From The State:
COLUMBIA, S.C. — The four Republicans running for governor of South Carolina support drilling for natural gas off South Carolina’s shores and pushing the federal government to remove nuclear waste from the state. But they have different views on the type of oil exploration that has led to the massive Gulf oil spill.
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Four-term U.S. Rep. Gresham Barrett, two-term Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer, three-term state Rep. Nikki Haley and two-term Attorney General Henry McMaster all say natural gas reserves off South Carolina’s coast could be an economic boon to the state and help the country become energy independent.
Some experts doubt that commercially feasible oil exists off South Carolina’s coast, but three candidates want to explore, provided safeguards are in place. Haley compared the flow of crude in the Gulf of Mexico – what’s become the worst oil spill in U.S. history – to a plane crash.
“We don’t stop all the planes from flying. What we do is we look at that accident, we learn from it and say, ‘What do we need to do to make sure that it doesn’t happen again?’ That’s the same thing here,” said Haley, 38, of Lexington.
Bauer said the $75 million federal cap on oil spill liability, beyond direct cleanup costs, must be lifted to prompt companies to use the latest technology and equipment.
But McMaster had more reservations, saying it may be impossible to ensure oil drilling can be done without a spill.
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Barrett, Bauer and McMaster said outright that any drilling rigs must be far enough off shore to be out of sight from land. Barrett said no structures within 20 miles of the coast. Haley said she’d study the rigs’ effects on the environment and tourism before deciding.
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All four champion the expansion of nuclear energy, both for job creation and as a clean energy solution. They support promoting other alternative energy sources, such as solar, wind and hydrogen, but say only nuclear currently offers substantial energy output.
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The Republicans believe plans for Yucca Mountain, a project 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, must get back on track so highly radioactive nuclear waste isn’t permanently stored in South Carolina. The Obama administration wants to halt plans to open the nuclear repository. South Carolina and Washington state are suing to prevent the federal government from killing the project.
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Regardless, GOP candidates said, uncertainty on Yucca Mountain should not sidetrack nuclear energy.
But even with that repository, spent nuclear fuel rods should be recycled at the Savannah River Site for power plants, said Barrett, whose district includes the Department of Energy facility near Aiken.
“If we don’t continue down the recycling venue, then Yucca Mountain is literally full before it’s open,” said Barrett, 49, of Westminster. “Everything we’ve got stored right now will fill up Yucca Mountain.”
But that’s not what people are talking about. From The Post and Courier:
Republican voters may enter the voting booths June 8 without knowing if anything happened three years ago between gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley and her onetime consultant, blogger Will Folks.
Folks sent tremors through the four-way Republican primary Monday by reporting on his website fitsnews.com that he and Haley had an “inappropriate physical relationship.”
Haley spent much of the rest of the week denying it, as Folks dribbled out text messages, phone records and other tidbits showing that the two once talked a lot.
They stopped short of proving any affair, but his blog posts often suggest there’s more to come.
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“If this blogger had ironclad proof, and Haley were forced to admit it, that would be a completely different kettle of fish,” [Larry] Sabato [director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia] said, “but it hasn’t been proven. It just hasn’t.”
Sabato said Haley is winning the public relations battle against Folks, and he predicted that she will finish in the top two June 8, giving her a slot in a likely runoff June 22.
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The campaigns of Haley’s rivals, U.S. Rep. Gresham Barrett, Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer and Attorney General Henry McMaster, expressed a mix of exasperation of how the race was hijacked and hope for a calmer week ahead.
Barrett campaign manager Luke Byars noted that when Barrett was getting endorsed by the S.C. Minutemen Tuesday, reporters wanted to talk only about Haley.
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Bauer’s longtime friend and adviser Rod Shealy said the Folks-Haley fracas changed the dynamics of the race, but he said Bauer hasn’t changed his campaign plans.
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Rob Godfrey, McMaster’s communications director, said high-profile races often have distracting background noise.
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Sabato said changing public mores mean that talk of an affair, even if it turns out to be true, isn’t as fatal to a campaign as it might have been 30 years ago.
Gov. Mark Sanford’s recent infidelity, which became known last summer after his absence from the state, was the most recent incident that deadens any potential shock.
“There have been so many scandals that people finally figured out that politicians are just like them, only maybe worse,” Sabato said.
HYSTERICAL RAISINS 
Jeez! It’s like these people are arranging chairs on the deck of the Titanic.
Could they pick a worse time to discuss offshore oil drilling?
The way things are going w BP, if SC politicians wait a bit, they may have oil come right to their shores.
seriously! and what’s wrong with south carolinians? why are they supporting people who want to bring that kind of chaos to their shores?
South Carolina is too small to be a republic and too big to be an insane asylum. That was true when they fired on Ft. Sumpter and it’s still true today.
it’s not that big! i bet it’s a lot smaller than the mexican border. i think we should try to put walls around it to keep the lunatics inside.
Oh we SC GOPer pols are totally nuts! The stuff we say is so ridic-u-lus! Because offshore drilling could lead to cleaning up oil by sucking. And we’ll have no Louisiana aphrodesiac oysters for shucking. So the only thing we’re good for is lots of f**king!
it’s a good thing they don’t have oysters there. the appalachian trail would be very, very crowded.
So the voters of South Carolina would rather talk about a sex scandal than about offshore drilling. That makes them normal, but it also makes them idiots.
maybe it’s better that they talk about sex. after all, when they say sex, i know what they’re talking about. however, when they talk about oil, it takes me at least 5 minutes to figure out that they’re saying oil, not all.
SC could take some advice about that natural gas drilling. A few years back it was determined the Barnett Shale (under north Texas) was chocked full of the stuff. Now poking holes in the ground ain’t nothing new round these parts. One of the first gas wells out in Mineral Wells was going fine untill it decided to detonate for some unknown reason. The head pressure was so great it took ’em over a week to even get close to the damned thing. The main drillers have been buying our homeowner mineral rights for several years. Made my first oil money ever ($480)! Meanwhile the locals are getting paranoid about fume releases (they put these wells everywhere) and the kicker came last year when towns like Mansfield started to get daily earthquakes! Something will happen when you change things deep down there. But good news on the nuke waste front. Our leading gopers have found a little town out in west Texas, just past the 90 degree bend on the map, that will take everyones waste! Knowing how things go around these parts, it’ll proably be set out in 55 gallon barrels on the ground and drunk rednecks will come by and shoot at ’em with guns.
😆 i love your texas stories, jerry! earthquakes, really? i think they should store all that nuclear waste in the garage of that fancy house the state is renting for gov. little ricky goodhair.
I saw this poster yesterday and LOVED it, but I was too sleepy to write.
Love the tramp button. 😆
yayyyy!!! you got my little joke! 😀
I’m here for ya, baby. Love Bauer’s stretched out head, too. Made me think of how he fancies eugenics in the ghetto. 😀
…like Cartman.
i can always count on you, melissa! 😀
when i was looking at pix of andre, i was struck by how thin he’s gotten since i last did posters about him. (maybe he forgot he wasn’t poor and stopped eating like his grandma would have wanted him to do), so i giggled as i stretched out his stupid face. 😆
Oh, God, Jerry! LMAO at the thought of these old drunk guys shooting at these barrels and then glowing in the dark at night. The barrels were going to be enclosed in the mountains of Nevada, wasn’t it? One question, why would Texas volunteer one of their own towns for this? Or since Gov. Goodhair needs stimulus money to balance budgets, is this a way to make a little more money? Just imagine the old boys shooting the barrels and their pee being flourescent yellow! I should talk. I live 5, 35 and 65 miles away from 3 PA nuclear power plants.
Why would the Republican of Texas allow nuke waste? Where do we start? First it’s the cash. Second would be Austin is 500 miles away, why should they be bothered. Third would be the “junk science” of some smartass yankee with book learnin telling us something is dangerous. Our politicians are notoriously stupid, like our former AgSec who was going to show the press how harmless the Fire Ant problem was buy taking them out to a big mound and digging in it with his bare hands. He was hospitalized soon after with toxic shock effects. Just typical. Down here, ignert is a two sylibal word!
😆 omg! fireants are smarter than elected texas officials!!!
Just a little aside, when Limerick, PA was chosen as one of the sites for a nuclear power plant in the early-70s, the electric company was still called Philadelphia Electric (now PECO, and the Limerick plant, Exelon Energy). Guess who did the commercials for them at this time and was shown in them? Leslie Neilson. I wish he’d do some Exelon ads as Sgt. Frank Drebbin. He’d have the cooling towers steaming, knowing him.
Oops! Meant smoking, not steaming!
leslie neilson? really!? i love that guy!
i laughed so hard when i read that about old drunk guys shooting at the nuclear waste barrels. i laugh, but it’s not very far from the truth. corporations are so lax when it comes to safety. it seems like the real bigshots always live far away from any dangerous spots.
Oh sure, have a laugh at our expense, you don’t have to live here. The only thing “holding it up” is neighbor states with working brains ain’t gonna let ’em truck and train this crap all across the countryside and interstates. And besides drunkeness, you might wonder what would motivate the good old boys to do such stupid things. Well, they know they’re not supposed to, that would get ’em out there plugging away. And the truth be told, they just want to see if they can make one of them barrels “go off.”
sorry jerry, but after living through floriduhhh elections, i get a bit overanxious when another state gets attention for stupidity. there are so many to choose from these days.
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