Does Haley Really Have a Moral High Ground? A Brief Account of a Times Times Report on “Trump Voting in Florida”
Haley created an illusion of having a moral high ground, which she never really did. She is as politically ambitious as any man or woman who has considered themselves qualified enough to lead the world’s most powerful nation. However, her principles have often seemed an afterthought or conditional on circumstance.
When Trump first declared, Haley was an early critic. In February 2016 she said that she wouldn’t endorse Trump because he was everything a governor wouldn’t want in a president. She continued to criticize him as she campaigned with Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, whom she had endorsed for president.
Why Didn’t We Riot? A Man Is in Trumpland. An Analysis with Issac Bailey and Mark Haley
Editor’s Note: Issac Bailey is a longtime journalist based in South Carolina and the Batten Professor for Communication Studies at Davidson College. His book is called “Why Didn’t We Riot?” A man is in Trumpland. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN.
The scandal surrounding South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford led to the hosting of a luncheon in the aftermath. After listening to Haley give a fairly routine stump speech, I asked Haley, if she won, would she resign as governor if she made as big a misstep as Sanford had.
As governor of South Carolina, she never messed up like Sanford, who also had strong presidential prospects before his escapades. But she messed up when she decided to embrace Donald Trump – rather than keeping him at arm’s length – providing further proof that even the most talented Republicans were willing to bend the knee to the former president.
Donald Trump is still the top contender for the Republican nomination despite Haley having ambitions. Even after a loss in 2020, his most loyal supporters won’t abandon him just because of the bad 2020 cycle for Trump-backed candidates.
In 2013, then-Gov. Haley and a Republican-dominated General Assembly denied the expansion of Medicaid through the Affordable Care Act to hundreds of thousands of low-income South Carolinians. She even opposed creating a statewide health care exchange under that law.
About 40% of the state’s uninsured adults would have received health coverage under an expansion, as well as low-wage workers in retail and hospitality who are concentrated in Horry County, home to resort destination Myrtle Beach, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
A White House study said expansion could have saved about 200 lives in the state every year through early detection and treatment. And a University of South Carolina study estimated the state could have seen an additional 44,000 jobs added by 2020 with the multibillion dollar federal investment from a Medicaid expansion.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/14/opinions/presidential-ambitions-nikki-haley-2024-bailey/index.html
Taking the flag off the South Carolina State House: defending the First Indian-American Governor, Tammy Haley, in the wake of Dylann Roof’s killing
Haley stood in the way of life-saving Obamacare, exposing her hypocrisy on an issue that has come to define the Republican Party.
Haley proposed a tax swap, a lowering of the top marginal income tax rate for the wealthiest South Carolinians in exchange for an increase in the gas fee that everyone pays. She was pushing for tax cuts in her final proposal. She did not get her way often.
Of course, many of her supporters point to her handling of the Confederate flag as a sign of her sincere commitment to the people of South Carolina, and particularly the Black community.
After White supremacist Dylann Roof massacred innocent Black churchgoers at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston in 2015, Haley took the lead on the decision to take the Confederate battle flag off the South Carolina State House.
When Trump became the nominee, Haley was given a position as the US ambassador to the United Nations which would give her foreign policy experience that she would need for a presidential run. She could claim that she’d taken the position to serve her country.
Her approach seemed to work. She had good standing among many of her supporters, but not many who considered herself moderate or Never Trumpers when she left the UN. As a South Carolina voter who had sworn off the Republican Party, I was even intrigued by what she had pulled off.
That’s precisely how Haley defended South Carolina against accusations that the flying of the flag of traitors who tried to establish a new country built on the premise of permanent black enslavement was harming the state’s image. You lose version of identity politics, it is a heads I win-tails.
“But we really kind of fixed all that when you elected the first Indian-American female governor,” Haley said during that 2014 debate in South Carolina. “When we appointed the first African-American U.S. senator [Tim Scott], that sent a huge message.”