Nikki Haley is so slippery, she makes soap feel like glue.
On the plus side she’s reportedly surging in New Hampshire, which will soon host a gateway Republican primary, and that’s good news for everyone who’s rooting for a sane alternative to the demented fascist. But on the minus side she barely makes any sense at all when queried about the health care issue that will mobilize untold millions of women voters in 2024.
In a speech last April Haley promised to talk about abortion “directly.” But alas – especially lately, with the news that a pregnant health-impaired Texas woman has been forced to flee that repressive state – Haley all too often is reduced to babble and indirection.
Her predicament is obvious. She’s trying to walk a tightrope that’s narrower than dental floss – hoping to woo the forced-birth zealots in the Republican base (she needs them in the primary contests) while hoping to woo independents (she’d need them next next fall, if she were to miraculously win the GOP nomination). But is this kind of calculated balancing act – her strategic incoherence – even remotely doable? Can she be both ardently “pro-life” for the base and tonally “sensible” for swing voters?
You be the judge. Check out her gig on yesterday’s ABC News morning show.
She showed up with Chris Sununu, the ex-New Hampshire governor who has endorsed her and is now squiring her around the state – and in the TV studios when necessary, as you will soon see. After bobbing and weaving, as usual, about Trump’s fitness for office as a 91-count felon (“the last thing you’re going to see me do is weigh in or learn the details”), she had no choice but to weigh in on the Kate Cox abortion case.
Host Jonathan Karl: “We had the Texas Supreme Court abortion (case), really kind of a tragic case. The court ruled (last week) that she could not have an abortion, even though her doctor said that her health was in danger, it might jeopardize her ability to have children in the future (and) that the baby – the fetus – was almost certainly not going to survive. Did you disagree with that decision by the Texas Supreme Court?”
Haley: “Well, I think it is the right thing that unelected justices no longer decide this, and it’s in the hands of the people. I appreciate that Texas went more on the pro-life side, but as we go through this – listen, my heart broke for her because I had trouble having my children. These – the states are now going to have to look at these (cases)…”
Huh?
First of all, the U.S. Supreme Court’s erasure of Roe v. Wade has empowered the “unelected justices” in each state to rule for or against abortion – interpreting, as they see fit, the patchwork of often unworkable laws that each state enacts. Secondly, “the people” of Texas (actually, their gerrymandered lawmakers), freed up from the constitutional rights encoded in Roe v. Wade (which Haley opposed), enacted a forced-birth law so repressive that Cox, to protect her fertility, had to travel and get an abortion elsewhere. So, thirdly, it’s meaningless for Haley to say that her “heart broke” for Cox, because the chain of events triggered by Roe‘s erasure (Haley applauded the erasure) made the Texas farce possible in the first place.
Karl followed up: “Do you think the Supreme Court in Texas made the wrong decision?…Can you give a direct answer now?”
Haley: “I mean, the Supreme Court said what – that the law that the state put was – was the one they had to follow, right?…As a governor, when something happens that churns your stomach, that says that’s what this was intended to be, you go back and say, okay, what do we do to make sure that – that we are saving as many babies as possible, but also supporting as many moms as possible. It’s not as cut and dry as everybody wants, but states will self-correct to this. That’s what they do.”
I had to play back that answer in order to parse the babble. Does she actually believe that the most repressive states will now be motivated to “self-correct” their repressive abortion laws?
At this point in the ABC interview, Chris Sununu jumped in. It’s a sign of trouble when a wingman feels compelled to help out: “I think, to Nikki’s point…I think what Nikki’s saying exactly right it is…What Nikki is saying is, if – if there’s a problem there, it’s in the law. And that’s up to the citizens and the lawmakers and the legislature. That’s how the states do it.”
So here’s the bottom line on Haley’s abortion talk: She wants to foster a “consensus” on the issue – but, by definition, consensus is impossible in the post-Roe era because some states can say yes to abortion while others can say no. She talks a lot about her “heart” and her “compassion” (buzz words for swing voters, to show she’s not scary), but in recent weeks she has suggested that if “the people” were to ban abortion after six weeks of pregnancy (that’s virtually a total ban), then, yes, she would sign such a bill. That’s truly where her “heart” is anyway, because lest we forget (not that she’d ever remind us), she voted, as a state legislator in South Carolina, to ban abortion coverage for state employees who’d been raped; and later, as governor, she signed a statewide abortion ban with no exceptions for rape or incest.
One of her favorite lines, repeated recently in New Hampshire goes like this: “I don’t judge anyone for being pro-choice, any more than I want you to judge me for being pro-life.” That tonal equivalence goes down smoothly like a fine wine – until you take a breath and think about it. That’s when the hitch becomes obvious: The “pro-life” people (like her) want not only to judge the “pro-choice” people, but to restrict their right to exercise choice.
Assuming she can supplant Trump in the Republican race (a massive assumption), can she make hay with this strategy, wowing the base while wooing independents? It all sounds a bit too slippery.