Carolina on
Haley’s behalf at a crucial campaign juncture.
“The best lesson I learned from her was just in a car after leaving
the rally,” Haley recalled. “She said, ‘You’re going to do well. And
when you do, they’re gonna come after you.’ And she said, ‘It’s never
gonna stop.’ ” Indeed, her ex-consultant hounds her daily with
critical posts on a widely followed news-and-sports Web site. Asked
about whether the days when sex allegations overtook the campaign were
her darkest, she shook her head vigorously: “I will tell you: The more
they came at me, the more they motivated me to fight.”
And as a dealmaker who must get past local underminers before she gets
any political promotion, Haley has decided on a governing style.
“Forceful with a smile. Forceful with a smile,” she said, describing
her mantra under fire. “They always laugh because I can undercut
somebody and smile the whole way doing it.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/nikki-haley-south-carolinas-hard-charging-gop-governor/2011/11/28/gIQA10vhwO_story.html#weighIn
