There is a part of me that really wants to see Nikki Haley on the 2024 GOP ticket. Recent polls have shown that she performs really well in general election matchup polling against Joe Biden—better than any other candidate, including Donald Trump—and for that reason, I think she could be a huge asset to the ticket as the running mate of the nominee, particularly if it is Trump.
But boy, she’s made a few mistakes lately.
During an interview on Fox News last month, Haley essentially came out against free speech on the internet when she argued that “every person on social media should be verified by their name.”
“When you do that, all of a sudden people have to stand by what they say," she continued. "And it gets rid of the Russian bots, the Iranian bots, and the Chinese bots. And then you’re going to get some civility when people know their name is next to what they say, and they know their pastor and their family members are going to see it.”
It was hardly her finest moment, and it could have been a campaign killer. Conservatives believe in free speech, especially in light of Big Tech efforts to censor and suppress conservative speech on social media. As PJ Media’s Stephen Kruiser noted at the time , “I’ve been dealing with anonymous randos on the internet for a very long time now. Yes, they can be very irritating. On the other hand, there are many anonymous social media accounts that are valuable contributors to national political conversations.”
Curiously, her poll numbers didn't tank as a result, but will they after a clip from a June interview on "CBS Mornings" went viral this week? In the clip, host Tony Dokoupil asked Haley, "What care should be on the table when a 12-year-old child in this country assigned female at birth says, ‘Actually, I feel more comfortable living as a boy.’ What should the law allow the response to be?”
“I think the law should stay out of it, and parents should handle it,” Haley replied. “This is a job for the parents to handle."
Really? How many parents have been emotionally blackmailed into thinking they had to butcher their child to save their life? We've all heard the stories of parents being told, "Would you rather have a dead son or a living daughter?" What about all the children who were encouraged by doctors and their parents to undergo these experimental and irreversible procedures and later experienced regret? Their bodies and lives have permanently been destroyed by this snake oil treatment, and often with the consent and encouragement of their parents. The sad reality is that state laws protecting kids from these gender butchers are necessary.
Haley continued. "And then, if that child becomes 18, if they want to make more of a permanent change, they can do that. But I think, up until then, we see with our teenage kids, they go through a lot during puberty. They go through a lot of confusion. They go through a lot of anxiety. They go through a lot of pressures. We should support them the whole way through, but we don’t need to go in and force something in schools. We don’t need schools sitting there hiding from the parents what gender pronoun they’re using. We don’t need to have those conversations in schools. Those are conversations that should be had at home.”
Nachama Soloveichik, the Haley campaign's communications director, responded to the story on Wednesday.
"With his poll numbers plummeting and his campaign imploding, Ron DeSantis is desperately throwing lies at the wall, hoping something will stick," she said in a statement to our sister site Townhall. "Spoiler alert: It won't. Nikki Haley has long said she opposes gender-changing surgeries for minors. Bald-faced lies won't save DeSantis."
I'd like to believe her, but her comments in that interview were quite clear. Maybe she's had an epiphany since then, because there's no place for anyone who believes that children should be guinea pigs of the transgender cult on the GOP ticket.
