It took 24 More Hours, But The Nikki Haley Campaign Is Now Officially Off Of The Rails

I wrote yesterday that Nikki Haley wasn’t even out of the gate for 24 hours, and already she seemed to be having a little trouble closing with the problem. I wrote that she was trying to run as a moderate Republican, the problem being that there are no moderates in the GOP anymore. I pointed out other issues.

Apparently Nikki Haley lives for no other reason than to please, so in the last 24 hours she has wonderfully clarified her position and campaign for me. She has no idea of what platform she’s even running on, or apparently even who she’s trying to talk to. In 24 hours she said three totally stupid, and in some cases contradictory things about her campaign and platform.

First things first. In her first public appearance since her official announcement, Haley really took the bull by the horns and fired up her crowd. She looked them in the eye and literally said, We’re Losers. She went on to try to clarify;

“We’ve lost the popular vote in 7 of the last 8 presidential elections,” Haley told supporters. “Our cause is right, but we have failed to win the confidence of a majority of Americans. Well, that ends today.” The line, which was also included in her video announcement on Tuesday, is expected to be a regular feature of her campaign.

No Nikki. no! No! NO! The last thing your rally crowds want to hear is that they’re fucking losers! I’m a lifelong Cubs fan, and even in our 100+ non World Series losing years, no players ever came out and admitted to being losers. One time Cubs manager Dallas Greene, after being heckled, told the press that Cubs fans were losers, since they obviously didn’t have jobs if they were at a ball game in the middle of a weekday afternoon. Greene was fired shortly afterwards.

In case you’ve forgotten, the whole point of running for public office is to be inspirational, not to send your supporters dialing up suicide prevention hotlines. If you’re going to admit to being losers in the past, it’s your job to then pivot to an inspirational path forward. And no matter how inspirational your message, even briefly labeling yourself and your supporters losers is the road to ruin.

Then, in one fell swoop, she turned around and shot herself in both feet with one bullet. Speaking to supporters she said that she represents the New generation of leadership in the GOP, and in the next breath lamented that It’s still Trump’s party.

Nikki, what in the hell are you doing? I wrote that to be successful you needed to bring home all of the moderate GOP voters, and pick up some of the soft, possibly disaffected Trump voters. And in one sentence you chased both of them away from you. After all, why should moderate GOP voters support you if it’s Still Trump’s party? They want him gone, and yet you tell them it’s still his party. And why would soft Trump voters switch to support you if it’s still Trump’s party? Hell, the can always do that in four more years when Trump’s out of the picture.

And here’s where Haley went off the rails with what should be the central messaging of her whole campaign. As I wrote, Haley’s only path forward is as the moderate GOP candidate. And if you’re going to be the moderate, then that means that you have to be a Big Tent Mama, welcoming and inclusive. You know, like when you took the confederate flag down from the Capitol?

But in a town hall in New Hampshire, Haley shit all over her Big Tent mess kit by telling the audience that FL Governor Ron DeSantis’s Don’t Say Gay law didn’t go far enough. According to reporting in The Hill, she told the audience;

“Basically, what it said was you shouldn’t be able to talk about gender before third grade,” Haley said at a town hall in Exeter, N.H., according to Fox News. “I’m sorry, I don’t think that goes far enough.”

“When I was in school you didn’t have sex ed until seventh grade. And even then, your parents had to sign whether you could take the class,” she added. “That’s a decision for parents to make,”

wait, what?! You’re trying to attract moderate Republicans, and hopefully some undecided independents, and you main pitch is to try to drive gays and LGBTQ members back into a closet in the basement with no lights or water? Trump and DeSantis must be laughing their asses off right now.

It’s not like Nikki Haley woke up two days ago and said to herself, Screw it, I got nothing going, I think I’ll run for President today! She made it clear for months now that she was actively considering running. What the hell was she doing for those months, mentally measuring the Oval Office drapes?! She sure as hell wasn’t planning out a coherent, well thought out national message and campaign strategy. What a way to run a railroad.