I’ve never actually considered Nikki Haley a contender for the presidency in 2024. From the beginning, it was clear to me her campaign was an audition to be Donald Trump’s running mate — and that’s fine. While many in the MAGA crowd don’t like her, Trump has reportedly been floating her name to his close advisors as a potential running mate.
In a lot of ways, it makes sense, especially because polls have shown her to perform better than any other Republican candidate — including Donald Trump — against Joe Biden. On that point alone, she’s a valid consideration. But boy has she made her fair share of mistakes lately, and they’re big enough mistakes that if she was a contender to be Trump’s running mate in 2024, then she may have messed up her chance.
Last month, she really stepped into it when she took a position widely seen as being anti-free speech. She told Fox News in an interview 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.”
She later backtracked, of course. Surprisingly, her poll numbers didn't tank.
Weeks later, a clip from a June interview on "CBS Mornings" went viral. In the clip, she essentially argued that as long as a child has parental consent, they should be allowed to have their genitals mutilated.
"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?” asked host Tony Dokoupil.
“I think the law should stay out of it, and parents should handle it,” she responded. “This is a job for the parents to handle."
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From where I sit, a parent who consents to having his or her child mutilated is guilty of child abuse. Clearly, Haley didn’t see it that way. During the latest Republican primary debate, she insisted that she meant that one should be 18 to “change your gender,” even though such procedures don’t actually change your gender.
Once again, despite the controversy, Haley's numbers haven't suffered, and she's allegedly within striking distance of Donald Trump in New Hampshire.
Speaking of New Hampshire, her latest fumble also comes out of the Granite State. This week, during a town hall in Berlin, N.H., a voter asked Haley, "What was the cause of the United States Civil War?"
A stupid question for a presidential candidate? Yup. But she still managed to fail when she responded with a lengthy answer that failed to mention slavery. It doesn't matter if the questioner was a plant or if she figured that slavery was merely the obvious answer; in light of her recent mistakes, she should know better.
Whether you believe she's really running for president or merely auditioning to be Trump's running mate, it's hard to see how she can remain viable after making such obvious mistakes. During the 2012 GOP presidential primaries, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry essentially destroyed his campaign when he failed to recall all three of the federal agencies he wanted to eliminate — the keystone of his campaign platform.
How Haley's campaign has survived this long is astonishing.
