Nikki Nullified

South Carolina Republicans have fallen out of love with their former governor, Nikki Haley.

She lost the state's Republican primary to Donald Trump by twenty percentage points.  She didn't lose by as much as the polls had predicted, and some pundits will find some way to spin it as being a revealing look at Trump's disadvantages and weaknesses in a general-election matchup with Joe Biden, but it's still a crushing loss.  The one-on-one knock-out, drag-down fight that people had been hoping for between Trump and an anti-Trump has finally happened, but it's Haley who is getting knocked out and dragged down.

This is a loss that Haley richly deserves.  Some pundits have actually applauded her for finding her voice and lashing out at Trump at long last, but the truth of the matter is that she's merely changing her message to appeal to the anti-Trump faction in the GOP after treating Trump with kid gloves didn't work out.  But then bashing Trump for his numerous deficiencies was something Chris Christie had done in his 2024 presidential campaign since day one, and he didn't get any credit for finding his voice. What he got was an early exit from the campaign when he tried to gain traction but ended up in traction.  Haley only bashes Trump with the knowledge that she has nothing left to lose, so why not go full tilt boogie in being the anti-Trump when no one gives a twit?

But I'll be happy to see her continue her campaign long enough to drive Trump crazy. 😉 

Haley vows to stay in the presidential campaign for as long as she has the money.  She could theoretically stay until the bitter end.  But Chris Christie knows better than to plan to vote for Haley in the last-in-the-nation New Jersey presidential primary in June, because Trump will have long before won all the delegates needed for the Republican presidential nomination.  

The Plot Begins To Unravel

Nikki Haley is treating her second-place finish in New Hampshire as a victory of sorts, and she may have a point.  Although she lost New Hampshire by eleven percentage points, exit polls show that a majority of those who voted in the primary would not vote for Donald Trump in a general election matchup with Joe Biden and that Haley would do better against Biden with Republicans and independents than Trump.

Biden may be doing better against Trump and is doing very well among independents,  Recent polls show that, although his approval rating is still nothing to write home about, he actually beats Trump handily in New Hampshire and now has an edge in recent polling in Pennsylvania.

And Trump sees the handwriting on the wall that is closing in on him.  When Haley presented a cool, calm, collected persona in her sort-of-victory speech and declared that the campaign has just begun, Trump responded with the least gracious victory statement ever committed to video, thanking Haley's fellow South Carolinian Tim Scott for his endorsement  by saying that Scott must really hate Haley, who appointed Scott to his seat to complete an an unexpired term.

An embarrassed Scott quickly went up to him and said, "No, I just love you!"

No one's buying it.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have here a bromance made a few feet below heaven.

Trump must be getting desperate because not only is he saying things like "We are an institute in a powerful death penalty" and "And my cream pie kitty ate an Armenian zapato con queso dipped in chocolate syrup" (I made up one of those - can you guess which one Trump actually said?), he's wearing more bronzer in the most pathetic attempt to look youthful and vigorous since Democratic presidential candidate Alan Cranston dyed what was left of his hair in 1984.  

Increasingly, Trump's last hope is that third-party candidates siphon enough votes away from Joe Biden (and I'll get to that later). 

By the way, what's the difference between Gene Simmons and Donald Trump? One is a sexist vulgarian who wears face paint in public and entertains white-trash audiences in big arenas. The other is a heavy-metal bass player.  😛  

And Nikki Haley is right when she says that New Hampshire is not the end of the presidential nomination process.  That would be New Jersey.  😛

The Carroll case?  I'll address that in a separate post.

Taken For Granite

The New Hampshire primary is today, and it's do or die for Nikki Haley, who could pull a classic Granite State upset against Donald Trump and win or go down swinging like Sonny Liston as the polls (which, in New Hampshire, are never right) suggest.

Haley has hit her heights.  Alliterations aside (well, after that second one), Haley has finally been going after Trump on his increasing cognitive disorder, as he's been confusing her with Nancy Pelosi in talking about January 6 and making beep-beep noises talking about nuclear-missile launch boards.  But she started doing so late - maybe too late to win. But we will see tonight. 

As for the other Republican contenders . . . well, Vivek Ramaswamy's fifteen minutes of fame are pretty much over, though he might have won himself  the Secretary of Commerce position in a Trump 47 administration, but given Trump's racist insinuations against Ramaswamy's fellow Indian-American Haley (oh yeah, South Asians are actually members of the Caucasian race, making them, as George Carlin once called them, dark brown white people, so it's actually ethnicism, or perhaps xenophobia), that's not likely.  Asa Hutchinson, the only 2024 Republican presidential candidate not from New Jersey who called Trump on his crimes, also quit the campaign, much to the delight of the Democratic National Committee, which sent out a press release joking that they hadn't even noticed that he was still running.  Sort of like when I learned this month that Joyce Randolph, who played Trixie Norton on "The Honeymooners," died at 99 and I said to someone that I hadn't even known she was still alive - except that I didn't say that as a joke!  Anyway, President Biden personally apologized to Hutchinson, realizing how mean-spirited that press release was, especially when Hutchinson was an anti-MAGA comrade in arms.  But that's the Democratic National Committee for you.  Heck, leading Democratic Party members ridiculed Martin O'Malley in 2016 when he exited the presidential campaign - and he's a fellow Democrat!

And then there's Ron DeSantis . . .

After a landslide re-election victory as governor of Florida that destroyed Florida's state Democratic Party like a hydrogen bomb, DeSantis was a colossus in the national Republican Party and seen as the logical heir apparent to Trump, and he looked like an attractive candidate, advocating Trumpist policies without Trump's toxic personality.  Unfortunately, DeSantis turned out to have a toxic personality of his own.  His inability to smile, for example, is clearly evident in the photo above, and he couldn't work up enough energy with voters to even display an affectation of warmth.

Democrats were hoping that DeSantis would be strong nationally as he's been in Florida and cause a knockout brawl with Trump that would mirror the Ford-Reagan battle of 1976.  Instead, the DeSantis campaign was destroyed like the Florida Democratic Party, and in both cases it was DeSantis who did the destroying.  He tried so hard to show his MAGA credentials that he came across as a vindictive, angry man who would do anything to further his political career - and not just as a presidential candidate. He had been going after gays and picking fights with Disney even before he declared his candidacy for President, as well as restricting abortion in his state even before Dobbs was handed down by the Supreme Court.       

DeSantis will still be governor of Florida for another three years, but his political career is all ready over.  By 2028, no one will want DeSantis to run for President.  His chances for a Trump 47 Cabinet position have already been blown to bits.   

He died with his high-heeled boots on.

Ron Is On

I took a break from not watching the news last night to watch the returns from Iowa.  I'd hoped to write Ron DeSantis's political obituary, at least in national politics, at the conclusion of the Iowa Republican presidential caucuses, but he actually eked out a second-place showing in the Hawkeye State, edging out Nikki Haley by just a couple of percentage points.

Haley was considered the favorite to give Trump a big scare in New Hampshire, but her calculations have possibly been scrambled as a result of DeSantis' better-than-expected run in Iowa.  As all this has happened, Chris Christie has withdrawn as a candidate, having seen that he has no chance of winning and wanting to avoid splitting the vote against Trump after his road-to-Damascus conversion from Trump acolyte to Trump adversary (COVID will do that to you), but not only has Haley been diminished at DeSantis's expense - Trump won an outright majority of caucus-goers' votes, the first presidential candidate to do that in Iowa in either party since, when?  Ever?

Democrats hoping for a bruising battle among Republicans that could affect Trump's chances in November might still get their wish.  Haley, who finished only a couple of points behind the Florida governor, could still make this difficult for the Donald in New Hampshire, where independents can vote in the primary, or DeSantis' new-found momentum could result in the knock-down brawl between Don and Ron that once seemed likely only a year ago.  But the Biden campaign had best not count on too much drama in the early state GOP presidential nomination contests, because, as Trump's success last night proved, it's ultimately not going to matter much.    

Ikki Nikki

States' rights are wonderful.

States' rights are the reason one state does things differently from another.  They're what enable Pennsylvania to run a chain of "state stores" at which to buy alcoholic beverages, enable Maine and Nebraska to proportionally award some of their presidential electors, enable Hawaii and Utah to ban gambling, and enable New Jersey to require expiration dates on water, which doesn't really expire, which means that expiration dates get printed on water bottles in all fifty states because it's too expensive to print dates on only bottles sold in New Jersey . . . oh, and it's illegal only in New Jersey to pump your own gas.  (Okay, maybe New Jersey is a bad example here.)

States' rights are guaranteed in the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution, written by Founding Father Roger Sherman of Connecticut, the only state with a stand-alone gift tax (and it's Connecticut's right to have one!), which reads as follows, and I quote:

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

So, the rights of the states matter a lot.  But the states do not have the right to withdraw from the Union in defiance of federal policy regarding the restriction in federal territories of a practice legal in certain states and banned in others, because secession under any circumstances is unconstitutional.  No state has the right to secede on the basis of issues regarding federal powers and individual liberties, and that was especially the case regarding . . . slavery.

But Nikki Haley, campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination in New Hampshire, seems to think that the cause of the Civil War  was a issue over states' rights, personal liberty, and federal government overreach.  

Which is particularly strange when you remember that her home state of South Carolina, the first state to secede from the Union after Abraham Lincoln was elected President in 1860, said it was doing so because "an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution."

Haley has since tried to backtrack on her statements, but the very idea that she could talk about the cause of the Civil War and not acknowledge slavery would be laughable if not for the fact that she will happily dodge any inconvenient realities of American history to avoid offending Trump supporters whose votes she doesn't have a prayer of getting anyway.  How bad it is for her?   She has Ron DeSantis - who approved educational guidelines in Florida to suggest that slavery provided skills to those in bondage - criticizing her, and she has Chris Christie laughing at her!  

We seem to be in an Alice in Wonderland situation when a South Asian woman married to a white man in the state where Bob Jones University is located can't talk openly and honestly about race.

Then again she is a Republican . . . 

Latter Days

At the annual Nuremberg rally - er, Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Maryland, Trump revealed the Coming of the Apocalypse by declaring to be the "warrior, justice and retribution" of all those patriots and defenders of the state who have been sinned and libeled against by the radical left.

Also, at the same underattended conference, 2024 presidential candidate Nikki Haley, speaking to a bunch of empty chairs,  made a statement that was as well reported as the conference was attended.  She said that "wokeism" is a virus more deadly than a zoonotic virus of any pandemic.  This is going on while anti-abortion governors crack down on abortion pill distribution.  Walgreens has already decided not to offer abortion pills in at least twenty states. 

And though black women like April Ryan and Zerlina Maxwell say it's up to the sistas to save America, Fani Willis, the one sista who could actually do that by indicting Trump for illegal interference in the 2020 Georgia presidential electoral college vote, might not get that chance.  A bill quickly circulating through the Georgia state legislature will give the state government the authority to remove district attorneys like Willis for abuse of power, defined as "black women who investigate and obviously hate white men."  This racist bill will allow Trump to escape indictment in the one slam-dunk case against him, although he says he will continue running for President if he's indicted to fulfill his promise of destroying the bleeding-heart liberals who want to make us give up our American way of life.

This is happening as the Florida state legislature may consider a bill "canceling" the Florida Democratic Party for its support of racism . . . in the 1850s and 1860s - while Ron DeSantis continues to ban black history from being taught in schools . . . even in February. 

And in Tennessee, the governor has singed a bill outlawing drag shows, which will likely punish cable providers with fines and imprisonment for their corporate officers if they air "RuPaul's Drag Race" in the state.  (Yeah, and maybe they'll ban Hillary Clinton from visiting Tennessee for being a drag king - those pantsuits!)  The RuPaul program, a celebration of drag-queen culture, is a favorite of New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, who, to the Make America Great Again crowd, is an obvious obstruction to their agenda, and she is clearly un-American for her solidarity with transsexuals and for her environmentalist agenda, and of course every true-red MAGA Republican knows what a threat to the Republic AOC and Jennifer Lopez are as Puerto Rican women for their solidarity with undocumented immigrants as well as J-Lo's anti-American, pro-migrant, indecent 2020 Super Bowl halftime show performance, the likes of which are likely to be banned in Tennessee if the Super Bowl is ever held in the state. 

I just have one question . . .

When did this country suddenly become Utah?

The last days are here.  Blow your trumpet (or your harmonica), son. 

Darling Nikki

Former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley became the first Republican after Donald Trump to announce her candidacy for her party's 2024 presidential nomination.

She says it's time to bring a new generation of leadership to the White House.

New generation of leadership . . . new leadership . . . yeah, I've heard that line before.  It's been used most often by presidential candidates who go on to become hasbeens.

In fact, Haley is a new kind of leader.  The new Nikki Haley is running against Trump.  The old Nikki Haley said he wouldn't run for President in 2024 of Trump did.  The new Nikki Haley highlights her experience as governor of South Carolina. The old Nikki Haley served as the United Nations ambassador in the Trump administration, the most xenophobic presidential administration in American history.  The new Nikki Haley complains about "bullying" from the American left and promises to kick back in high heels.  The old Nikki Haley opposed Trump, a bully himself, in the 2016 presidential election by supporting Marco Rubio for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination and later Ted Cruz.   The new Nikki Haley says that America is not a racist country.  The old Nikki Haley was born Nimrata Randhawa, going by her nickname and married surname because . . . who in America would vote for Nimrata Randhawa for President?

Oh, yeah, then there's this . . .

In other words, Nikki Haley comes across as the same old type of Republican.

Haley the Comet

Nikki Haley is leaving her post as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.  People are praising her for her service to Donald Trump, showing her independence while remaining loyal to the administration and demonstrating her diplomatic skills in standing up for American interests while earning international respect (!) for this country.   

Yeah?  How do you justify standing up for principles as eschewing concern for human rights and the climate?  How do gain respect for odious policies designed to push the rest of the world aside?  How do you explain support for Israel, whose egregious policies toward the Palestinians has made the Israelis global pariahs almost as great as we are?  How can anyone respect what this country does?  Haley has been defended for upholding traditional, pre-Trump Republican foreign-policy values at the United Nations, but it's worth remembering, considering the GOP's history of all of the overthrown Latin American governments, unnecessary Middle Eastern wars, and hostility toward international treaties governing everything from the rights of the disabled to maritime interests, that traditional Republican foreign policy was odious long before Trump.  Not that traditional Democratic foreign policy has been all that much better.           

And pundits are talking about Haley as a potential 2024 Republican presidential candidate.

Her biggest accomplishment was leaving her job with a lot of goodwill, unlike other Trump appointees who left prematurely.  She wasn't shown the door; she found it herself.  Some would say she's leaving at the right moment, what with Trump having had his best week yet.  Or, maybe she's leaving because she knows that things won't get any better than now.

American foreign policy today is the pits as far as I'm concerned.  (Paris Agreement, anyone?)  I find it quite nauseating.

Speaking of nausea, the Clintons are going on a pop-concert-style speaking tour starting next month.

Sandbagging From Teabaggers

It finally happened. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People finally demanded that the Tea Party movement address the growing racism among its ranks, though the NAACP wouldn't accuse the Tea Party movement itself of being racist.

This of course, is exactly what the Tea Partiers said the civil rights group did. Sarah Palin - no stranger to overreacting - took a page out of Rush Limbaugh's playbook in insisting that supporters of her ideology are average people concerned about the country. The Tea Partiers, she said, are normal, everyday folks who work hard, raise families, and support smaller government. She completely overlooked the butchers, doctors, and insurance salesmen who carry around sings depicting President Obama as Hitler and spit on black congressmen. Palin also added that the Tea Party is a "DY-verse" group.

And it is. Ask Rick Santelli - it happens to include a few Italians!

And at least one South Asian.

No, I'm not saying Nikki Haley is racist. Of course she doesn't have anything against white people! Sorry, I couldn't resist. No, seriously, I don't think she's bigoted toward blacks, but as a woman of South Asian decent - and as someone who was on the receiving end of a racial slur during the gubernatorial primary in South Carolina - she should be among those to take the first step to condemn the bigotry in the movement that helped get her the Republican gubernatorial nomination in her state. If she has Palin's personal contact information, she should call Alaska's most famous book-banning wolf killer and tell her to do the same.

Nikki, don't lose that number.

Carolina In My Mind

History was made in South Carolina yesterday as the Republicans nominated Indian-American state representative Nikki Haley to run for governor and voters in the palmetto State's First Congressional District nominated Tim Scott, who is black, to be the Republican candidate for that seat in the fall. Scott would be the first black Republican congressman from South Carolina since Reconstruction and the first black Republican congressman since 2003. Both are likely to win in November.

As much as I want to praise South Carolina Republicans for looking beyond race, gender, and ethnicity in these primary elections, I choose to damn them instead. Haley and Scott won largely out of right-wing anger with Washington and the Obama administration. Haley, a wealthy businesswoman, and Scott, who had the backing of the anti-tax, Wall Street-friendly Club For Growth, both represent a philosophy that promotes an unfettered market and a limited role for government - the same ideology that got this country in trouble in the first place. To give you an idea of how toxic Haley and Scott could be, both were endorsed by noted book-banning wolf killer Sarah Palin. The end.

The Republican party in South Carolina has been redeemed by the star quality of its nominees, though, after the embarrassing revelations of last year involving Mark Sanford. It's now the state Democratic party - which somehow nominated a loser named Alvin Greene to take on the horrible incumbent Republican senator Jim DeMint and has less than zero chance of unseating him - that's the joke, and the less said about that, the better.

Meanwhile, next door in North Carolina, U.S. Senate hopeful Elaine Marshall, a favorite among progressives, defeated establishment candidate Cal Cunningham for the Democratic U.S. Senate nomination. This should be a big deal. Marshall did what Bill Halter couldn't do in Arkansas - defeat a Senate candidate backed by the White House. She's running in November against Richard Burr, a rather unpopular fellow, though probably not as unlikable as Jim DeMint, and one who holds a Senate seat that is a political graveyard for those who have held it in the past thirty-five years.

No one cares. No liberal commentators at MSNBC are celebrating this victory over establishment Democrats within the party. Even Ed Schultz hasn't mentioned it. As noted, Chuck Todd considers it such a long shot for the Democrats he'd rather not talk about it. But it proves that progressives are getting energized and are ready to put forward more of their own candidates. They've not only nominated Marshall to run for the Senate, in North Carolina, they've nominated Joe Sestak to do so in Pennsylvania. Two out of three ain't bad. And they pulled off their latest coup in a state where voters lean Republican but have shown a willingness to hear out Democrats. Ask Kay Hagan, North Carolina's Democratic senator. If this primary is any indication, the left is not going to let Tea Partiers suck up all the political oxygen.