Give Nikki Haley credit: Few politicians can match her ability at speaking for so long while saying so little. But her mastery of enthusiastic vagueness hasn’t kept her from tripping up on the simplest of questions. Such was the case again in her interview on “The Breakfast Club” this week, when asked to explain her assertion that the thought of Vice President Kamala Harris becoming president “should send chills up everyone’s spine.”
Haley’s rambling answer — which also included what she objected to in Barack Obama’s presidency — exemplifies the devil’s bargain she and every other nonwhite Republican has to make to advance in the GOP. Haley would like to be the answer to the party’s race problem, the living evidence that the party has moved beyond its darkest impulses. But in order to succeed, she has to pander to those very same impulses.
We all know what distinguishes Kamala Harris from other run-of-the-mill Democrats who don’t make Republicans tremble with fear: She’s a woman, and she’s not white.
Haley’s description of a Harris presidency as “spine-chilling” is not new; she’s repeated it throughout this campaign. She knows that the prospect of Harris being president does indeed fill Republican voters with horror. But why?
There’s nothing wrong with criticizing Harris; given Joe Biden’s age, there is a chance that if he is re-elected she would become president by 2028. There’s a difference, however, between criticizing her and saying that the mere thought of her in the Oval Office should inspire terror.
Harris is, by any measure, a standard Democrat. While Republicans would certainly dislike the policies she would pursue, her agenda would be the same as the one pursued by Biden or most other Democrats.
When asked to explain why Harris frightens them so, Republicans will sputter that she’s inexperienced or incompetent. “It’s from an experience standpoint,” Haley told the show’s co-host, DJ Envy….
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