According to the online journal Politico , South Carolina Democrats are going on the attack against the Republican gubernatorial nominee, state legislator Nikki Haley.  Her crime?  The perceived chink in her armor?  She's too popular.

According to the report, the South Carolina Democratic Party has developed a web site devoted to criticizing Ms. Haley for appearing on national media outlets like Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN.  It also "shows the recent Newsweek cover story featuring Haley, 'Woman on the Verge,' with the word 'woman' scratched out and replaced with 'celebrity.'"  Who knew that being a celebrity had such a gender-sensitive effect?  The ad also features Ms. Haley in a picture with the blogger who claimed to have had an affair with her (a claim Haley denies, and one for which no corroborating evidence has surfaced) and disgraced current SC Governor Mark Sanford, himself a known adulterer.  So much for subtlety.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Republican nominee John McCain tried a similar approach, producing an ad comparing Barack Obama to vacuous celebrities like Paris Hilton.  The ad was greeting with near unanimous criticism, and provided no traction for McCain in the campaign.  Then-Senator Obama had reached celebrity status, but it wasn't because he was vacuous or born rich, it was based on his soaring rhetoric and electoral success.  The effect of McCain's ad only served to turn people off to McCain's substantive message — that a vote for Obama was a vote for a bigger, more intrusive, more expensive government.  It also lent a sense of "is that the best you can do?" to the campaign — if the worst thing that one could say about Obama is that a lot of people liked him, that doesn't exactly make a great case to vote for his opponent.

In a similar manner, Nikki Haley has hardly achieved celebrity status for superficial reasons.  She is young (only 5 days older than this author), energetic, articulate, and intelligent.  An accountant, Ms. Haley worked in her family business, and has been a regular recipient of awards and honors since joining the South Carolina legislature.  Like Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, she is of Indian heritage, and is one of a noteworthy number of Republican women candidates in this year's election cycle.  In short, she's no Paris Hilton; she's now a celebrity because of her intellect, her uniqueness, and the buzz that she's created.  Consider the story:  an Indian-American woman being elected governor of South Carolina.

On the playground, a common retort to an insult that has no real substantive comeback usually involves hurling pejoratives at the offenders mother, or some circular nonsense like "I know you are but what am I?"  "Woman Celebrity on the Verge" seems about equal in intellectual timber. 

If this is the best South Carolina Democrats can do, State Rep. Governor Haley seems a pretty sure bet.