Politics, Government, 2024 Election
Dump Nikki Haley Over Her Slavery Gaffe? Not So Fast
On December 27, former South Carolina Governor and presidential candidate Nikki Haley fumbled badly. When asked the cause of the Civil War at a Berlin, New Hampshire town hall meeting, she failed the most obvious, correct answer, "Slavery." The mistake was huge since the blunder was made less than a month before the New Hampshire primary and when polls showed her "within striking distance" of defeating Donald Trump.
But how serious was the mistake? Is she unfit to be president? Was she afraid to offend voters who may believe, as Haley suggested, that the war was about "the freedoms of what people could and could not do?" Or is she a racist, as Joe Biden intimated in a tweet? Of course not. A better explanation is that she was not ready for the question, and rather than giving a one-word answer, she clumsily concocted an answer about the benefits of limited government — something she thought Republicans wanted to hear. (If Haley's response was driven by a fear of offending Republican voters who don't believe the Civil War was about slavery, that confirms what we all know about the Republican party).
Since making the gaffe, Haley has aggressively backtracked, shouting that, of course, she knows the Civil War was about slavery. Unfortunately, her…
