No, Nikki, No
Nikki Haley promised she wouldn’t run for president against Donald Trump. She lied. She just sent a St. Valentine’s Day card to America: “I love you. XOXOXOXO. Elect me president and I will bomb numerous countries.”
She’s emphasizing her background as a female and the daughter of immigrants. That might have played back in 1984, when Walter Mondale picked as his running mate Rep. Geraldine Ferraro. But 39 years later it’s rather passe. The video only briefly mentioned foreign policy, even though everybody knows she’s itching to get her finger poised over the Nuclear Button. While intervening in numerous conflicts that are none of our business.
That’s where she’s going to have problems with Republican primary voters. Trump is running as the Peace Candidate. And in winning a seat in the U.S. Senate from Ohio, J.D. Vance showed that message resonates strongly today.
Haley also just published a campaign book, “‘If You Want Something Done’: Leadership Lessons from Bold Women.” That derives from a saying by Margaret Thatcher, “If you want something said, ask a man; if you want something done, ask a woman.” What an insult to male Republicans, who are maybe 55% of the primary electorate. It was an amusing quote when the Iron Lady made it decades ago. But today?
The first two of 10 women profiled are Thatcher and Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Reagan’s ambassador to the UN. Nikki, despite trashing Trump in his 2016 campaign, became his UN ambassador, another personnel mistake by him. Anyway, both Thatcher and Kirkpatrick were strong, but reasonable. Thatcher’s 1979 election as PM swung the UK against not only socialism, as Nikki’s ad says, but against the Soviet Union. Then in 1985 she met new Soviet boss Gorbachev and said, “We can work with him.”
I was aghast at the time. But it turned out to be the right move. Thatcher helped the UK play the important role it has since 1945, of being a catalyst for polices needed to be pursued by its more powerful ally, the USA. Reagan, Thatcher’s good friend, picked up on that, soon met with Gorbachev and began winding down the cold war without getting all of us nuked.
As to Kirkpatrick, a gracious woman I met briefly once at CPAC, she was really tough with the Soviets at the UN. She was one of the neocons. But she later opposed the Iraq War. She was more loyal to America than to the incendiary neocons, whom Nikki still follows.
Indicating her true priorities, not that stuff about protecting the borders or better schools, here’s what she tweeted Feb. 12:
The last sentence is true, but it’s because Biden provoked Russia into invading by weaponizing Ukraine instead of keeping it neutral. And how about those Burisma bribes to him and Hunter?
If you look at that list, within weeks of taking the Oath of Office, Nikki could have us in wars with North Korea, Afghanistan, Iran and Russia. At least she didn’t list China.
Meanwhile, here’s her military service record: 0 years, 0 months, 0 weeks, 0 days, 0 minutes, 0 seconds. It’s the old story: Rich man’s war, poor man’s fight. But with recruitment numbers down, there aren’t enough troops to fight even one of those wars, let alone all of them.
By the time the primaries start a year from now, the Ukraine War will be even more of a debacle, maybe a “kinetic” one, as the military calls it, with thousands of Americans coming home in body bags.
The positive aspect is her candidacy, along with that of the even more psychotic John Bolton, will go down in flames, pushing the GOP further into the peacenik camp, which I welcome. No more war!