By CINDI ROSS SCOPPE – Associate Editor

I’M RETURNING to the Nikki Haley saga for what I hope will be the last time because it so dramatically illustrates the difficult decision every legislator with any integrity eventually faces: how much to compromise ideas or even principals in order to get along with other legislators, who largely determine how effective you are.

Most legislators choose the middle way: Rather than making waves, they quietly vote against plans they disagree with. A few will actively support what they know to be lousy ideas, believing they can do more good in the long run if they amass power by carrying water for the leadership.

But with her decision first to team up with House critics on her proposal to force more recorded votes and then to speak publicly about what she saw as retribution, Rep. Haley cast herself as the other extreme: the whistleblower who fights what she sees as wrong, regardless of the political repercussions. It’s the role played regularly by Gov. Mark Sanford, who has strong public support but few legislative accomplishments.

Ms. Haley’s decisions offer a rare glimpse inside the tight-knit world of legislative interpersonal relationships, because even those who push their causes aggressively rarely talk about the consequences, which usually aren’t as obvious as those suffered by Ms. Haley and blogger and Rep. Nathan Ballentine, when House Speaker Bobby Harrell shunted them off to what they consider lesser committee assignments.

Even the bridge-burners aren’t immune to the pressure to be team players. When she first accused Mr. Harrell of targeting her for retaliation, during a meeting last month with Brad Warthen and me, Ms. Haley refused to discuss what happened inside a closed Republican Caucus meeting, where Mr. Harrell reportedly made what some interpreted as threats. She would go only so far as to say it was made clear that the speaker and caucus would not support her proposal. “What happens in those meetings is supposed to be private,” she explained. (This allegiance to the code is all the more incredible when you recall that it’s a violation of state law for those meetings to be private if at least 63 representatives — a quorum of the House — attend.)

Mr. Harrell says what got Ms. Haley in trouble (and he insisted that her trouble was that other House members resented her, not that he was angry) was the way she was pushing for more openness.

Ms. Haley knew she was playing with fire. She said she wanted more than anything for her speaker and her caucus to join her recorded-vote campaign; but when they refused, “what choice did they leave me” but to accept the assistance offered by Gov. Mark Sanford and the S.C. Policy Council?

“When you see something wrong,” she said, “do you sit down and be quiet and say maybe next year, or do you say change has got to start somewhere? When I was discussing it with my husband, that was the discussion we had. It was not an easy decision for me to get together with that group of people and go to the public, because I knew if I did that I was killing myself with leadership. I knew that. And I made that decision hoping that the legislation was going to be beneficial enough that it would outweigh the sacrifices that I had to make.”

But it wasn’t Ms. Haley’s comments that got me thinking about the choice legislators face. It was the fact that the person Mr. Harrell first dispatched to answer my questions was Ms. Haley’s fellow Lexington County representative, Kenny Bingham.

Around our office, Mr. Bingham has become Exhibit A of the ends-justify-the-means approach to leadership. As we explained in a 2004 editorial after his primary opponent took aim at a few of his votes: “Mr. Bingham makes no bones about the strategic approach he has taken to the party-disciplined, hierarchical House — building relationships, working hard on the front end to influence policy but, when that doesn’t work, falling into line and voting with the party on the floor.” Two years later, after he voted for the vouchers he had always told us he hated and for an irresponsible tax plan that was anathema to his comprehensive-reform approach, we noted with growing skepticism that “he concluded that he had to cut property taxes if he wanted to stay in office, and in favor with House leaders, which he considers crucial to getting the real reform he wants.”

Today Ms. Haley serves on the House Education Committee — which I consider important but which she does not — and wears a scarlet S on her chest. For his even-more-pointed criticism of House leaders, her friend Mr. Ballentine was booted from the education panel to the Siberia of House panels, Medical, Military and Municipal Affairs.

And Mr. Bingham was just elected Republican leader, which can be the second-most-powerful job in the House. He argues that vindicates his approach.

Perhaps. But only time will tell whether the actions he had to take to get there left him the same person.

It’s a dangerous game to play. What we said in 2006 when we urged Mr. Bingham to stand up for the big-picture perspective we admired is true of any legislator who plays it: “There’s no point in building up clout if you don’t use it to accomplish something worthwhile.”