NIKKI WINS – AT 9:07 P.M. ET:  Nikki Haley has won the Republican primary runoff for governor of South Carolina, as expected. 

If elected she will be South Carolina's first female governor and will be the second Indian-American governor, the other being Bobby Jindal of Louisiana. 

In addition, Tim Scott has defeated Paul Thurmond for the Republican nomination for Congress in South Carolina's First Congressional District.  Scott is an African-American.  If elected, he'll be the first black congressman from South Carolina since the Civil War era.  Thurmond is the son of the late Senator Strom Thurmond, who ran for president as a "Dixiecrat" in 1948, abandoning the Democratic Party because the party was embracing civil rights.  The elder Thurmond later become a Republican and moderated his racial views. 

Nikki Haley, Tim Scott.  South Carolina.  Is this a great country, or what?  And maybe it's time that the snotty northern liberals started showing some well-deserved respect for the new, rising South.

June 22, 2010