(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Bless her little heart. Nikki is Standing for America... [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-02-19 Really, Nikki? Handicapping GOP contenders #3 Nikki in her own words Note: This is the third in a series of diaries handicapping the Republican presidential field for 2024. You needn’t agree with the analysis, but we can have fun discussing it. Let’s play. Part 2... Trolling Nikki Haley’s campaign website, it appears she is enamored with her Stand for America corporate tagline. SFA, Inc. perhaps reveals more than it should about the candidate’s intentions should she be elected. Spoiler Alert, this writer will bet that she won’t. Haley, who has a knack for speaking through clenched teeth, is banking on countering the meanness of the GOP leaders in the race with her brand of southern charm and “bless their hearts” smarm. Her qualifications begin with her diversity and the fact that she is a Republican woman with guts enough to play with the GOP big dogs. It's her brand and it worked in her home state of South Carolina. Her penchant for platitudes and fuzzy promises is evident in her web appeal for funding: Our country is at crossroads and we have a serious choice to make in 2024. We need a leader who will fight with strength and conviction. Nikki Haley has made it clear where she stands. As governor of South Carolina, Nikki Haley turned a declining economy into a prosperous state of opportunity. As U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, she held human rights abusers accountable and refused to step down from foreign enem ies. As the founder of Stand For America PAC , Nikki endorsed and supported more than 60 Republican candidates in the 2022 midterm election. As President of the United States , Nikki will be the strong leader America deserves. She will be a bold champion for America, and won't hold back on fighting for what's right. But she needs your help to do that. Will you contribute a gift of $50 to get her campaign off on the right foot? Her campaign will need all the resources it can get. Reading through her list of “whatevers”, I have a hard time repressing a yawn. No blazing comet, Haley is a master of the obvious. Her “stands” seem remarkably similar to a statement that in her previous positions, she did her job! She may have a hard time explaining how being a “bold champion for America” and a promise to “fight for what’s right” comports with her stated friendship with one Donald J. Trump who only fought for what was his. Her flip-flopping “before I liked him I hated him and now I’m not quite sure” relationship with her previous benefactor is troublesome. Haley's muted slight, calling for a new generation of leadership, ignores the political reality that voters have deeply felt opinions of Trump. They either love him or hate him leaving little middle ground. Her most memorable quote might be the one for sale as Nikki merch on Etsy: “Even on our worst day we are blessed to live in America.” When she wants to be naughty, she is inclined to default to her feminine wiles as in the quotes, “I wear heels, and it’s not for a fashion statement— it’s ammunition.” and, “I think the media's a little frightened of women.” — Nikki Haley Most of what she allows herself to say for publication is insipidly uninspired— except when she is safely speaking in her comfortably conservative home state. There she lets her hair down and whispers right-wing dogma on her home field. For example, when seeking her second term for governor — and before she had national aspirations— Haley gushed: “I am not going to stop beating up on the unions!” and the more explicit, “We don't have unions in South Carolina because we don't need unions in South Carolina.” — Nikki Haley platitudes and self conceit Her bravado is protected speech in the “Right to Work” environment of the south, where Haley's main contributors include Boeing and BMW. She will live and die with those sentiments among union workers elsewhere. Haley also has a penchant for the inane— statements that can be used on the campaign trail by rivals that defy context. Her stance on issues affecting women and ones in play within the current culture wars is compromised by her need to satisfy. She tries hard to balance conservative interests with the semi-woke interests of others who may be inclined to vote for her: “Contraception doesn't define a woman.” “On matters of race, South Carolina has a tough history. We all know that. Many of us have seen it in our own lives - in the lives of our parents and our grandparents. We don't need reminders.” “ All of my policy is not based on a label. It's based on what I lived and what I know.” ”I'm a huge fan of women; I think we're great.” ”This is America. Anyone is free to protest about anything they want.” ”You don't go to the people that are just like you. You go to the people that you have to earn their credit” and the always popular, “ Courage doesn't come by doing what everybody else says. Courage does by what you know is right.” Her attempts at speaking with folksy “wisdom” are often lost amidst her need to not offend extremists. Haley ends up being abstruse. She is agreeable to neither. with friends like Donald... While she professes to be a proud lib-owning conservative steeped in the philosophies of the right (“I've always made liberals' heads explode.”) she spends a lot of time making excuses for them. Of late she has embraced damning her former boss with faint insight. Either completely fooled or completely cynical, Haley has promoted herself as Donald Trump’s foremost apologist: “I want to make sure you’re okay,” she told (Trump). “You’re my president, but you’re also my friend...” ...Haley (was) someone with a reputation for speaking candidly to Trump, someone who had the courage as governor to remove the Confederate flag from her state capitol, admitting that she hadn’t bothered to challenge him—even in private—on a deception that threatened the stability of American life. Why not? “I understand the president. I understand that genuinely, to his core, he believes he was wronged,” Haley told me. “This is not him making it up.” — Politico, “Nikki Haley’s Time for Choosing,” by Tim Alberta For all the above, it appears unlikely that Haley can wrest the Republican nomination from the frontrunners. Despite her protests to the contrary, she is best positioned as vice president on a DeSantis ticket. She looks foolish spending so much of her political capital on defending Donald Trump only to learn of his private feelings for her— he deemed his appointment of he as UN Ambassador a “favor” and reportedly wrote her off as a VP option due to her complexion. A DeSantis-Haley marriage would be less complicated should it become available. As Tom Nichols wrote in the latest issue of The Atlantic newsletter under the heading “Why Did She Bother?”: Nikki Haley, one of the many Republicans who swore to stop Donald Trump in 2016 and then became a loyal supporter, is now running against Trump. Her campaign is already a collection of meaningless platitudes and she is unlikely to win, but she is the essential example of why the current GOP cannot be trusted with power… She’ll never snatch the green jacket from the Master’s Open in Sucking Up from Lindsey Graham, but she’s certainly putting in the effort. — The Atlantic Daily, “The Pointless Nikki Haley Campaign,” by Tom Nichols, February 15, 2023 Nichols, a conservative who supported Hillary Clinton in 2016, spares little sentiment, and his conclusion is dead on. Why bother indeed. Odds 100-1 Next up: The rest of the field [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/19/2153662/--Bless-her-little-heart-Nikki-is-Standing-for-America-Handicapping-GOP-contenders-3 Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/