[UPDATE: See a fuller copy of Knott’s remarks where she alleges Haley is a secret Sikh who is being elected by a cabal of Indian interests [link]]

One of the interesting differences between Jindal and Haley, two politicians with so much in common down to their Punjabi parents, is that Jindal makes his conversion central to his political identity whereas Haley does not.

1 One reason for this is color. Bobby Jindal is very clearly brown, he is married to a brown woman with a “foreign” name. He couldn’t hide his ancestry if he tried, so instead he emphasizes his conversion from the alien Hindu faith to the more familiar Catholic one.

Haley doesn’t have that burden, she’s a light skinned woman married to a white man, with a familiar sounding name. Heck, I got a number of emails last week from friends (desi and non-desi) all saying “Nicky Haley’s desi?” For her, talking about her conversion is not just unecessary, it would remind people of what’s alien about her and so it would be counter-productive.

I think this is why the attacks on her religion have been fairly tame in the past (in 2004 anonymous fliers claimed she was a Hindu but she still went on to beat the most senior member of the State House [link]) and present [link], they just have a hard time sticking, even though this is a state where anti-Catholic and anti-Mormon attacks have worked in the past [link].

2 The other reason why she doesn’t stress her conversion as much is that it doesn’t seem to have been as abrupt. Her campaign strongly stresses her Christianity today, but this was not true in 2004 and reflects a strong increase in Christian language in her campaign materials [link].

In 2004, seven years after her conversion, she was quoted as saying she attended both Methodist and Sikh services [link] and even now her spokesman will admit that “She attends Sikh services once or twice a year in respect for her family… Like millions of others, she honors her mother and her father” [link].

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[Update: See below the fold for much more extensive coverage of what Knotts actually said. It’s far more offensive and inflamatory than the first reports revealed]

On a political talk show Thursday night, State Senator Jake Knotts said (about Nikki Haley):

“We already got one rag-head in the White House, we don’t need a rag-head in the governor’s mansion,” [link]

I’d love to show you the video of this clip, but it was either pulled from the archive or “Republican political operative and show co-host Wesley Donehue …forgot to hit record” [link].

After being soundly reamed by Haley for his remarks and more mildly criticized by the SC GOP, Senator Knotts “apologized” saying

my “raghead” comments about Obama and Haley were intended in jest. Bear in mind that this is a freewheeling, anything-goes Internet radio show that is broadcast from a pub. It’s like local political version of Saturday Night Live, which is actually where the joke came from,” Knotts said. “Since my intended humorous context was lost in translation, I apologize. I still believe Ms. Haley is pretending to be someone she is not, much as Obama did, but I apologize to both for an unintended slur [link]

Get that?

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