Nikki Haley, the Republican presidential candidate and former governor of South Carolina who for years has wrestled with how to approach issues of race, slavery and the Confederacy, found herself again confronted with those subjects at a town hall event on Wednesday in New Hampshire, hundreds of miles north of the Mason-Dixon line.
Her answer to a simple yet loaded question by an audience member in the city of Berlin — “What was the cause of the United States Civil War?” — showed just how much she continues to struggle with such topics.
“I mean, I think it always comes down to the role of government and what the rights of the people are,” she said eventually, arguing that government should not tell people how to live their lives or “what you can and can’t do.”
Interesting. So the government should not tell people they can’t murder everyone they dislike or steal cars or violently overturn an election.
Notably missing from her answer was slavery, which most mainstream historians agree was at the root of the United States’ bloodiest conflict — specifically the economics and political control behind slavery. Democrats were quick to jump on her answer, with President Biden’s re-election campaign team and others spreading video of the exchange on social media.
After a quick back and forth with the questioner, she said, “What do you want me to say about slavery? Next question.”
Hm. How about: that it made a difference?
Her latest remarks were in keeping with the way she and most of her Republican rivals have toed the line on race and racism on the 2024 presidential trail, downplaying the nation’s sordid racial history and portraying structural racism and prejudice as challenges of the past.
Wouldn’t it be nice if it were that simple?
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10 responses to “Notably missing from her answer”
Golly. It’s kind of like how some people react upon being asked, “What is a woman?”
Mike B., so true. Only in the case of a woman, it’s the Democrats who can’t manage to answer. Both parties have an enormous blind spot where non-white or non-men are concerned.
And by the waffling non-answers you can tell who they’re desperately trying to not piss off. Who is interested in “downplaying the nation’s sordid racial history and portraying structural racism and prejudice as challenges of the past?”
How long before we have someone in the comments telling us that structural racism and prejudice are challenges of the past that should be left in the past?
5, 4, 3, 2…
She missed a chance to compare herself to the overtly racist Trump.
But that would have been bad form; she’s trying to court his voters too. There might be blood in the water, but Republican sharks are going to wait until he’s safely “dead” before taking a bite out of him and alienating his supporters. Until then, the price of offending the deplorables is just too high politically.
They always claim an impending loss of states’ rights and/or an impending imposition of burdensome law from the Union, but never go on to mention that the lost right / imposed law was going to be a ban of slavery…
Look to the original sources. Every state that left the union mentioned concern about the survival of slavery in their declarations of secession. Every single one.
States rights? Sure. But mainly the right of a state to preserve slavery.
And most of those Southern senators and representatives would be more than happy to run rampant over state’s rights for any state that has legal abortion.
I’ve always said that the Lost Causers were half-right. The Union was, indeed, fighting a war over (or against) states’ rights, at least, the ‘right of secession’. But the South was solely and entirely fighting a war over slavery; they justified that war with talk about states’ rights (ie, they claimed the latter gave them the ethical right to go to war over the former).
It was only after the war was over that the former Confederate generals shied away from talking about slavery as the great and noble purpose of the war.
For folks wanting a lighter approach than some of the books I’ve seen mentioned in various comment threads, I recommend “Checkmate, Lincolnites!”, a Youtube series by a historian. He dissects various Lost Causer arguments very handily, and his videos usually have actual citations in them, which is handy. Best of all, arguably, he doesn’t feel the need to lie or obfuscate about the North’s shortcomings, at all. He readily acknowledges that a lot of what the Union did about slavery was political manipulation at best, and hypocritical at worst–he simply then goes on to prove that in even the worst cases, the Confederates outdid them.
Kevin Drum talked about this issue, partly in response to Jeffrey Blehar at National Review.