Nikki Haley Explains It All
Her 'answer' on the Civil War was just the beginning
Author’s Note: I had planned to post my reflections on 2023 and projections for 2024 today but then Nikki Haley went and restarted the Civil War, so here we are. -R
This week, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley managed to pull off a rare feat in American politics: She made bad, bad (really bad) news during the week between Christmas and New Year’s. She was unaware that this time is reserved for escaping the last of your family, watching football, watching the scale, and listening to all the “best of” lists overworked morning show producers and tired content creators must come up with this time of year.
But I digress.
Earlier this week in Berlin, New Hampshire Nikki Haley was asked a simple question. A no-brainer, some might say: What caused the Civil War?
I’ll give you three guesses what she didn’t say.
But before we get to her tortured, nonsensical, amateurish response, it’s important to understand why it matters: In today’s Republican Party, in year nine of the Trumposcene Era, candidates must contort themselves to answer a simple question about the Civil War so as not to upset the fragile racists, antisemites, and white Christian nationalists!
The inability or unwillingness to answer this question should be yet another alarm bell in the fight for democracy. Haley knew what she was doing when she refused to answer directly. She’s done it before. Worse yet, maybe the former governor of South Carolina does in fact believe the Civil War was a disagreement over economic ideologies. It’s worth asking her the question again and again. Just what do you believe Ambassador Haley?
Back to Berlin.
Haley’s answer about the origins of the Civil War, that it was about a form of government, and who would rule are hallmarks of, as Stuart Stevens posted, the “Lost Cause” myth of the American south. This revisionism on the part of those who still proudly fly the ‘stars and bars’ is necessary because, even for them, saying “We wanted to keep our slaves,” is over the line.
Using “economics” and the old “states’ rights” chimera is something they can work with. Here’s the problem, though, Nikki: Even the southerners of that time knew it was about slavery. They embedded both the supremacy of white citizens and human bondage in what would have been their founding documents.
One quick historical note: The ‘confederate states of America’ was not a country. It wasn’t a nation. It was an armed, mass insurrection begun in the name of a heinous institution that ultimately led to the deaths of more than 600,000 Americans. Abraham Lincoln understood this. He never gave the south the legitimacy it was looking for. Nearly two centuries later, we shouldn’t, either.
In the wake of her bumbling and stumbling, Haley pulled from the Trump playbook and accused the Biden campaign of planting the question. First, if the president’s campaign did in fact have someone ask her the question, bravo! New Hampshire is the place where candidates must answer any question, anywhere, anytime. Second, the Haley campaign’s response was telling; don’t blame Nikki for bungling the question! Blame the guy who asked her! Pay no attention to the unqualified, spineless sycophant running for President of the United States!
Haley’s attempt to clean up the mess will hurt her efforts. Going on a radio show and saying, “Of course I know the Civil War was about slavery,” is a signal to the ultra-MAGA that she’s just a RINO squish. It’s also a reminder that Haley is just another politician. She got in trouble and is trying to get out of it. This is a key, fundamental difference between her, DeSantis, and Donald Trump.
If we replaced Haley with Trump, the soon-to-be felon would have doubled down on the outrage. He would have thrown more gasoline on the fire to raise the temperature on the rhetoric, further divide Americans by race and ideology, and would’ve laughed as people called him out. He doesn’t play by the rules of American politics. He’s fundamentally rewritten them (see my earlier piece on this here.)
For all her ineptitude, Nikki Haley once again highlighted the fight of our time, perhaps the most consequential since 1860. When she said, “I think it always comes down to the role of government and what the rights of the people are,” she was also talking about the struggle we face today.
To the liberal democratic tradition, the rights of “the people” are sacrosanct and held above those of the government ‘we the people’ empower for a period of time. Trumpism will change all that, Haley knows it all too well.
Years ago, when Haley said the Civil War was a fight between tradition and change, she was echoing the beliefs of millions of people who are willing to sacrifice the individual liberty of their fellow citizens in the name of a man and a cause that should not have a place at our American table. Preserving “tradition” is the starting point for suffering, pain, and destruction.
The 2024 campaign is not just about who will occupy the White House in 2025. It’s about everything. The fight begins and ends with democracy and sweeps the rest of us, our hopes, dreams, and beliefs, along with it. The struggle that Abraham Lincoln was not able to bring to a successful and complete conclusion continues today. Nikki Haley’s answer in New Hampshire this week wasn’t a mistake. It was a reminder. She, like so many others, are willing to say and do anything, regardless of the cost, to attain and retain power.
In that regard, she is just like Jefferson Davis and the other Losers of 1865. She, Trump, Mike Johnson, and all the other Republican leaders are willing to sacrifice Americans on the altar of their cowardice, fear, anger, and greed. Haley stood up to be counted with the likes of those confederates who, having to choose between liberty and slavery, chose bondage. That wasn’t enough, though.
Like MAGA today, the insurrectionists of 160 years ago doubled, and tripled down on a broken and evil belief system. In many of the old confederate states, we already see the branches of Jim Crow and authoritarianism growing back. Unchecked, their poison fruit will flower once again.
Those of us who make up the pro-democracy movement will not fight with guns or violence. We’ll fight with words, belief, and action. As you prepare yourself for the long weekend, spend a few minutes thinking about Nikki Haley. Do you want to live in a world where her brand of moral relativism is acceptable? Or do you want a country where we’re honest enough with ourselves to call out the wrongs of the past, praise the contributions of our forebears, and know that we have the chance to shape our world.
If we don’t Nikki Haley, Donald Trump, and their ilk most certainly will.
If you haven’t yet checked out my conversation with
please give it a listen. I’m a lot smarter for it and I know you will be, too!
Quite right, Reed Galen.
BTW, if Tim Alberta is to be believed, and I think he is, ("The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory," HarperCollins, 2023), there is a new "lost cause" afoot, and it goes a long way towards explaining tfg's stranglehold on evangelicals.
Many of them are absolutely convinced that some combination of secularists, liberals, etc. don't merely want to avoid Christianity and keep our government separate from ALL religions, but are actively working to punish Christians and destroy everything that they hold dear. (Hence the concern about the so-called "war on Christmas).
I know, I know. I have never heard anyone except right-wing agitators mention any such thoughts, but apparently it's a deeply held theory and is why its adherents feel justified, even compelled, to "fight back by any means necessary," including using godless tools such as Donald J. Trump.
There are so many great lines that stand out here, Reed, and I copied them all for they illuminate some exceptionally profound messages that everyone should hear. That entire "Lost Cause" moment of history has been forgotten by so many and/or handidly washed over by a large segment in that ever repainting of the truth.
I just happened to grow up at the heels of it, as my grandmother was from the Deep South, not the perfumed South, as she would say, and she would tell me about the Daughters of the Confederacy and all that States Rights narrative, of those White Abolisitinsts and all those chains of slavery they twisted into a retelling of heritage and Southern redemption, all sewn up like a Sunday dress and presented just as fashionably. It takes a lot of effort to turn such horrific pages of history into a seemingly cheerful portrait and reduce all those years of bondage to nothing more than a postcard of the past.
The fact that Haley had no problem ignorning it is indictive of that portrait that she and far too many not only cling to but refuse to release, determined to remain in that perfumed South of their own refashioning, where the sunlight shines through those old knarled trees instead of the shadows of the bodies that had hung from them. It's a sight they won't acknowledge and, like all the horrors of Trump, won't face. To do so they would have to admit they actually prefer the real portrait and, if given a chance, would happily return to it.
Thus the importance of what you wrote, because they now have that chance and knew it the moment Trump returned or even before with Jan 6. It's why they think of him as the savior, as the chosen one who can lead them back to that promised land of southern whiteness, where they can hang all their anger and racism back on the lines again, and can finally stop clinging to that watercolored version of them and their past. It's the old glory they want, the north vs the south, us vs them. It's in their bones. It's who they are. I know, because my grandmother told me all about it. She grew up with it. She lived it and she warned me that given the chance it would return. And now here we are. My grandmother is long gone, but her words have never left me and I hope everyone holds onto yours as well.
As you said, Lincoln understood this, and it's up to us now to try to end that struggle that he couldn't. We have less than 9 months, so keep writing, and thank you.