By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | South Carolina’s former governor, Nikki Haley, mostly did what she needed to do during Wednesday night’s GOP presidential debate to be taken more seriously as a real 2024 contender. U.S. Sen. Tim Scott, also of the Palmetto State, didn’t. He fizzled under the lights of the MIlwaukee stage.
While former President Donald Trump remains the frontrunner of the Republican contest, he is facing 91 charges in four indictments and this week became the first ex-president to have a jail mug shot. As his absence loomed during the first 2024 debate, the eight candidates on the debate stage seemed mostly like unpolished political pawns in a long chess game for which they aren’t ready.
While Scott looked mostly like a deer in the headlights and offered lightweight responses, other candidates campaigning for the GOP nod didn’t do much to help themselves. Businessman Vivek Ramaswamy seemed little more than a Trump preener on the stage as a national advertisement for teeth whiteners.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis looked and sounded like a robot or some kind of cartoon politician, energized only by the spotlight of a question. Former Vice President Mike Pence came out firing and offered some very un-Christian put-downs, but seemed less asleep than usual. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie landed a couple of good put-downs, but didn’t offer much to distinguish himself. And the two other guys on the stage – why were they there?
So it was Haley who seemed to make the best use of her time, several columnists for The New York Times agreed. She had a pretty good performance, noted liberal columnist Jamelle Bouie, because she “didn’t seem to be running for the Republican nomination as much as she was casting herself as a choice for the general election next November.” Conservative columnist David French remarked, “All of it warmed my old-school Reagan conservative heart. If there’s any life left in the old G.O.P., Haley gave it hope.”
The newspaper’s David Brooks argued the day after the debate that it’s time to give Haley a chance because she showed mettle, courage and substance during the debate on issues involving foreign policy, fiscal responsibility and abortion.
She “dismantled” Ramaswamy, Brooks wrote, and “took on the whole America First ethos that sounds good as a one-liner but that doesn’t work when you’re governing a superpower. Gesturing to Ramaswamy, Haley said, ‘He wants to hand Ukraine to Russia, he wants to let China eat Taiwan, he wants to go and stop funding Israel. You don’t do that to friends.’” She also spanked the GOP for being part of the nation’s problem with profligate spending and pointed out Trump boosted the national debt by $8 trillion – nothing to be proud about.
Brooks said Haley also was more serious about abortion by acknowledging the complexity of the issue and trying to “”humanize people caught in horrible situations, who acknowledged that the absolutist position is politically unsustainable.”
This is where we’ll depart from Brooks because the always ambitious Haley pandered with self-righteous sanctimony when she tried to bash and pigeon-hole Democrats on abortion. She demanded they say whether they approve of abortion up to 40 weeks, the time for human gestation. (Reality: An overwhelming majority of Americans, including Democrats, want abortion available as a reproductive health option for about half that time – 20 weeks or so – as suggested in the Roe v. Wade decision that the conservative U.S. Supreme Court overturned in 2022, stirring up an election’s nest of trouble.)
As governor, Haley signed a 20-week abortion ban. And she’s realistic that a 15-week federal ban supported by the men on the debate stage will be tough to ever pass in Congress. But to suggest that Democrats want to abort fetuses at any time during gestation is just politics as usual. It’s unpresidential and irresponsible.
Andy Brack, editor and publisher of the Charleston City Paper and Statehouse Report, last week was named first-place winner for political columns in the 2023 national contest by the Association of Alternative Newsmedia. Have a comment? Send to: feedback@statehousereport.com.
We Can Do Better, South Carolina!