An occasionally irreverent look at S.C. Politics, featuring, this week, exclamation marks. (They were on sale and ... Buzz ran out of dashes and ... )

Enough! Run for governor already!

Gov. Nikki Haley, state Treasurer Curtis Loftis sees your Vogue magazine profile and raises you The New York Times.

Loftis, Haley’s nemesis (one of them, anyway), scored a glowing article on the front page of last Sunday’s Times Sunday business, where he got to tell stories about having dinner with a “centerfold model” and having “meetings with Wall Street types within the black-lace covered walls of the Provocateur nightclub in the meatpacking district of Manhattan.”

The article was a two-fer for Loftis, who got some national ink for his crusade against what he considers to be unwise investments that carry high management fees in the state’s $25 billion pension fund while also taking more shots at Bob Borden, the state’s former chief investment officer who repeatedly butted heads with Loftis.

While Haley made the rounds of national publications and TV talk shows following the publication of her book, “Can’t is Not an Option,” Loftis also has been amassing an impressive resume of national press clippings, including The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg TV.

Haley does have Loftis beat in the glamor-shots department — thanks, Vogue! But it’s nothing that a GQ profile of Loftis couldn’t fix.

Frankly, Buzz is getting tired of this. Loftis should just go ahead and announce he is running for governor so we stop pretending that he is not.

Drill, baby, drill!

The Buzz was so excited about U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham’s press conference last week — with Gov. Nikki Haley, R-Lexington, and U.S. Rep. Jeff Duncan, R-Laurens — about drilling for oil and natural gas off the S.C. coast that he had visions of sugar plums dancing in his head for days.

Heck, Buzz was ready to start drilling in the backyard at home!

Yessirree, we can make millions and reduce America’s dependence on dangerous foreign sources of energy while posing no threat whatsoever to the state’s $14 billion-a-year tourism business.

What’s that you say?

No one sober thinks there is any oil off the S.C. coast? And with natural gas at historic low prices because of the U.S. glut, thanks to new technology, no one would pay the cost of drilling miles off shore on the unlikely chance — according to geologists — of finding economically viable natural gas?

And the United States is more energy independent today than it has been in decades? And Canadians and Mexicans — the biggest sources of oil imported to the U.S. -- aren’t dangerous?

And there was no threat to Alaskan’s Prince William Sound or the Gulf Coast either until ...

Darn, you’re a buzz kill.

In retrospect, the Buzz suspects an election must be upcoming and Republicans are pandering again since there are not any real issues in South Carolina that need to be resolved.

So, “Drill, baby, drill!”

(The backyard is kind of close to a pipeline, guys. You might want to start there.)

Welcome back, Mark Sanford! The Buzz has missed you!

Former S.C. Gov. Mark Sanford, R-Beaufort, reappeared last week with an op-ed in The State newspaper criticizing Lt. Gov. Glenn McConnell, R-Charleston.

In addition to getting a $5 million increase to the lieutenant governor’s Office on Aging in next year’s budget, McConnell — who became lieutenant governor in March after Ken Ard resigned — also scored a SLED security detail that cost nearly $500,000 a year.

Sanford said McConnell, with whom he feuded while governor, doesn’t need the detail.

Here’s what Sanford wrote: “The commodity of politics is power and the details are a tool in projecting its image. But that doesn’t make it a wise use of taxpayer resources, particularly in a state where we have unfunded liabilities that reach into the tens of billions.”

Here’s what Sanford wanted to write: “Security details are the worst! They’re always asking questions, like, ‘Where are you?’ and ‘Why are you packing a Hawaiian shirt for a hike on the Appalachian Trail?’ ”

Sanford did address his famous South American jaunt, where he ditched his security detail to go visit his lover in Argentina, saying: “That was wrong. But it doesn’t change our present obligation as taxpayers to look at what we get — and don’t get — out of what we invest in government.”

Buzz thinks that is a good point.

So keep on keeping on governor — especially if it is in the form of op-eds in The State.

Could 7th District depose Lexington as S.C.’s wildest political scene?

The Buzz is starting to think the newly-drawn 7th Congressional District, anchored in Horry County, is going to be the Palmetto State’s most exciting political venue. The district won’t have its first U.S. representative until November, but it already is generating wild headlines.

First, state Rep. Thad Viers, R-Horry, drops out of the race after he learns authorities will prosecute him on charges he allegedly harassed a former girlfriend.

Next, state Rep. Ted Vick, D-Chesterfield, drops out after being charged with a DUI and having an 380 handgun in his pocket and a 21-year-old USC student in his car. (Of course, college students are not illegal, but Buzz doubts Vick’s wife was pleased with the revelation.)

Meanwhile, former Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer, the wild child of S.C. politics, gets into the race, starting a countdown to see when he next will crash a plane or get clocked going 100-plus miles per hour.

Just when Buzz thought there was no more fun to be had, Vick won 2,300 votes in last week’s Democratic Primary, even though he no longer is in the race. That set off a scuffle among Democrats over whether Gloria Tinubu won the primary outright, assuming you don’t count Vick’s votes, or should be a runoff later this month with the second-highest vote-getter, Preston Brittain.

(The Democratic Powers That Be are not pleased Tinubu, a former Georgia House representative who recently moved to the district, toppled Brittain, their heir apparent.)

Buzz can’t wait to see what will happen this week. The 7th could prove to be more fun that Lexington County GOP politics!