Nikki Haley Just Stepped On Her Freudian Slip

See-saw, Marjorie Daw. Jackie shall have a new master   English nursery rhyme

I wrote yesterday about how much trouble former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley seems to be having getting her campaign shit together. But the more the news plays of her, the worse it seems to get.

In most repetitive tasks, there’s a secret. If you want to be really great at playing darts, playing gold, pitching, or even juggling, the secret is consistency. the same motion every time, with the same release point, leading to the same positive result. And if you’re a politician, then your message had better have the consistency of fine pudding, because words is all you have to sell.

And not only is Nikki Haley’s message all over the place, it’s going to war with itself seemingly almost every time she opens her mouth. With new context provided by additional video of what she said yesterday, it’s even worse. It comes in two parts.

In trying to take a kitten-growing-claws swipe at Ron DeSantis at a town hall in New Hampshire yesterday, Haley said something like, All the talk about the Florida “Don’t Say Gay” law highlighted the fact that you can’t discuss gender in kindergarten through 3rd grade. Well I’m sorry, but I don’t think that goes far enough. When I was in school, we didn’t have “health” classes discussing gender until 7th grade.

Guess what, Nikki? I’m 14 years older than you, and we didn’t start having health classes until high school. But you know what else I didn’t have, and neither did you? Openly gay teachers, single sex parent families, and an enlightened attitude towards gender choices. The only thing our health classes were concerned with was not getting girls knocked up.

But here’s where Haley steps on her Freudian slip so hard she snaps the strap. Earlier in the same day, she told a rally that she Is the future of leadership in the GOP! Ummm, have I lost my mind, or doesn’t the word future mean looking forward? But what’s the first thing that the leader of the future wants to do? Run full speed 40 years into the past to stick LGBTQ members back into a closet in the basement. Makes perfect sense to me.

And here’s a Saturday greebie for you. When asked in separate interviews by first sean Hannity of FUX News, and then NBC’s Craig Melvin on The Today Show about her policy differences with Trump, Haley gave the same reply, rankly, I don’t kick sideways. I kick forward. This is apparently going to be her go-to cop out whenever she’s confronted with Traitor Tot. But what does she do? Within 24 hours she kicks sideways at Ron Pissantis over his Don’t Say Gay law. This is like a kid hiding in the bushes when the bully walks by, and then jumping out and giving the kid with the glasses and pocket protector a wedgie.

Haley can’t keep doing this. Her only survival lane is coalescing moderates and independents, and her getting knee deep in culture wars is the last thing they want to hear. And if another moderate candidate jumps in, every time she does this, it gives that candidate something to whack her over the head with in his own rally speeches pitched towards moderates and independents. She’s got a little time to get her messaging straightened out while nobody is really paying attention yet, but that window is closing quickly.