Nikki Haley again reminds us that there are no good Republicans

What the media is missing about her answer on the Civil War

Nikki Haley—who served as governor of South Carolina, the first state to secede from the Union in the run up to the Civil War—doesn’t believe that slavery was the cause of that brutal war.  At least that’s the impression she gave on Wednesday at a town hall in New Hampshire when asked by a voter, “What was the cause of the Civil War?”

In response, Haley stated, “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.” She 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.”

Some in the  media have labeled her response a “flub.” But in reality, this was no mistake. Haley’s answer was actually defending state’s rights—the same argument used to defend slavery, defend Jim Crow and today to defend state’s enacting laws to force women to carry a fetus to term.

Look at what Haley stated later in that answer on the cause of the Civil War: “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.”  That is the very foundation of the state’s rights argument.

She then added lines that conjured up what slave owners said back in 1860: “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.”

Haley—a graduate of South Carolina’s Clemson University—certainly knows as the former governor of South Carolina that the declaration of secession adopted by her state in December 1860 was all about preserving slavery.  It was ratified shortly after Republican Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 presidential election who the slave owning states viewed as deeply hostile to slavery. In fact, South Carolina’s secession resolution—after first slamming Northern states for refusing to return enslaved people who had escaped—noted: “A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery.”

The resolution continued on to note that if Lincoln’s perceived goal to end slavery nationwide came to fruition, “The slaveholding States will no longer have the power of self-government, or self-protection, and the Federal Government will have become their enemy.” Thus, they declared that the bonds between South Carolina and the other states were “dissolved” and that “the State of South Carolina has resumed her position among the nations of the world, as a separate and independent State.”

She knows that and more about her home state’s history. In fact, Haley made that very point Thursday in a radio interview after the media backlash for her answer at Wednesday’s town hall: “Of course the Civil War was about slavery, that's the easy part. Yes, I know it was about slavery. I am from the South."

Haley also knows something else: the GOP base. That is why on Wednesday, Haley didn’t mention slavery as the cause of the Civil War because she gets that GOP voters don’t want to hear the truth that the Southern states waged a war for the right to own Black human beings as property. (Haley is like a human version of the “critical race theory” laws enacted by the GOP so white, right wingers don’t become “uncomfortable” by having to hear the truth about race in America.)

All of this is why in 2010 when running for governor, Haley described  the Civil War as a fight over “tradition” and “change” and said the Confederate flag was “not something that is racist.” It’s also why during that same campaign, she slammed the idea of removing the Confederate battle flag that flew over the South Carolina Capitol since 1961, hoisted at the time as a commemoration of the centennial anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War. (After a white supremacist in 2015 killed nine people in a famed South Carolina Black church, Hailey relented and agreed the flag should be removed.)

Haley—like Donald Trump has repeatedly done—is pandering to the white supremacists of the GOP base.  It’s why Trump has defended Confederate monuments and military bases named after Confederate military leaders as well as continually refused to denounce white supremacists—until shamed into it and even then everyone knows he is not sincere. (In Trump’s case, though, he is a white supremacist.)

But Haley’s answer also warns us of her adamant support for state’s rights. In the past that argument was utilized to defend slavery and Jim Crow to deprive Blacks of basic human rights. Today that same argument is how the GOP defends depriving women of basic human rights by forcing them to carry a fetus against their will to term.  As a reminder, Haley has said that if she were still governor, she would sign a six week abortion ban.  (And if she is elected President, we can be certain she would work to impose a six-week national abortion ban despite her defense of state’s rights.)

Only to some in the media is Haley a “moderate.” In reality, Haley is as dangerously right wing as they come from her support of laws that deprive women of human rights to supporting restrictions on freedom of speech, to her extreme anti-LGBTQ agenda and her opposition to providing humanitarian aid to Palestinians.

Again, there are no good Republicans.

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