Nikki Haley: Hey, Disney, We've Just Met But Ron Sounds Crazy So Call South Carolina, Maybe?
Let them fight!
Florida's Bobblehead Governor Ron DeSantis has waged war against "woke" corporate titan Disney ever since the company criticized his fascist anti-LGBTQ legislation. Disney legally pantsed DeSantis to all good people's delight, but once he started talking about building prisons or sewage treatment plants near the monorail, Disney finally had enough and filed a lawsuit charging "government retaliation." (Thesuit itself is a very good read.) This is a big deal, because contrary to rumor, Disney doesn't have Mickey Mouse lawyers.
DeSantis is in a strong position to finish a distant second in next year's Republican primary, so it was only a matter of time before the other doomed candidates leveraged the fact that he's gone full Ahab against Florida's biggest employer. An estimated 75,000 people work at Walt Disney World. It's not just the largest employer in Florida. It's the largest single-site employer anywhere on Earth.
So, if DeSantis doesn't want that action, then former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley thinks her state is ready for the big teacups.
PREVIOUSLY:
Disney's Middle Finger To DeSantis Was A Love Note To Lawyers
Wednesday, during an interview on the newly Tucker Carlson-less Fox News, Haley was asked about Disney's suit and she immediately pitched her record as governor, which admittedly didn't involve picking fights with major corporations. Why, she probably fondly recalls when Republican governors belly-danced for corporations while offering them every possible tax break.
“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.”
— Nikki Haley (@Nikki Haley) 1682534943
"You know, as governor, I took a double-digit unemployment state and I turned it into an economic powerhouse," she said. Haley did reduce South Carolina's overall unemployment rate from 11 percent in early 2011 to 5.5 percent in early 2016, but Black unemployment was a whopping 9.9 percent. The State newspaper estimated in 2013 that the tax incentives for BMW, Boeing, Bridgestone and Michelin came to about $800 million, or $100,000 for each of the 8,000 jobs created. (The employees did not get six figure salaries.)
But, hey, she didn't kick Mickey Mouse in the dick.
"Businesses were my partners," she went on, "because if you take care of your businesses, you take care of your economy, your economy takes care of the people, and everyone wins. That's how we dealt with it. South Carolina was a very anti-woke state. It still is."
Republicans weren't using "woke" as a buzzword smear when Haley was governor. Also, Haley removed the Confederate flag from the state Capitol. That is in fact hella "woke."
"If Disney would like to move their hundreds of thousands of jobs to South Carolina and billions of dollars with them, I'll let them know I'd be happy to meet with them in South Carolina."
Haley didn't even try to defend DeSantis — not that she should. She nailed him further on Twitter, writing, "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."
You'll recall that one of Donald Trump's nasty nicknames for DeSantis is "Ron DeSanctimonious." Although "Meatball Ron" and "Tiny D" probably do a better job deflating DeSantis as a serious opponent, "DeSanctimonious" reinforces how his "war on woke" has become bad for business. "We're not woke, but we're not sanctimonious about it either" feels like a line intended to clearly distance still-awful Republicans from the toxic clown show DeSantis is running in Florida.
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Haley did reduce South Carolina's overall unemployment rate from 11 percent in early 2011 to 5.5 percent in early 2016
Um, that was Obama that did that, not Haley