South Carolina's Governor Nikki Haley is a Tea Party darling, a Sarah Palin favorite and touted as one of the most fiscally conservative public officials in America today. That said, it must have come as nothing less than a virtual thunderclap when here own Republican dominated state legislature voted to override Haley's drastic cuts in Clemson University's agricultural outreach  programs and deferred capital maintenance. Clemson is a state university that relies on public funding.
 
Quoting the university directly: "The veto of $15 million for agricultural research in Clemson PSA was overridden by the House in a 106-3 vote and in the Senate by a 32-6 vote. The Legislature also overrode the veto of $250,000 for PSA Agency Operations by a 92-19 vote in the House and a 31-8 vote in the Senate. Legislators overrode the governor's veto of Capital Reserve Fund spending, including $6.2 million one-time funding for deferred maintenance for Clemson. The vote was 112-1 in the House and 32-8 in the Senate." 

Thus one is left with one overriding question: If drastic cuts are considered by the far right to be the only way to attain balanced budgets, then why has the state legislature, in state as so thoroughly conservative as South Carolina, decided to hand its ultra conservative governor such an astounding rebuke and political defeat? 

SJG

6/30/11