Photo via Ron DeSantis - Facebook
Ron DeSantis in Iowa
Ron DeSantis in Iowa
Major news organizations pretended last week the Iowa caucuses were the start of a normal election year even though Republicans cast more votes for their criminally indicted former president who tried to violently overthrow democracy than all the other candidates combined.
Within days, the political charade was over. The Republican primaries were always fake. They were over before they began. The Republican party is no longer a legitimate American political party that requires primary elections to determine who their candidate will be.
The Republican party is now firmly in the grip of criminal insurrectionist Donald Trump who refuses to support elections unless he and his MAGA supporters win.
It will be ridiculous for political reporters to pretend to detect “momentum” by Nikki Haley in New Hampshire this week if she draws any closer than losing to Trump by 30 percentage points like she did in Iowa.
Running for Second Place
When Gov. Ron DeSantis ended his disastrous presidential campaign over the weekend and endorsed Trump, Haley finally achieved her goal of becoming the last remaining candidate against Trump.
That’s not much of an achievement because Haley and DeSantis were never running to beat Trump. They were running to be Trump. That political strategy was never designed to threaten Trump’s frontrunning status as the Republican nominee.
Both were running for second place just in case Trump is hit by a meteor or fails to delay his criminal trials long enough to try to overthrow another presidential election so he can pardon himself.
That’s why neither Haley nor DeSantis dared to criticize Trump’s support for the violent Jan. 6 insurrection. Just the opposite. Both promised to pardon Trump for the worst terrorist attack on democracy in history if they were elected. But why would hard-core MAGA Republican insurrectionists accept any cheap Trump imitators when they could vote for the real thing?
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Here’s how worthless Haley’s status is as the last girl in the horror movie that is Trump winning the Republican presidential nomination again. The only question after Trump defeats Haley in New Hampshire is whether she drops out before facing the political embarrassment of losing the Feb. 24 Republican primary in South Carolina where she was twice elected governor.
Trump has a huge lead there with support from the current governor, both U.S. Senators and nearly every other elected Republican in the state.
More Moderate
The only thing as ridiculous as Trump as a U.S. presidential nominee again has been the media’s attempt to portray Haley as a more politically moderate alternative to Trump within the Republican party. She’s not, although she’s so skilled at political double talk it can be difficult for voters to know exactly where she stands on any political issue.
That’s how Haley has managed to convince some voters she’s more moderate on abortion than either Trump or DeSantis. It’s an absurd lie. She’s promised anti-abortion evangelicals would sign the most extreme nationwide abortion ban Republicans can pass.
It's no accident the Republicans’ political battles for the nomination, unlike those in the Democratic party, are front loaded in overwhelmingly white Iowa and New Hampshire and southern states like South Carolina where Black and Brown voters vote Democratic.
As the daughter of Indian immigrants, Haley’s candidacy was always a long shot in Trump’s racist, anti-immigrant, misogynist Republican party fully stocked with male, white supremacists who share his hatred of equal rights for women and Black and Brown immigrants who “poison the blood” of America.
Haley has long relied on the usual ploy by Republican candidates of color of claiming her own success proves systemic racism no longer exists in America, music to the ears of racists everywhere.
Poisoning the Blood?
But now she’s attracting attention with an even more extreme racial claim about America that’s right up there with Trump spreading terror about poisoned white blood and DeSantis claiming slavery was a jobs program teaching Blacks valuable career skills with a bullwhip.
Racism isn’t just over in America, Haley now says, but it never existed. “America has never been a racist country,” she declared on Fox News. Republican presidential candidates must believe they really can abolish America’s history simply by passing laws against teaching about it in public schools.
The problem is far too many American voters already know slavery existed and racism still does. They also know Trump’s violent, rightwing racists celebrated his presidency from beginning to end with deadly riots in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017 and Washington, D.C., in 2021.
Republicans can’t fire enough teachers or ban enough books to prevent a majority of American voters from realizing how dangerous it would be to return Trump to presidency where he jokes about becoming a dictator or Day One. The Republican party needs to fully support democracy and equal rights for all Americans regardless of race or gender just like the Democratic party does.
But that’s not going to happen this year.
