I have never been a big admirer of Nikki Haley. She has always been a mild-mannered neoconservative who would have fit right in with George W. Bush’s administration. Still, I tried to be polite. In earlier pieces, I’ve called her “fine” and given her a fair go, despite the fact she is far from what I would like in a national politician.
That was all destroyed on Wednesday evening, along with the remnants of her developing presidential campaign. Haley opted to stand with The Walt Disney Company over Ron DeSantis in one of perhaps the most tone-deaf, unwise assaults I have ever witnessed in politics, asking the woke multi-national company to relocate to South Carolina.
Hey @Disney, my home state will happily accept your 70,000+ jobs if you want to leave Florida.
We’ve got great weather, great people, and it’s always a great day in South Carolina!
SC’s not woke, but we’re not sanctimonious about it either. pic.twitter.com/uf1PWQjGc5
— Nikki Haley (@NikkiHaley) April 26, 2023
Who needs adversaries when your party has people like this?
Haley was able to personify every flaw in the current GOP in just a few brief seconds. That act was a really cowardly move on her part. She had an opportunity to do the right thing and support DeSantis’ play (or, at the very least, shut up about the matter and let him work) while demonstrating to Republicans how she can be depended on to deliver in tough situations. Instead, she chose a firm that openly boasts about child grooming and despises ordinary people with conventional values.
This was supposed to be a layup. It should have been a subject on which all Republicans could agree. And what about Haley? The most pathetic, self-serving thing possible. The fact that she also replicated Trump’s ridiculous “sanctimonious” assault on DeSantis just adds to her terrible performance. Is this woman genuinely a creation of overpaid consultants, or does she have a genuine bone in her body? Of course, that’s rhetorical, because everybody knows the answer.
Can you trust Haley to stand up to the deep state after what she just did? What happened to corporate tyranny? To censorship on social media? In response to foreign threats? I find no indication that she would do anything other than fold at the first direction of her donors if she thought it would benefit her personally.
To be obvious, that is what this is all about. Clearly, she believes that if she sucks up to Trump sufficiently and hurts DeSantis by standing with Disney, she will be nominated for vice president. It’s a clumsy attempt at self-promotion after her presidential campaign floundered like a fish out of the water. More amusingly, it has no realistic likelihood of success.
Call me old-fashioned, but certain topics should be avoided, even in a presidential primary. This includes fluffing far-left political rivals in order to get a cheap shot at a party member who is considerably more popular and successful. If Haley wants to play that game, she can slip into obscurity and become the manufactured non-entity she really is.
I tried once again to be polite. Despite my reservations, I attempted to give her the benefit of the doubt. That’s the end of it, and the gloves come off. If she wants to go down this path, let’s go down it.
Author: Scott Dowdy
