As to why Haley isn’t following Paul Ryan’s lead in talking about it: it’s a loser among large swaths of GOP voters. That would apply to both the primaries and the general. Those who will profit from Social Security privatization are powerful, but small in number. Those who will lose from privatization are huge in number, and a good chunk of them are registered Republicans.
Like any smart 2024 GOP candidate, Haley will talk about immigration and the USA’s position in the world and the need for parents to control every aspect of their children’s education and the way the Liberal Elite are (supposedly) ruining the country. But she’ll keep the One-Percent’s plans for cashing in to herself, for the most part.
And that’s why even in prior R administrations with congressional majorities it went nowhere. Many of the lawmakers were relieved to have some other crisis or priority to take up the legislative calendars – war and disaster during the middle W years, ACA repeal and the Border Wall in the first 2 Trump years.
I just don’t see it. Trump, for all his many, many, many flaws, isn’t a warmonger. There were plenty of wars he might have started in 2017-21, but didn’t. He was a critic of our commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan. Hell, he praised the leaders of two of our most likely future enemies, Russia and North Korea!
I just don’t see this. There’s a logic to it – in both 2012 and 2008, Republicans nominated the also-ran from the previous contested Presidential nomination. But Romney and McCain actually won some states in their losing efforts, something that Haley is unlikely to do. Losing every single state in the primary isn’t a very convincing argument that she’s the “heir apparent.”
Also, “I told you so” is NEVER a winning campaign theme. Even if Trump does flame out in the general election, the overwhelming majority of Republicans voters will not admit to themselves that they made a mistake. They may try to justify it, but more likely they’ll just put the whole thing behind them. They won’t want a Haley rubbing in their face the folly of their decision. Much more likely that they’ll look for someone new who was on the sidelines during the whole debacle.
I agree that it’s now or never for Haley. If Trump loses, even if he’s in jail, he will be campaigning until he dies, overshadowing any future she might have. She was also a Trump enabler, so she will be tainted by that in the future unless she can erase it by actually being president (which isn’t going to happen either).
No.
Haley was a Trump enabler.
She will be tainted by that forever.
She can’t erase that fact by anything she does.
If the Right won’t do it (See: Robert Byrd et al.) why should I/we?
In my view, she can’t. But if she actually became POTUS (she won’t) and did a good job (she wouldn’t, but she would be your normal bad Republican, not Trump), then the fact that she was a Trump enabler would probably be forgotten by the public.
I would forgive someone for being a Trump enabler if they actually recognized their culpability and apologized for it and I actually believed the apology to be sincere.
That’s a false dichotomy. Saying Trump isn’t a warmonger isn’t the same as saying he’s a pacifist. I think you’re agreeing with @Elendil_s_Heir in that if there was a way for a war to benefit Trump, he would have started one. But there wasn’t, so he didn’t. He’s not a trigger-happy guy who thinks the US needs to flex their military muscles.
Which is in direct contrast with the idea that there are “war or wars he will almost certainly start”, the assertion made in this thread that the “not a warmonger” comment was contradicting. Do you think Trump would start a war if it didn’t benefit him to do so?
Getting back to the actual subject of this thread, and in spirit of the talk of war, one difference between Haley and Trump that I pointed out relatively early in this thread is that Haley has been outspoken about supporting Ukraine and opposing Russian aggression. I haven’t heard this subject come up any time recently though, and I have no idea if it has had any bearing one way or another on the primaries so far.
Exactly. I’ve been saying this since 2016. It’s literally his one redeeming quality – though it’s just a side-effect of the fact that he simply doesn’t care about, nor have any interest in, the rest of the world at all.
If he could skip all of the difficult and boring parts of having a war and skip right to the parade he would do so. I grant Haley has enough awareness to not want any kind of conflict.
Nikki Haley herself was on Saturday Night Live last night in a Trump town hall sketch. I’m not a fan of the show giving a platform to politicians, and I doubt it’ll have any impact on the primaries, but it was a decent bit.
