Asked About Cause of Civil War, Nikki Haley Leaves Out 'Slavery,' Goes Full Miss Teen South Carolina

You never go Full Miss Teen South Carolina.

Haley image from video screenshot; Mathew Brady photo via National Archives

Nikki Haley got what should have been a pretty simple question at a town hall campaign stop last night in New Hampshire: “What was the cause of the Civil War?”

But then, Nikki Haley is also a Republican who’s running for President-if-Trump’s-convicted-or-croaks, and these days you just don’t go around saying the Civil War was caused by slavery because that’s Critical Race Theory, Charlie Brown.

Let’s all enjoy her impressive conservative-deer-in-the-headlights performance here, because it’s so obvious she’s trying and failing to come up with an answer that won’t make the Bubba Caucus hate her. Assume deer dead.

The squirming, it’s delicious.

Audience member: What was the cause of the United States Civil War?

Haley: I think the cause of the Civil War was basically how government was going to run, the freedoms and what people could and couldn’t do.

For fuckssake, she wasn’t even able to squeak out “States’ rights,” because Republicans aren’t so sure about that, either. States might decide abortion is a right, and that certainly can’t be tolerated.

Haley tried to throw the question back to the audience member asking him what he thought caused the Civil War. No luck: He pointed out that he’s not running for president (If God Forbid Something Happens To The Great Man).

Haley tried to Republican Duckspeak her way out of the dilemma:

Haley: I think it always comes down to the role of government and what the rights of the people are. And I will always stand by the fact that I think government was intended to secure the rights and freedoms of the people. It was never meant to be all things to all people. Government doesn’t need to tell you how to live your life. They don’t need to tell you what you can and can’t do. They don’t need to be a part of your life. They need to make sure you have freedom.

Oh, freedom? (That is a worship word. You will not speak it!) This might have been a good place to mention its opposite, which is … umm … not how government should be run.

Now we can’t get “People …. people who own people …” out of our heads, our apologies to Ms. Streisand.

Oh, Haley didn’t stop there. We need capitalism and economic freedom and individual liberty and “freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to do or be anything [we] want to be without government getting in the way.”

How true this is. We wanna be free! We wanna be free to do what we wanna do; And we wanna get loaded; And we wanna have a good time; That's what we're gonna do!

Again, Haley could have at any point noted that none of those things can happen if you’re in a state of chattel bondage and treated as property, a thing that the Republican Party was founded to oppose, in fact. (We have got to stop writing sound bites for her!)

The audience member coolly replied, “In the year 2023, it’s astonishing to me that you answer that question without mentioning the word slavery.”

Haley pretended not to get it, or worse, actually didn’t get it: “What do you want me to say about slavery?”

The guy said nah, he’s good, “You’ve answered my question, thank you,” and Haley smiled in relief. “Next question!”

And that’s one of the two parties in 2023. You can’t be honest, or you’ll get shit from (the people you hope will eventually come around to being) your supporters. No telling how Haley will try to Reconstruct her credibility after that one.

But now that everyone else is giving her shit for not simply saying the truth, Haley may find a way to parlay that into a narrative about the mean media attacking her because she stands for freedom. You know, the Otter Defense, from Animal House, where you spout nonsense and claim it’s a stand for Liberty and Justice for All.

Of course, as we note in the headline and deck, Haley sounded a lot more like another famous South Carolinian, Miss Caitlin Upton:

Good luck, and such as.

Update: Alert Wonkette Operative “JamesSmith” points out, in the comments we don’t allow, that Haley is now “clarifying” that duh, EVERYone knows it was about slavery, but what does it mean to us today? Via CNN’s Kaitlan Collins:

Yeesh. I just felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if thousands of people suddenly slapped their foreheads and muttered, “Give me a BREAK.”

[NBC News / CNN]

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