"I proudly serve in this administration, and I enthusiastically support most of its decisions and the direction it is taking the country.”
It is the wrong sweet spot. GOP primary voters don't want kinder, gentler. They want a fighter. Bill Kristol observed GOP voters insist on five things to be a Republican contender for president. I agree.
1. One must agree to support Trump if he is the nominee, even if you believe he is dangerously unfit for office.
2. One must say Trump was a good, successful president.
3. One must say that the 2020 election was irregular in some way, thereby justifying or mitigating extra-constitutional legal pretexts to overthrow it.
4. One must oppose the media and Democrats, including coastal elites, liberals, academics, and representatives of "woke" values. One must call them inauthentic and illegitimate Americans.
5. One must make attacking those illegitimate Americans one's highest priority in message and policy.
Haley is soft on numbers four and five. She is presenting herself as the next generation of Trump--Trump minus the flaws. Ron DeSantis is not a cleaned-up version of Trump. He is the meaner and more confrontational version of Trump. He is Trump-plus. DeSantis finds enemies that Trump hadn't considered: Martha's Vineyard residents, Walt Disney, the College Board, gays and trans people, vaccines, masks, and Blacks who were inaccurately told by state officials they could vote. DeSantis is out-Trumping Trump. "Florida is where woke goes to die," DeSantis says.
Haley is positioned incorrectly. She needs to be even more brutal than DeSantis. DeSantis has a record. He was soft in his opposition to COVID vaccines, having at first recommended them to elderly Floridians. DeSantis was soft on protecting Social Security, having entertained sunsetting it when he was in Congress. Trump went low this week, twice tweeting the suggestion that DeSantis preyed upon underage high school students. Haley needs to take over the go-low job.
There is no policy consensus among Republicans. The emerging base of blue-collar non-college voters have opposite goals than do the Main Street and corporate business people who formerly shaped the GOP message. Wall Street Journal readers want free trade with low wage countries, more immigration, less consumer protection, less regulation, lower taxes on the wealthy, and privatized Social Security and Medicare. White working-class Americans prefer the opposite. There is a common denominator, though, that unites Republicans. They resent judgmental scolds on the left who advance uncomfortable ideas on race and gender. A plurality of Republican primary voters doesn't care about elections and democracy--the kinds of things important to Liz Cheney. A democracy that elected a liberal like Biden, who would seek to appoint a Black female Supreme Court Justice, opposed by every Republican senator except Romney and Murkowski, is a flawed democracy and deserves no respect. Not when the main threat to democracy is leftist pressure for diversity, equity, and inclusion. A Republican who disagrees with this is a RINO, not a Republican at all.
Nikki Haley will either step up her game as a social warrior and displace DeSantis, or she will get, as Trump predicts, her 1% of the vote.
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11 comments:
Just say it out loud:
"President Nikki Haley"
Have a great day!
Nikki Haley will be lucky to get 3% of the GOP vote. She won't beat Trump and DeSantis (or ever Mike Pence).
While Haley was the South Carolina governor, being the US representative to the United Nations is a nothingburger job.
On the other hand, if a Republican is the next President, I would prefer her to either Trump or DeSantis. At least she's reasonable and not a mean SOB.
Nikki Haley vacillates too much. During Trump’s 2016 campaign, she was a sharp critic. Then she supported him, joined his administration and encouraged voters to re-elect him in 2020. After the Jan. 6 coup attempt, she criticized him and said the GOP needed to move on from his leadership. Then she backtracked and said the party needed him. She’s wishy-washy, not to mention a woman of color.
DeSantis, on the other hand, is on a crusade against everything “woke,” which his general counsel defined as “the belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them.” His obsession has led him from attacking Critical Race Theory to restricting the teaching of Black history itself. That’s the kind of “strength” Republicans like to see: someone who can twist a benign African American term like “woke” into the new N-word.
However, DeSantis lacks Trump's penchant for calling people stupid names, so Republicans might still view Trump as the stronger choice.
If Haley thinks her removal of the Traitors Flag from the State House has been forgiven by "the base", she's not nearly as smart as I once thought, and certainly not smart enough to be President. Not to forget, she has switched her positions on Former Guy so often, she could take Mittens place as a political well oiled weathervane. If she's not tagged as Veep candidate, she'll be gone by the first Primary next year.
The somewhat left wing Takeaway show on NPR had a very positive profile of Nikki Haley this morning. Perhaps this is evidence that Nikki Haley is competently aiming for a constituency consisting of the center right and the center left. Eliminating the influence of both the woke left and the Trump right from this country’s politics would be a great thing.
I can’t support Haley, because I don’t know who/what she really is, other than the Queen of Flip-Flop. I also don’t like Peter's idea of her toughening up her persona. That seems like asking her to lie even more about her views. Me, I’m sick of all the lying. If you can’t get elected by being honest, be honest anyway. Whatever happened to honesty and statesmanship in this government?
Wouldn’t it be great if we had honest, SANE candidates from both major policies telling us their versions of what’s best for the USA?
Peter Sage posted this here on behalf of Joe Yetter, who posted this useful comment on the Substack site:
Joe Yetter commented on your post Nikki Haley is missing her best shot.
What most Republicans want, I believe, is someone who is angrily aggrieved, not just someone who is merely perceived to be a "fighter". Trump cashed in on this, because he is constantly aggrieved, but not for the same reasons that his supporters are. Trump is aggrieved because he has been treated "worse than any president, ever"--presumably worse than Lincoln, Garfield, Kennedy, et al. Bette Midler dissed Trump, and he's still bitter. His base is aggrieved at their real and imagined losses in the culture wars, economic challenges, and so on--none of which hurt Trump and his family. But Trump and his base share performative grievance. They are dangerous. They seek to destroy "wokeness"--empathy, awareness, information, science, institutions--and to identify and destroy those responsible, a la the Charlottesville mob. They seek to find someone to blame, and Trump gives them that. Haley is going to have an impossible time plausibly articulating grievance. So she really has to take the sane, "team normal" approach and hope that the crazy becomes less ascendant. I wish her good luck in her senior year.
Joe Yetter
Not a fan of NH. But she would be better than Don Gotti or the FL Guy. She has a good background for the job, despite what UN haters think.
For years I have thought that (probably) a Republican would be our first female president. But hopefully not MTG, Lauren Boebert, Marsha Blackburn, Sarah Palin or Michelle Bachman (ugh).
Don Lemon really put his foot in it with his recent comment about women over 50 not being in their prime. He should be cancelled for that remark.
I couldn’t help but notice that Ann Coulter told Nikki Haley, “Go back to your own country.” I’m sure that pretty well sums up the attitude of the GOP’s whacko, anti-woke base.
Might she appeal to somebody sane, like Democrats? After four years of having a psychopath in the White House, Haley said about him: “Donald Trump has always put America first. And he has earned four more years as president.”
In other words, FUHGEDDABOUDIT.
I will never again vote for a republican at any level.
That political party needs to go to the dumpster.
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