In Iowa, 98 of 99 counties went for Trump, except for left-leaning Johnson County (Iowa City and the U of Iowa). Nikki Haley won BY A SINGLE VOTE.
This illustrates just how important voting is.
“We’re not a racist country, Brian. We’ve never been a racist country,” she said. “Our goal is to make sure that today is better than yesterday. Are we perfect? No. But our goal is to always make sure we try and be more perfect every day that we can.”
“I know I faced racism when I was growing up. But I can tell you, today is a lot better than it was then. Our goal is to lift up everybody. Not go and divide people on race or gender or party or anything else. We’ve had enough of that in America,” she added.
Her campaign later affirmed Haley’s statement.
“America has always had racism, but America has never been a racist country,” a campaign spokesman said. “The liberal media always fails to get that distinction. It can throw a fit, but that doesn’t change Nikki’s belief that America is special because its people are always striving to do better and live up to our founding ideals of freedom and equality.”
Mostly because the liberal media is aware of the Three-fifths Compromise, mostly.
So: does she think DeSantis would win the debate? Or does she fail to realize that a large fraction of people don’t know about her and she needs all the free publicity she can get?
That is arguable. I mean today only 74M voters are either bigots or find racism acceptable.
Yeah, lots of racism, but even back in the days of Slavery there were quite a few Americans staunchly against it.
So, I would say she is wrong, but her point is something that can be argued.
Haley should have said that racism “depends on context.”
It worked for the presidents of major universities testifying before Congress.
I think the actual slavery was a bigger issue than the compromise.
It’s a ridiculous argument. The US was a white supremacist slave state for almost 100 years, and then allowed overt and legal white supremacism for another 100 years.
It’s entirely a gambit to entice trump into a debate. It’s a hubristic assertion that she’s so far ahead of the rest of the pack that trump needs to take her seriously. It’s not about her vs DeSantis. And it’s also about shaping how the media think about and more importantly, talk about, her.
Even assuming for some wacky reason that trump chooses to take the bait, I’m not seeing what knock-out blow she could hope to deliver at that debate. But ultimately it’s about elevating her, (and oh by the way, the whole debate rigmarole) up from the kid’s table to being part of the real campaign for the real nomination.
It’s a bold strategy, Cotton.
I recall, after every recent GOP debate, seeing analysis news stories saying that the absent Trump won the debate.
It’s just acknowledging the reality of debating without Trump being a pointless exercise, all they are doing is debasing themselves for the pleasure of getting second place. It makes sense, it also makes sense for Trump not to bother.
I misread that as “getting to second base” and I’m furious at my brain now for that image.
Trump’s apparently going to start going after her. She’s still saying she’d vote for him and maybe be his running mate and/or would pardon him.
Yeah, for trump the ideal tactic is obvious: Ignore all the also-rans and concentrate on pitching all his message all the time until/unless one of the pipsqueaks starts to gain traction. Then unload on them, only them, and do it hard until they cry.
“America has always had racism, but America has never been a racist country,” a campaign spokesman said. “The liberal media always fails to get that distinction."
I guess we can also use that formulation to say that America has always had Christianity but America has never been a Christian country, and that the right-wing media always fails to get that distinction.
I don’t think it’s even about the also-rans. Trump just knows that no one who would take a debate seriously would ever vote for him, so why waste his time? Even if his supporters watched the debate, all they’d care about is, “Whoa! Good zinger!”, and Trump can say the good zingers just as well in a rally, without all that bothersome “Letting other people speak” nonsense.
Nikki is currently at 12-1 to be the nominee, which is a heck of a lot better than I expected.
DeSantis is at 60-1, so it looks like the betting public has written him off.
But basically they are expecting neither has a chance unless Trump gets disqualified or dies.
Both of those have significantly higher chances than normal.
But still lower than that he is the named candidate on the Republican ballot in November.
All three of these could be true come election day.
I suppose I’m just slightly weary of the years-long repetition all over the threads of “he may be dead or (in jail/legally disqualified) soon”.