Nikki Haley's Lost Cause

It's your pre-'Super Tuesday' Sunday show rundown!

In the 1978 movie Animal House, Bluto (John Belushi) tries to inspire his fellow fraternity brothers to fight back against being kicked out of college.

Everyone always remembers the part where Bluto gets his basic WWII facts a little messed up.

Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell NO! […] And it ain’t over now!

But most forget Bluto’s speech doesn’t work. But, at Otter’s (Tim Matheson) suggestion, they resign to go down fighting.

Now, we could fight 'em with conventional weapons, but that could take years and cost millions of lives. No. No, in this case I think we have to go all out. I think this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture...

Speaking of futile and stupid gestures, former UN ambassador and (still?) Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley was on NBC’s “Meet The Press” this weekend:

There is a special schadenfreude in watching the former governor of South Carolina who didn’t pull the Confederate flag out of her state’s capitol, until it became politically impossible not to, running her campaign the exact same way. Haley, though not dropping out yet, seems to finally be tempering her expectations.

HALEY: I've always said this needs to be competitive. As long as we are competitive, as long as we are showing that there is a place for us, I'm going to continue to fight. That's always been the case.

Guess you can take the Nikki Haley out of the former Confederate state, but not the “lost cause” mentality.

Host Kristen Welker followed up by asking if Haley will eventually endorse Donald Trump, considering that she seems to be attacking him more fiercely now, and Haley reminded everyone of another pointless gesture from early in the GOP primary.

WELKER: Let me try it this way. You did sign a pledge, an RNC pledge –

HALEY: Yes.

WELKER: – to support the eventual nominee. Do you still feel bound by that pledge?

HALEY: I have always said that I have serious concerns about Donald Trump. I have even more concerns about Joe Biden.

WELKER: So, is that a no? Are you bound by the RNC pledge?

HALEY: The RNC pledge – I mean, at the time of the debate, we had to take it to where, "Would you support the nominee," and in order to get on that debate stage, you said yes. The RNC is now not the same RNC. Now, it's –

WELKER: So, you're no longer –

HALEY: – Trump's daughter-in-law.

WELKER: – bound by that pledge?

HALEY: No, I think I'll make what decision I want to make.

If only someone had pointed out how worthless this RNC pledge was long, long ago.

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Welker asked Haley about January 6, to which she replied:

HALEY: I think if you look at what happened on January 6, I have said it was a terrible day. It is not a beautiful day. […] And what Trump's role is, is not that he had the rally in the first place. That's what we do in America. The problem is when he had the opportunity to stop it. […] And he didn't say anything. So, it was like, "Why did you allow it to happen," because when a leader sees something that goes wrong, you use the power of your voice to make it right. That's what’s the question is: Where was he? Why didn't he do it? Those are the questions he's going to have to answer.

Nikki Haley should not get praise or kudos for acknowledging what should be objectively obvious. As Desi Lydic recently pointed out on “The Daily Show,” political media likes to frame everything as “right vs. left” instead of “democracy vs. fascism.” This allows people like Nikki Haley or Georgia Governor Brian Kemp or Liz Cheney to be referred as “moderates” for clearing subterranean low bars.

Haley proved Lydic’s point when she was asked again, now having had time to formulate a coherent response, about IVF restrictions after the Alabama supreme court ruling that simply followed the long-held GOP belief that “life begins at conception.”

First, Welker asked if Haley believed there should be federal protections for people for IVF.

HALEY: I think there should be protections for the embryos, so that parents feel like they're protected and respected. But I think the conversation of what happens with those embryos has to be between the parents and the physician, period. We don't need to go and create a bunch of laws for something when we don't have a problem. There is not a problem, in terms of what is happening, so we shouldn't have government create one.

Apparently there is a problem, ever since “government” started issuing all these rulings infringing on people’s bodily autonomy.

Haley went on talking about embryos and protecting them, but Welker pointed out that in the IVF process embryos are sometimes destroyed or donated. This would appear to contradict her beliefs, so Welker just straight asked if she supported IVF, and Haley contradicted her statement minutes earlier about what the federal government should do.

WELKER: Do you support IVF as it is practiced in the United States?

HALEY: Yes, of course.

WELKER: And should there be federal protections for that?

HALEY: Yes, to make sure that IVF is there, to make sure that parents have it, all of that.

This exchange encapsulates why Nikki Haley has been losing and will continue to do so to Donald Trump. Because despite her protesting that the GOP isn’t Trump, their voters say they are.

Trump pointed this out two days ago in Richmond, Virginia, sandwiched between his usual incoherent babble:

The sad secret Haley can’t bring herself to admit is there have never been “good Republicans.” Trump is just the Dorian Gray portrait they don’t want to reckon with.

Have a week.

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