Earlier this week I did a brief post on the madness that's consumed the South Carolina Republican gubernatorial contest.

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Haley's legion of very conservative supporters in and beyond South Carolina, including Sarah Palin and RedState blogger Erick Erickson, have treated the whole thing as a certain smear, with lots of innuendo that someone more powerful than Folks--perhaps one of her GOP gubernatorial rivals, perhaps satanic socialists fearful of Haley's wrathful righteousness--was behind it. And yesterday the saga seemed to take a new turn when Erickson put up a red-siren post saying that he had evidence Folks had accepted six-figure money to make the allegations, and that RedState would "name names" today.

Turns out that was sort some of joke by Erickson, meant to parody Folks' own media manipulation tactics, but that didn't keep ol' Erick from retailing some vague conjectures about the possible involvement of Lt. Gov. Andre "Stray Animals" Bauer in Folks' conspiracy (maybe that was part of the joke, too, though if I were Erick I'd have a libel lawyer close at hand).