Nikki Haley is still trying to recover from her spectacular failure to answer a basic question about the history of the Civil War last month. All she’s really doing, though, is digging herself a deeper, more embarrassing hole.
On December 27, the Republican presidential candidate was asked during a town hall event to explain what she saw as being the cause of the Civil War. Haley failed to even mention the word slavery, choosing instead to focus on “freedoms” and “basically how government was gonna run.”
The answer was immediately and harshly mocked online for obvious reasons. The next day, she unsuccessfully attempted to recover in a radio interview. “Yes, I know it was about slavery. I’m from the South, of course I know it’s about slavery,” she insisted. The only reason she gave for not saying as much in the moment was to suggest it was too “easy” of an answer. And we’re supposed to believe that’s why she chose to focus on the more complicated explanation of vague “freedoms.” OK.
“I had Black friends growing up.”
More than a week later, Haley is still trying to convince people that her answer to that basic question was an acceptable one and she continues to fail in that mission.
At another town hall in Iowa on Thursday, Haley told attendees, “If you grow up in South Carolina, literally in second and third grade, you learn about slavery. You grow up and you have, you know, I had Black friends growing up. It is a very talked-about thing. We have a big history in South Carolina, when it comes to, you know, slavery, when it comes to all the things that happened with the Civil War, all of that.”
She continued: “I was thinking past slavery, and talking about the lesson that we would learn going forward. I shouldn’t have done that. I should have said slavery but in my mind, that’s a given that everybody associates the Civil War with slavery.”
This is, of course, total bullshit. Haley was asked what she thought was the cause of the Civil War and she said “freedoms” and “government.” Now she wants us to believe that her response was a more philosophical, galaxy-brained response than we were all expecting and that we just can’t understand that level of nuance.
She knew what she was doing with that answer
Nikki Haley’s answer to that question may have been clumsy and embarrassing but she knew exactly what message she was trying to send. Her goal was simple and cowardly: Appear reasonable but don’t alienate racist voters.
She’s done this before. As the governor of South Carolina, she removed the Confederate flag from the statehouse but also defended the flag, falsely claiming it symbolized “service, sacrifice and heritage” until the white supremacist murderer Dylann Roof “hijacked” it.
Haley’s opponent Chris Christie called her out during an appearance on The View this week, saying “She knew exactly what she was doing” with her comments about the Civil War, though he took pains to make it clear he doesn’t believe she’s racist.
Expanding on his thoughts via a spokesperson, Christie told The Hill, “She’s smart and she knows better. And she didn’t say it because she’s a racist. Because she’s not … The reason she did it is just as bad, if not worse, and should make everybody concerned about her candidacy: She did it because she’s unwilling to offend anyone by telling the truth.”
Meanwhile, DNC Chair Jaime Harrison—who, like Haley, is from South Carolina—took a harder hit but echoed Christie’s sentiment, telling her to “spin all you want but we all know your answer was rooted in political appeasement and not grounded in moral truth & clarity!
(featured image: Scott Olson/Getty Images)
