Two articles were written in the last two days leading to today’s New Hampshire primary election. I was impressed with each article and will share parts of each article below. They discuss how Haley should have run against Donald Trump in the New Hampshire primary. Trump is an authoritarian who is following the same path as other autocratic leaders, from Mussolini to Putin. Haley must be willing to attest to the fact that Trump is an autocrat and racist, who has been charged in 4 indictments with 91 felonies, found guilty of business fraud in New York state, and found guilty of rape and sexual assault in a New York courtroom.
Haley must sharpen attacks on Trump before the NH primary by Rex Huppke.
Early in his career as a humor(ish) columnist at the Chicago Tribune, Rex Huppke declared himself “America’s most-beloved columnist,” a claim wholly unsupported by facts or empirical evidence. He is now a national columnist at USA TODAY, writing staggeringly brilliant (according to him) columns on the news of the day three or more times a week.
Huppke writes:
For a Republican candidate like Haley – an actual adult in political circles – all it would take to put up a fight against Trump is an ounce or two of courage. All she would have to do is speak the truth. Here are five ways she can do that – perhaps too little, too late – on the day before New Hampshire voters hit the polls.
1. Bring up the insurrection and all those indictments
The primary line of attack against Trump is and always should be the fact that he’s in more legal peril than the average American could dream up.
No matter how many times he screams “WITCH HUNT,” you have to put in work to get indicted as many times as Trump has been indicted. He’s credibly accused of election interference, falsifying business records, more than 30 counts of violating the Espionage Act, conspiracy to obstruct justice and conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government.
You hear the phrase “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire” a lot these days. Haley should say, “That’s the biggest amount of smoke I’ve ever seen.”
And let’s not forget the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and the fact that Trump continues to deny the results of the 2020 presidential election. I reckon campaign strategists daydream of having an opponent hand them that kind of material.
Haley should use it. President Joe Biden’s presidential campaign certainly will.
2. Note that a judge has declared Trump a rapist
The former president is not “alleged” to have sexually abused writer E. Jean Carroll. The judge in the case made clear that the jury in Carroll’s defamation case against Trump found that he raped her.
In a court filing in July, Judge Lewis Kaplan wrote: “The finding that Ms. Carroll failed to prove that she was ‘raped’ within the meaning of the New York Penal Law does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape.’ Indeed, as the evidence at trial recounted … makes clear, the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.”
Trump was in a Manhattan courtroom last week behaving like an oaf in front of a jury tasked with determining what damages if any he should pay for defaming Carroll. He also posted dozens of things on his social media account blasting Carroll.
Haley should say, without equivocation, that a judge has said that Donald Trump is a rapist. And that Trump continues to defame and behave like a unrepentant jerk toward the victim.
3. Point out that Trump is back on his racist, birther nonsense
Recently, Trump shared a post on his social media account falsely claiming Haley is ineligible for the presidency because her parents, immigrants from India, were not citizens when she was born. That’s hot garbage, and it echoes the notorious birther conspiracies Trump hurled at former President Barack Obama.
Haley is an American citizen, born in South Carolina in 1972, and is fully eligible to be president.
Trump has also started harping on Haley’s given first name, Nimarata. (She has gone by her middle name, Nikki, since birth.) First he started using the incorrect spelling “Nimrata,” then that morphed into “Nimrada,” and on Friday he again changed it to “Nimbra.”
This is on-par with his attempts to “other-ize” Obama by using his middle name, Hussein, at every mention. Haley could use this to highlight Trump’s reflexive racism and juvenile mindset.
4. Read one of Trump’s social media post out loud to voters
To remind New Hampshire voters just how unhinged and unstable Trump is, Haley should read aloud one of the former president’s posts from his social media account.
Here’s a perfect sample, from last
Monday:
“Fox & Friends is giving DeSanctimonious & Haley one last shot. They are working hard, even using an old CNN Fake Poll, which shows I am only up on Birdbrain by 9 points in New Hampshire (all other polls say 20 to 25 points up!). Why are they using CNN polls? That’s why! Nikki is using an old poll to show she’s beating Crooked Joe. She’s not. Almost all new polls show she is being decimated by him. I am beating Crooked Joe, by a lot, in the polls. MAGA!”
Read that and then say: “You all sure you want four years of whatever the heck that is?”
5. Remind New Hampshire voters that Trump hates Americans who don’t support him
Haley should point out that Trump said this month he hopes the U.S. economy collapses soon: “When there’s a crash, I hope it’s going to be during these next 12 months.”
She should also note that at a recent rally in Iowa, Trump suggested intimidation against Democratic voters and referred to them as “bags of crap.” He told his supporters: “You should all stay in those voting booths – you should stay there and watch it. If you see bags of crap coming into the voting areas, you gotta stop it, you can’t let it happen, ‘cause these guys are crooked as hell.”
Haley could easily note that none of this is “America first,” as Trump likes to say. In fact, it’s decidedly un-American. It’s “Trump first,” everywhere and always.
Haley should have been hitting Trump hard from the jump. I doubt she’ll do so now, on the last day before the New Hampshire vote. Republicans at large seem comfortable living sans spines. But if she really wants to win, she should at least give it a try.
Be honest with voters, Nikki Haley. Tell them the truth.
You might find that people, even at the last minute, like candidates unafraid to take a stand.
Nikki Haley Missed Her Best Chance to Take on Trump by John Nichols, The Nation
John Nichols is a national affairs correspondent for The Nation. He has written, co-written, or edited over a dozen books on topics ranging from histories of American socialism and the Democratic party to analyses of the US and global media systems.
Nichols brings up the racist nature of Donald Trump and says that Haley missed her opportunity to stand up against him.
He writes:
Here’s the argument: By closing his New Hampshire campaign with overtly racist and xenophobic jabs at Haley, Republican front-runner Donald Trump is, once again, making the Grand Old Party the prime vehicle for his crudely divisive approach to politics. Trump needs to be rebuked, not just by responsible conservatives within the party—whose number seems to get smaller by the day—but also by independents who frequently participate in Republican primaries and vote Republican in general elections. There’s never been a better time to call out Trump’s ongoing crusade to turn the GOP into a vile cult of personality that invariably defaults toward racism. And there’s no better place to do it than New Hampshire, a state where a large block of independents can—and often does—influence the results of Republican primaries.
As the New Hampshire contest narrowed into a fight between the former president and his former United Nations ambassador, The New York Times reported:
Mr. Trump lobbed his latest racially charged attack at former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina, the daughter of Indian immigrants and his closest competitor in the New Hampshire primary, by repeatedly flubbing her given name, Nimarata Nikki Randhawa. On Friday, Mr. Trump referred to Ms. Haley as “Nimbra” in a post on Truth Social, his social media platform, three days after facing criticism for dubbing her “Nimrada.” Ms. Haley has long gone by her middle name, Nikki.
Both are racist dog whistles, much like his continued focus on [former president Barack] Obama’s middle name, Hussein, and add to a long history of racially incendiary statements from the campaign trail.
And Trump didn’t stop there. As Tuesday’s vote approached, he bragged about deliberately mangling Haley’s birth name as part of an effort to suggest there was something foreign about his last viable Republican opponent. Talking about Haley—born in South Carolina and has lived there her entire life—Trump speculated about “wherever she may come from.” Late last week, he even reposted a false charge that she was ineligible to serve as president because her parents were not US citizens at the time of her birth.
So what was Haley’s response to what is a calculated strategy by Trump?
She described these crude attempts to portray her as some foreigner as “temper tantrums,” said Trump was “insecure,” and concluded, “I don’t sit there and worry about whether it’s personal or what he means.”Trump’s racism created an opening for Haley to go after the former president for what the Times refers to as “his long history of racist attacks,” to ask voters—be they Republicans or independents—whether they really want one of the nation’s two major parties to be defined by a man who regularly seeks to exploit racist and xenophobic stereotypes as part of a political strategy.
Haley could have claimed the legacy of the Republican Party as “the party of Lincoln,” and used that claim to rally voters who might not always agree with her to join a Republican primary coalition that was determined to send a message—not just to Trump but to anyone using racist and xenophobic political appeals to divide Americans against one another.
Instead, she shied away from what could have been an inspired and potentially effective challenge to Trump’s party. In a campaign defined by its many missed opportunities, this was the saddest and most frustrating of them all.
Nikki Haley Missed Her Best Chance to Take on Trump, John Nickols. The Nation, January 23, 2024.
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