Typical presidential candidates spend months on the campaign trail, interacting with voters, fielding questions at town-hall-style meetings, and sharpening their message over time. As is true with most things, more practice leads to better results, and White House hopefuls learn how to give compelling answers.
But every once in a while, candidates hear a question they haven’t fully prepared for — and it becomes a problem. NBC News reported early Thursday:
GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley on Wednesday declined to say slavery was a cause of the Civil War, arguing instead that it came down to “the role of government.” At a New Hampshire town hall, a voter bluntly asked Haley, “What was the cause of the Civil War?”
The South Carolina Republican certainly said a lot of words in response to the question, but Haley never got around to mentioning slavery.
“I think the cause of the Civil War was basically how government was going to run — the freedoms and what people could and couldn’t do,” the former U.N. ambassador said at the beginning of her response. Haley added, “I think it always comes down to the role of government and what the rights of the people are. And I will always stand by the fact that I think government was intended to secure the rights and freedoms of the people. It was never meant to be all things to all people.”
As part of the same answer, the GOP candidate told her New Hampshire audience, “Government doesn’t need to tell you how to live your life. They don’t need to tell you what you can and can’t do. They don’t need to be a part of your life. They need to make sure that you have freedom,” she said. “We need to have capitalism. We need to have economic freedom. We need to make sure that we do all things so that individuals have the liberties so that they can have freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to do or be anything they want to be without government getting in the way.”
Evidently, the man who…
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