"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. I will always stand by the fact that I think government was intended to secure the rights and freedoms of the people.... It was never meant to be all things to all people."... After a quick back and forth with the questioner, she said, “What do you want me to say about slavery? Next question.”
Key words: "What do you want me to say...?" Does this woman have a mind at all? Is she saying what [somebody] wants her to say? If so, why didn't they program in a stock answer about the Civil War?
So much money has just been thrown at this person. Now, what?
ADDED: Here's the full video. The NYT summary is merciful, if anything.
Posts
130 comments:
Fortunately most people aren’t paying attention this week. Haley should have taken the week off.
Then again, Haley’s proposal to bring Palestinian refugees from Gaza to the US was fucking insane.
She should stick to her sinecures on defense contractor boards of directors.
Trump will probably pick her as his running mate. His Kamala.
Key words: "What do you want me to say...?"
What we want you to say, Nikki, is that you recognize that you finally recognize that you aren’t up to the job and that you’re dropping out of the race.
Nikki Haley quietly bought a $2.4M SC island home after leaving office and joining Boeing board
Slavery is a stable and efficient economic system, just not in a free market rule of law economy.
In a hit the guy on the head and take his stuff economic system, it's a win/win. Instead of killing your enemy you enslave him. The West ended that with the free market and rule of law, in particular contract law. A gift to the world from the West. There a slave contributes more to society working in his own interest that in working in his master's interest.
Slavery was obsolete and just surviving on tradition at the time of the civil war.
She could say that about slavery. It's not a sin, just obsolete.
Can't think on her feet. She must have expected a Joe Biden townhall where he is asked whether he prefers vanilla or chocolate.
Nikki Haley has a tin ear. That is fatal in politics.
She now claims her questioner was a plant (like that changes anything) but, what he really was, is a citizen who knew her ways and biases too well. That guy heard her blow that issue one time too often, and just knew she'd do it again, before the nation, if only given the chance.
Well done.
If she weren't a woman -- if she were just a middle-aged white guy with the exact same credentials, and saying the exact same things in this campaign -- would she have ANY traction whatsoever in this race? She seems like such an empty suit.
She could have wrist bands to remind herself what state she's in while campaigning.
She should have been honest and told the truth.
"Hey, what do want me to Say? I don't give a damn about a bunch of old white men fighting 150 years ago, over whatever. Its 2023, and I'm the daughter of immigrants. My parents came from Punjab in 1969.
So yeah, I don't want to say it was just slavery since that might lose me votes in SC primary, but if it would gain me more votes and help me win NH, I'll say its slavery".
BTW, why is anyone wasting people's time asking about the Civil war? It just doesn't matter. Sorry. It like asking about Evolution, or whether she believes in God. Just...Does..Not...matter.
Things that do matter? Her "invade the world, invite the world" politics. Her desire to censor the internet. Her desire to start WW III with russia and china. her support for isreal & killing 20 thousand innocent civilians in Gaza. Her support for Amnesty and unrestricted immigration. Her la-de-da attitude toward Biden trying to Jail trump. Her social liberalism and support for Big business and globalization.
There's no reason to perfer her over Biden. You'll get 90 percent of Biden's policies but dressed up in Republican rhetoric.
Haley's coaches had never addressed the question and a practiced answer with their client. She didn't know the correct answer because no one had given it to her.
The other problem with Haley, as shown by her "Deer in the headlights" response to Mr. V asking her to name the Ukrainian provinces under Russian attack, is she's not very smart. Although given we elected Joe Biden, that's not a disqualification.
I assume "what do you want me to say" was more rhetorical, trying to push back and make the point that the questioner wasn't serious about having a discussion, but looking for a specific sound-bite. Still, it was incredibly ham-handed and stupid.
Whatever.
Meanwhile - we are led by a corrupt husk-puppet crook - who operates above the law, and has let in millions of illegal entrants - against our immigration laws, standards, and policies.
I saw someone on Twitter suggest the best answer for why she avoided the topic of slavery: because she has so little regard for conservatives that she believes they'd take offense at the implication slavery was bad.
Well, when you have two armies of white boys fighting each other, one shouting “States’ Rights!” and the other screaming “Preserve the Union!” it would just confuse the issue to tell both sides they’re fighting over the rich man’s slaves.
That is not a legitimate campaign question in 2023 and should be treated as such.
What do you want me to say...?
She thought the questioner was one of her big donors.
Here's the video.
I'm having a hard time making sense of the answer. It doesn't fit with the question. Is it possible she didn't realize that the questioner's (yes, a plant) out-of-the-blue history reference was referring to "that" Civil War and her answer was more a reflection on the current conflict between the left and right?
Terrible look at any rate.
Also, this, “What do you want me to say about slavery? Next question.” is a lie by the Times.
Not ready for prime time.
"her support for isreal & killing 20 thousand innocent civilians in Gaza."
Surely it's up to 40 thousand by now
Ask Joe. He always tell us "they" will be mad at him for disclosing things. Why is she held to a different standard??
Which all goes to show that the big money isn't as smart as they think they are.
"Haley's coaches had never addressed the question and a practiced answer with their client. She didn't know the correct answer because no one had given it to her."
Gay, et al. show that practiced answers are not a get out of jail free card. They need to be good answers.
It is a bad response from Haley. Was she trying to accomplish something or did she just have a brain fart?
Missed opportunity to point out Democrats wanting to keep slaves while Republicans fought a war and died in order to end slavery.
"So much money has just been thrown at this person. Now, what?"
Well, she just bought a great big house. I think she'll want to furnish it and maybe do some entertaining, before she makes any more splashy expenditures.
Or she could have said that she's proud of being Republican precisely because it connects her with the party's roots in opposition to slavery.
Anyway, as others have noted, the issue is not the cause of the CW, or Haley's understanding of that cause, but the apparent lack of adroitness in dealing with traps, e.g., through ridicule. These GOPers still have no clue about the prog culture war and the way progs fight on all fronts all the time. The nice-diverse-woman shtick doesn't cut it.
I'll add that the possible fact that an unexpected mention of the "Civil War" did not instantly trigger in her mind the "recent unpleasantness" is a reflection of her "not quite there yet" assimilation into American culture.
She should have started out:
First of all, it was not a civil war. A civil war is a war for control of a country, also known as a state. This was a war between the various states, sovereign nations, that make up the United States. It was a war to disaffiliate from the other states. (for lots of reasons including slavery)
Then talk abut how after the revolution, the independent countries, as the 13 colonies then were voluntarily (stress voluntarily) decided to join together. They did not join together to form a single country. They formed a confederation, later a union, and delegated (not gave) certain powers to the confederation/union.
Then talk about how, having joined voluntarily, and having made no committment to the contrary, some states felt that they had the right to unjoin.
The northern states disagreed and invaded the southern states.
I'd point out that the northern states won and get to write the history books and that the members of the audience should go read some history.
That would have been my way oversimplified answer to the question. People in the "Live free or die" state might have understood it.
OTOH, it would probably be too complex for most public school graduates who think that the US is "A" country and that "The War of the Northern Aggression" was a "civil war" fought only about slavery with great popular support in the north.
But then I am from the way deep south. 900 miles south of Florida.
John Henry
From what I've read, Lincoln was no big fan of blacks.
It was an economic war and slaves got the benefit of the abolitionist movement at the time.
Criticizing the secessionist states is a little too close to criticizing the Democrats. Haley can't do that. She can only criticize the men she's running against. Then there's her distaste for saying a war, any war at all, is wrong, so perhaps the Civil War also falls into this no-go-there territory for candidate Haley. As for the "corrupt husk-puppet crook" Nikki is auditioning for the role of opponent to, when will she get around to saying that or anything nearly that clear about Joe's disqualifications? Biden agrees with his party that J6 was "worse than the Civil War" so apparently Haley is OK with that diminution of the War to End Government Overreach or whatever she calls it.
Pathetic GOPe hack. Ramaswamy had her number after all, didn't he?
'She could have wrist bands to remind herself what state she's in while campaigning.'
Like the mats on cruise ship elevators; "Tuesday"
: )
The South sought to secede from the Union, over protection of state rights (admittedly, one of the most important of which was the right to own slaves) as well as over tariffs. The first state to announce secession (South Carolina) did so after the election of Lincoln, who they feared planned to abolish slavery nationwide. The Civil War itself began on April 12, 1861 with the attack on Fort Sumter. At that point, no formal effort had been made by the North to free southern slaves. The Emancipation Proclamation was not made until January 1, 1863, nearly two years later. So strictly speaking, Haley was correct in that state rights was a driving factor. In another sense, she was wrong, because the right in question was the right to own slaves. Of course, it also didn't help that her language suggested she fell in the pro-state rights side...
"The cause of the Civil War is that Democrats lost the 1860 presidential election to Abraham Lincoln, a Republican whose campaign platform included the abolition of slavery. The Southern Democratic states, fearing that Lincoln would finally break the deadlock in the Senate and make meaningful restrictions upon slavery in the US, made the political decision to secede from the Union in order to preserve slavery within their territories and any future territories they might control."
That's what the Civil War is all about, Charlie Brown.
Haley's home state, South Carolina, was the first state to try to secede in the 1830s. They were also, IIRC, the first state to secede in 1861.
Did Haley mention that?
John Henry
Now that we have a proper "What the Hell, Nikki?" thread, I'll repost this from the overnight cafe:
So what you’re saying is Nikki Haley is an insurrection denier. She must think chaos just “follows Lincoln around,” and if Republicans had simply nominated a woman in high heels then Democrats wouldn’t have kept Lincoln off the ballots in ten states.
When I was a junior senior in high school I wrote a term paper on the causes of the civil war. I concluded that the causes were primarily economic.
Later on I realized that the economic systems were different because of slavery.
I had addressed the notion of state's rights but it was only later that I recognized that the only state's right that was in question at that time was slavery.
I had a contentious discussion with some Canadians in Ireland in 1979 who were so smug about saying the American Civil War wasn't fought over slavery or to end it. Couldn't make an impression on them that the war might not have been overly over slavery, but had slavery not existed the war would never have been fought.
Now, I recognize there's no way a Republican politician in this day and age could make such a nuanced argument, but to deny that slavery was not the central driving force to what was once called the "recent unpleasantness" is to be clueless.
My excuse for the term paper is I was no more than 17 at the time.
She could run with Harris on the Word Salad ticket. They truly represent what diversity means in 2024.
Wasn't it something about tariffs? The capitalist NorthEast wanted high tariffs to protect their nascent manufacturing sector from foreign competition, while the mostly agrarian South wanted to be able to buy their manufactures cheap, from the British. How did they sort that out?
Oh, yeah! They had a war, and Massachusetts won! The War Between The States, they called it. With good reason. What's the point of having high tariffs if the South doesn't have to pay them? Plus, the Northerners were well aware that the Southerners had plans to extend their Confederacy to Cuba and Latin America, perhaps including Mexico. That would have left the "United States" as a rump republic, and threatened California. No, they needed to nip that one in the bud, and who better than the wily railroad lawyer Abraham Lincoln to do it?
Per dgstock: The white boys doing the fighting were doing so for States'Rights and Preserving the Union because those were the issues that mattered to them when it all began. However, race based chattel slavery made inevitable a war that without that Peculiar Institution would have been impossible.
If she's the nominee, just run me over with a bus, OK?
Since she is trying to appeal to republicans, perhaps her strategery is to get the media to start noticing how stupid she is. Works for Trump.
People wonder why the GOP base is sticking with Trump.
One reason is he’s proven an inability to be blown up by his own words.
In an environment where the media is one-sided, it’s required to succeed.
I wonder if this is one of those "accidentally on purpose" mistakes? Is Haley trying to nobble her own campaign? Kind of like DeSantis is doing to his. Captain donut and the others really had no campaign to nobble in the first place.
Only Vivek seems to still be trying. Perhaps in vain given our president Emeritus' lead. Perhaps as a spare tire in the event that Trump does get taken out of the campaign by lawfare, health or death.
The Demmies don't seem to be doing much better. If Brandon wanted to nobble his own campaign, what more might he be doing?
Is Jack Smith purposely throwing his insurrection case? The Georgia case may be falling apart as well.
We see DIE falling apart in front of our very eyes. A takedown (perhaps) of our most prestigious university.
We may be starting to see what happened to Seth Rich.
The NY Times for goodness sake seems to be starting, slowly, slowly, to be taking up the "Maybe Trump was not so bad after all" theme. I predict that by next summer, CNN will start doing the same.
And there's more.
Are we just watching a giant kabuki show? Is the fix in by demmies and repos to reinstall Donald Trump?
Probably not. Probably my tinfoil hat is just screwed on a notch or 2 too tight. But I lie in bed at night thinking things can't be what they seem. Wondering what is really going on and hoping I make it to next January to see the denoument.
John Henry
Lately I've seen a huge push on X of people singing Haley's praises, also a push promoting Biden. It just started last week on my feed.
The woke snowflake union soldiers just wanted participation trophies.
The cause of the Civil War was secession. The South wanted independence, the North wanted to preserve the Union, and both sides were willing to go to war over it.
What prompted the South to secede was a collective sense of grievance and alienation over the election of Lincoln, coupled with the realization that the North was the dominant sector and that, absent secession, the South would never hold sufficient sway over the national government. So they said "Screw it, we'll do our own thing." But Lincoln and the North (quite reasonably) were having none of that, and hence the war.
Bottom line, the immediate cause of the war wasn't slavery, it was a sense of political alienation and marginalization on the part of the South that prompted them to secede. Of course, slavery was the biggest UNDERLYING issue that divided the North and South at that time. But it certainly wasn't slavery per se that prompted the war.
Consider this analogy: One member of a married couple insists that, every week and without fail, they have meat and potatoes for dinner M-W-F, fish and rice on T-Th-Sun, and pizza on Sat. The other spouse initially agreed to this routine but eventually tires of it and, more important, becomes resentful that it's the other spouse who is determining the menu. This same spouse then files for divorce. Now, you could say that the divorcing spouse broke up the marriage over nothing more than what they were having for dinner, but it really was a question of power within the relationship.
h/t Don Imus
Tommyesq said
The Emancipation Proclamation was not made until January 1, 1863, nearly two years later.
Not only that, it did not even free any slaves. It only applied to the states than "in rebellion against the United States"
None of them controlled at the time by the United States.
He could have freed the slaves in Deleware and Maryland, both still in the US.
But he didn't.
John Henry
The Deep State was promoting a Presidential boxing match between two lightweights. Unfortunately, Haley just got TKO'ed in one of the easy runnups to the championship. (By some no-name Democratic palooka, er, plant.) As in Carter's last year, even the craftiest plans go awry. What's the fallback for the MSM touts, strange new respect for Chris Christie?
This is amateur hour. It was while she served as SC Governor that Dylan Klebold shot up the black church, and subsequently the state flag was changed. The perception is going to be that she is now, all-of-a-sudden, insensitive to these things. I don't personally believe she is, but it's just a big political blunder.
Now, what?
Kamala v Haley
Bring’m on!
Does this woman have a mind at all?
She doesn't. That's why the anti-Trump GOPe money is behind her. Ramaswamy was right.
I think the first woman President has to be a Democrat anyway...
As stated above a better name for the Civil war is "The war between the states", since it was only a "Civil war" in the border states and parts of VA and Tennessee.
It should be noted that the Upper south was really fighting seccession. They only left after Abe Lincoln called for troops to "put down the rebellion". Once they had to choose between fighting with the North or the Deep South, they chose the Deep south. But they didn't write the Confederate Constitution or the various "Declarations of Independence" put out by various deep southern states.
Personally, I wish the boys in grey and blue instead of shooting each other, had gone to Richmond and DC and shot the Politicians. The whole war was unneccessary -and easily been solved by a compromise. A rich man's war, and a poor man's fight. Strange that the two worst states: Massachutes and SC, that led the extreme factions on both sides, are today the two worst states. Extreme and globalist.
Had I been alive, I would've joined Mark Twain and gone "out West".
“What caused the Civil War?” is a different question than “what cause was it fought over?”
That said, Haley answered neither.
It's not like Trump is well spoken on the subject, his 2017 remarks on the subject referred to Andrew Jackson who died in 1845.
“People don’t realize, you know, the Civil War, if you think about it, why?” Trump said in an interview with The Washington Examiner that also aired on Sirius XM radio. “People don’t ask that question, but why was there the Civil War? Why could that one not have been worked out?”
She has demonstrated a fundamental lack of historical understanding and political skill. Is that disqualifying in this age of a hollowed out political class?
A more pertinent question:
Nikki, what will be the cause of the next Civil War?
States rights and slavery. Period. The end.
See that’s easy.
If the questioner was a plant or not makes no difference. It was a stupid answer to a somewhat complex but not difficult question.
Slavery was the underlying cause of the war. There are other issues involved, but generally everything traces back to slavery. The South was only able to hold onto slavery because of the balance in the Senate, and with the West opening up and in little need of slavery that balance was unsustainable, which is why there were proposals to annex Cuba or the Yucatan or whatever else they could turn into slave states. If the matter was only state rights or tariffs, that could have been resolved without bloodshed. Slavery could not.
@tommyesq, +1000
I don't know what possessed her to answer in the fashion she did but, noting that she removed the Confederate-style South Carolina flag that was restored by Democrat Fritz Hollings back in the 1960s, I'm pretty well convinced that she's been told this is the answer to the question that is favored by certain segments of the GOP. As with the issue not being the crime but the cover up, the issue is less the tone-deafness of her answer but the evidence that she simply regurgitates phrases she is told will play well.
"I had a contentious discussion with some Canadians in Ireland in 1979"
There are few things more insufferable than Canadians in Ireland.
Bird Brain strikes again. Maybe her South Carolina connection was her first priority. There was a way to finesse that answer but she is not smart enough. Always mention slavery and Democrats in the same sentence.
Haley pretending slavery wasn't the cause of the civil war to DeSantis pushing a curriculum highlighting the "valuable skills" slaves gained. They need to admit the civil war was about a book about slavery.
Whatever.
I agree. It was a trap question and she knew it. Was there a good answer For you harpies what are pouncing is there any answer to the question she could have given that you would have accepted?
A stupid question, but ought to be the one every Republican dreams of getting. And the answer is, of course, the civil war was fought to make Democrats relinquish their slaves. The Republicans won, but the freed slaves still had to fight the Democrats for another century. Thank God for Republicans like Lincoln and Eisenhower.
“People don’t ask that question, but why was there the Civil War? Why could that one not have been worked out?”
Lefty Mark with another own goal on Trump. Explain the Missouri Compromise to us, Mark.
What do you say when they are trying to pin slavery on you?
Nikki shoulda said, "Democrats wanted to keep their slaves. Republicans wanted to free them."
Why was this a (valid) question in the 2023 Republican primary campaigns? It should have been dismissed as a stupid question (ask it in 5th grade, maybe and explore deeper in junior high) and treated as such. Having said that, Haley failed on two points: giving the question equal weight AND answering it poorly. Then she shite the bed with her followup answer which I also thought was rhetorical.
Almost finished with "Gotham", a book about NYC history to 1898. The way they treated blacks (not to mention the Irish, but that's a different subject) in NYC, why, it read as if NYC was a SOUTHERN STATE with all the hate, slavery, violence, lynching, on and on... But I never heard any of that in school or anywhere else growing up -- it was always "the South" painted as a demon.
Back to Haley: Trump would have blown away that questioner and destroyed him.
MarcusB. THEOLDMAN
Hey, Old and Slow:
Canadians DESERVE Pierre Tredeau just as the Dems deserve Biden.
M. (Old and hurting here ..... replacement hip surgery on the horizon)
@John Henry:
"OTOH, it would probably be too complex for most public school graduates who think that the US is "A" country..."
**********
So....The Unted States of America, with a Constitution ratified by the original 13 colonies is not "a" country---even though that Constitution sets up a federal government with powers the states do not have, and under its Article 1, Sec. 8 gives that government sole powers to engage in foreign diplomacy, declare and engage in war, coin money, collect taxes from all the states....etc.
And even though the original 13 colonies and states joining the Union after that agreed to those federal powers as binding.
And even though other nations, including the United Nations, treat that federal government as the sole representative of all the States.
But naaaahhhh...that doesn't make us a "country".
SNORT
She's a modern professional politician, which is to say, she's not particularly well-educated, well-read, or intelligent.
She's smart enough to craft a campaign persona, smart enough to go on lucrative political sabbaticals to build her pile of defense-contractor loot while sitting on their boards for a few quarterly meetings, but she's not that intelligent, and certainly not charismatic or quick on her intellectual feet.
I think she's just a social surfer, riding the wave of modern feminism and hoping the trend holds up. She's predictable and reliable as the Conservative GOPe Corporate Candidate, and that's good enough for them. Not good enough to win, though.
Marcus,
Everyone I know who has gotten a hip/s replaced were extremely happy once they healed up.
Yes, Haley's reply is word-salad. However, if had she said something that amounted to slavery caused the Civil War, she would have been pandering to the idiots, or else revealing herself to be one of them.
What caused the Civil War was the secession of the majority of the slave states spurred by the election of Abraham Lincoln, a man widely seen by Southerners as irredeemably hostile to slavery. However, Lincoln's entire political history up to his inauguration notably lacks explicit sympathy with radical abolitionism. Lincoln was resolutely opposed to the expansion of slavery into the West, nor did he hold with the principles of the Missouri Compromise. Lincoln looked forward to the end of slavery, but he was unwilling until 1862 to do anything precipitous about the peculiar institution. Lincoln wanted a constitutional answer to the question of slavery. Eventually, as statehood expanded into the West, an abolition amendment would be proposed and would likely pass into law. This is what the South states feared and why the majority of them precipitated the secession crisis of 1861.
Lincoln's cause was the preservation of the Union, and he was perfectly willing to use bayonets in that cause. (Robert E. Lee rejected the offer of supreme commander of the Union forces in protest to the President's policy.) Slavery had little to do with it.
"If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that."
Nor did the slavery question motivate the majority of the Unionist volunteers who answered the President's call for troops on 15 April 1861. They turned out to suppress rebellion, not to emancipate slaves. It was only after 18 months of inconclusive bloodletting that Lincoln realized the war he chose to fight needed a more lofty cause than the Union alone, hence the Emancipation Proclamation, one of the more clever bits of propaganda ever devised.
By the summer of 1862, the war for the Union had lost much of its luster in the North. The Confederates had shown themselves to be more than able soldiers capable of defending their independence. Let the South go became the topic of numerous editorials and soapbox speeches, particularly in the Middle West where abolitionist sentiment had never been popular. Lincoln saw the need to do something apparently radical on the slavery question to give his supporters a stronger argument in favor of continued war against the secessionist states, yet not so radical as to push Kentucky, Maryland, Delaware, West Virginia, and Missouri into the Confederacy.
West TX Intermediate Crude wrote:
"Nikki shoulda said, "Democrats wanted to keep their slaves. Republicans wanted to free them."
Bingo!
Yes, Democrats brainstormed for weeks poll-testing what question their plant should pose to the GOP front-runner. Then the idiot went to a Haley town hall.
The most interesting thing about it is how the establishment has made Nikki their new default selection. Both the politicians and the media. It still won't work, and it has nothing to do with her answer to the 'civil war question'. The rank and file conservative voters don't want her. This isn't the Democratic Party where they can simply place a person into the nomination- cutting out all others.
Haley is not going to be the selection. The only thing left to see is if DeSantis has a pulse in Iowa. If he has a good showing, then New Hampshire. Outside of any strong showing by DeSantis, the only remaining question is who are the Dems going to run against Donald Trump? There's no way they're going to let Joe Biden do this again. It's not covid time. He's going to have to come out this time. He's going to have to eventually face some actual questions that weren't pre-selected and approved.
And Hunter's business dealings and laptop are real and they're spectacular.
I misspoke -- the SC state flag wasn't changed. The confederate flag was removed from the statehouse.
Everyone knows the true causes of the Civil War.
Abraham Lincoln, who was totally GOPe, silenced his critics on social media and then stole the 1860 election. The fake news media wouldn’t report it.
It was a trap question and she knew it.
What was the trap she didn't fall into?
It was a big country, even in 1860, and millions of people have multiple objectives and goals. Why does anyone think there was only one cause for the tragedy of the civil war? I think there were two main causes; first, that the election of Lincoln and western expansion made slavery vulnerable to elimination, and second, that the south saw the center of power gravitating north and was destined to become a colony of NewEngland so, better to be the big fish in a small pond.
The South Carolina declaration synopsis in wiki says:
The General Government, as the common agent, passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the States. For many years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution.[2]
Further on:
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.
Haley should have seen the gotcha question, and asked the person “what do you think caused it sir?”
Let’s give Nikki credit for one observation in this brutal aftermath.
She observes that forces are arrayed, who want Trump, not her, to be the nominee. Because they expect to beat Trump more easily. And there’s at least some truth with that. Of course Nikki was never going to be the nominee. In the now-impossible circumstance where someone other than Trump won the nomination in primary season, Trump would never concede, and he would still run as an independent.
It’s Trump; and I look forward to a year where, with a campaign that will have no shortage at all of funds devoted to beating Trump, and a succession of criminal trials of Trump, I expect that we cut Trump’s living guts out. Figuratively speaking, of course. It’s the best thing; regular, repeated electoral beatings of Trump.
I'll give Haley credit for not saying "whiteness"...which would be the correct answer at all the best schools.
Marcus Bressler at 141: I endured a year of hip pain, day and night, and the hip replacement was my best medical decision ever.
Inevitably, there is risk. But the risk is low, and the rewards have been enormous for me. I have returned to golf and singles tennis.
One thing: research your surgeon for hip replacement experience. There's variation in skill level. Good luck.
rehajm said...
Was there a good answer For you harpies what are pouncing is there any answer to the question she could have given that you would have accepted?
What do you say when they are trying to pin slavery on you?
You reject the premise of the question, and point out that it was the Democrats holding the slaves.
IMHO, being able to think quickly on your feet is a highly desirable quality in a President.
Haley apparently lacks that skill, but so do Obama and Biden.
Haley needs a Candy Crowley to bail her out.
Blogger Mark said quoted our President Emeritus
“People don’t realize, you know, the Civil War, if you think about it, why?” Trump said in an interview with The Washington Examiner that also aired on Sirius XM radio. “People don’t ask that question, but why was there the Civil War? Why could that one not have been worked out?”
That's actually a pretty decent answer. Some might argue that it is overly optimistic. On the other hand, who ever thought that the Saudis and Israelis, and others, would sign agree to anything like the Abrahamic Accords after 5,000 years of more or less constant war.
Or get the Norks to back off on their talk of nuclear war.
The man who could do that might very well have been able to negotiate agreement between north and south.
Pretty much any peaceful solution would have been better than the resulting devastation and 150 years of continuing bitterness.
Before someone jumps in saying "buh, buh, buh a negotiated settlement might have included slavery." Yeah, it might have. I would hope not but it might have.
As Lincoln said:
If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.
Note also that Lincoln wants to save the "union" not the country. He recognized that the US was not a country in any traditional sense of the word.
John Henry
Blogger Marcus Bressler said...
Hey, Old and Slow:
Canadians DESERVE Pierre Tredeau just as the Dems deserve Biden.
In the ladies bathrooms in Canadian parliament women have to pay for a tampon.
Trudeau just initiated FREE tampons in the Parliament men's bathrooms. Last week, I think.
Protip: Many of the seceding states issued clear public statements of their reason for leaving the Union. It was spelled S-l-a-v-e-r-y.
The Democrats of 1860-61 used similar crooked shenanigans to stampede the Slave States out of the Union that they have used since, most recently in 2016 and especially 2020, when a threat to their stranglehold on social, political, and economic power had to be nipped in the bud.
One major difference is that in 1860 the Slavocrats thought they could hold the world economy over a barrel with King Cotton. The masters of a few million miserable slaves convinced themselves that they had a civilization, and were Masters of the Universe.
Anyone who confuses secession in defense of slavery with reasonable politics or simple common sense is a damn fool.
MAGA Narr keeps trying to disparage the modern Democratic Party by invoking Democrats from the 1850s, while fighting tooth and nail to preserve monuments honoring those very same people. For people who are supposedly so proud of their heritage/history, they sure don't want to teach it.
LLR Chuck writes, "I look forward to a year where... yaddah, yaddah, yaddah"
Does the commentariat recall LLR Chuck flexing his rhetorical muscles over Trump's inevitable electoral destruction in 2016?
"MAGA Narr keeps trying to disparage the modern Democratic Party..."
Wasted effort, Narr. Democrats do that job for themselves very efficiently.
Notice on a post strictly about Nikki Haley, the leftists here just can't help but talk about Trump.
Did slavery cause the Civil War?
The answer is yes, no, and yes.
Anyone stupid enough to ask such a question deserves no more clear answer.
Buhaha She deserves this. RDS would give a proper answer.
All you have to do is read the comments here to see why Nikki Haley gave such a bad answer. The idea that one person’s freedom, such as the “freedom” to hold slaves, can be another person’s bondage is lost on MAGA Republicans.
Thirty years ago or so I read a book on people's thinking at different ages. Five yr olds were black and white, 5th graders a bit more right/wrong, teenagers seeing the "good" in the bad kid, etc. They pointed out, that political ads, answers had to be to the 5 yr old mind. That was the level of the news media/inattentive public. We see that in the polarizing opinions.
Sadly, the 5 yr old mind is now what the college edumedicated work with. They have the gameshow knowledge of received opinion. I remember when they all went after Palin for saying 1775 when all the "smart" people knew the Boston Tea Party was in 1776 timeframe. Not.
Well, apparently, Haley didn't get the memo. She went with complex answer. She tried to use a paragraph for the multiple choice answer, "slavery".
She should have confused the crowd by first acknowledging that the Confederate states seceded out of fear that slavery might be ended. That Lincoln called up the Militia to reclaim federal property taken by the seceded states. That slavery didn't become the defining issue until January 1863 with the Emancipation Proclamation, which was done for domestic and foreign political reasons as well as to administrative since it permitted the Union Army to emancipate the slaves they were holding as enemy contraband and having to care for. Domestically, it ended any idea of a negotiated peace and was likely very popular in the upper midwest where the pietists were far more abolitionist than the coastal Atlantic/NYC areas. It also put Great Britain and France on notice that aid to the CSA was support of slavery which was domestically disfavored.
But the only answer the media "journalists" and the university professors would accept is "slavery" without elaboration. It is the received opinion and cannot be discussed
Re motivations of Civil War soldiers...
It is true that most volunteers joined to save the Union. But there were many that joined as abolitionists as well. Many years ago, reading the Illinois Adjutant General's Report on the war, the volume on letters home, there is a lot of reaction to the Emancipation Proclamation.
Some of it is sort of why make this about the negroes, they suck. Much of it is about, finally, let's free the slaves, that's what this war is really about.
This was especially true in the Western armies, where the soldiers campaigned through Tennessee and Mississippi and saw with their own eyes the fruits of slavery. By the time of the Georgia and Carolina campaigns, Sherman's army became consciously an army of liberation.
I thought I published a comment. It's disappeared. Guess I'll have to wait to see what happened. Maybe I didn't screw it up.
It was brilliant.
Well, not so much.
Simplest answer that would have blown up the whole issue, which would have led to the media burying it entirely? What Haley should have said?
"What caused the Civil War...? Why, Johnny, the Civil War was caused by the Democrats who wanted to keep their slaves seceding from the Union and then firing on a Federal fort..."
Short, to the point, inarguable on historical details... And, exactly the reality that the Democrat scum have been covering up for years and years.
Guarantee you that if Haley had actually said something like that? You'd have never heard of any of this.
Woman isn't fit for the job she's running for. This was a predictable question, and even an off-the-cuff answer should have been better phrased. Anyone from a Southern state should have been able to at least equivocate by saying something like "Well, that's a divisive question for a lot of folks... Some say this, some say that, and I wasn't there so I don't think my opinion matters, now does it?"
Well we saw after reconstruction when there were two different systems of justice
It's actually a hard question. Before high school, I would have, without thinking, said that slavery caused the Civil War. At that time, I neither understood slavery, nor causation, nor history, so it was an easy answer to give.
Then, in high school AP US History, I had the benefit of a serious Marxist teacher (not like today's faux-Marxists) who had us research for ourselves various speeches and newspaper interviews from the critical months between Lincoln's election and the shelling of Ft. Sumter.
Bottom line, if causes are what you're looking for, it's obscure. My teacher's take was, of course, that it was industrial capitalism's fault (and yes, we distinguished industrial from financial capitalism - my teacher was a serious Marxist), and though I now have a further evolved opinion on the matter, it is still compatible with his.
So yes, the Civil War was due to the incompleteness/failure of the American Revolution (my current view), and due to the industrial policy of the Union (my teacher's view), and due to slavery. The three are inextricably intertwined. The causal question with respect to the war turns on how you view causal dependencies among the three precursors just mentioned.
Bottom line: Haley was blindsided with a tough question that the media thinks is easy and obvious, but isn't, and isn't suited for a town-hall style response. That said, the exact question asked of Haley was once asked of me in a State Department Oral Proficiency Interview, in Finnish. I gave quite an extended answer.
Agree with Althouse. How does the Republican presidential candidate who is also the Governor of South Carolina not have a stock answer to that question?
Temujin, as usual, has the most insightful comment in this thread. This is how you should view the GOP nomination situation as of tonight:
"The only thing left to see is if DeSantis has a pulse in Iowa. If he has a good showing, then New Hampshire. Outside of any strong showing by DeSantis, the only remaining question is who are the Dems going to run against Donald Trump?"
It really is DeSantis or Trump, and this has been the reality ever since DeSantis started his campaign. I don't really understand why Haley (and Tim Scott etal.) had campaigns unless they are deliberately working with Trump in the background to divide the Chuck/Rich/Lonejustice vote and prevent it from coelescing around DeSantis. It isn't impossible this is why they ran, but that is the effect they have on the nomination process- DeSantis can't gain enough ground with so many candidates sure to make it as far as South Carolina. If DeSantis can't finish well clear of all the also-rans and second to Trump in Iowa, his campaign is finished and it will be Trump who will lock up the nomination very early this time. At a minimum, DeSantis needs to keep Trump within 15% in Iowa- so he could lose to Trump 50-35 and would be set up to make it a race in the following two primairies, but if the result is Trump 50%, DeSantis 20%, Haley 20%, rest 10%, then there is no momentum at all, and Trump will win New Hampshire by an even larger margin and it snowballs from there.
I thought 6 months ago that DeSantis would be the nominee, and he still has a chance, but the presence of all the other candidates still in the race dilutes the portion of the vote he really needed to be a serious challenger to Trump, and pushing Haley so hard just makes it even more likely that both fail to reach that level.
Rich, it's the hit cur that yelps.
Anyway, do tell me and everyone else about my fighting tooth and nail to preserve memorials to the Confederacy. I'll even give you a hint--I have been in the history arena--very much including ACWABAWS and Civil Rights--since the mid 80s (Nineteen, I say, nineteen) 80s, and have been here since 2015 or so, so there's a long trail to follow.
Have fun, and come back when you're done.
There is rarely, if ever, a distinct "causation" of an historical event. There are accidental and intentional events of varying proximateness, economic, technological and and social forces, cultural drivers relating to elements of personal and social identity, etc.
Mark Twain blamed Sir Walter Scott. I could blame the Founders for their failure to explain in the Constitution whether secession was or wasn't an option, and for their failure to explicitly provide an end date for slavery. It was also caused in part by a collective failure to anticipate what a bloody disastrous mess the war was going to be. Even the people who started the Civil War claimed to have different reasons fo doing so.
When I was a little kid in Catholic school, I amused myself and my friends by asking the unfortunate teacher impossibly difficult questions, phrased simply: e.g., Sister, what is it like in heaven, and how do we know? Sister, why does God create suffering and evil in the world?
Politicians have to expect to be handed subtle brain twisters, and they need to be ready with escape lines.
It's not a hard question. There may be more than one answer, as with many what--was-the-cause history questions. But Haley's answer was nonsensical.
A lot of half-baked “history” getting promulgated up-thread. For instance:
… having joined voluntarily, and having made no committment to the contrary, some states felt that they had the right to unjoin. The northern states disagreed and invaded the southern states.
Completely distorted. Lincoln had promised that he would not be the one to commence hostilities. Throughout the North there was widespread resignation in the face of the secessions accompanied by an attitude of “Let them go in peace.”
Then the South (specifically, South Carolina) attacked U.S. forces at the offshore island fort (which was legitimately acquired U.S. Government property, purchased many years before from the State of South Carolina), Fort Sumter. The massive artillery attack (which might easily have killed American troops) caused a lightning bolt in Northern public opinion – as well as freeing Lincoln from his promise.
Southern apologists typically claim that the South had no choice but attack – or weep that Lincoln tricked them into attacking. The first is false – they could simply have treated Fort Sumter as an enclave – to be recovered later via negotiations. But even if the latter were true, the South (South Carolina) eagerly bought into attacking – because they felt sure they'd win the war.
But, way beyond that, important elements in the South Carolinian leadership believed that the South had to win its freedom via bloody war – or else (e.g.) southern states would eventually start drifting back to the Union – so they launched the assault. The rest is history. [Source: W.A. Swanberg, _First Blood: The Story of Fort Sumter_, 1957, Charles Scribner's Sons.]
Here's another completely false assertion:
He [Lincoln] could have freed the slaves in Deleware and Maryland, both still in the US.
No he couldn't have. Lincoln had no constitutional authority to invade and transcend the internal bailiwicks of non-rebellious states still loyally remaining in the Union. It took a constitutional amendment to accomplish abolition in those states.
Left Bank of the Charles said...
All you have to do is read the comments here to see why Nikki Haley gave such a bad answer. The idea that one person’s freedom, such as the “freedom” to hold slaves, can be another person’s bondage is lost on MAGA Republicans.
***********
Funny, innit, that the people who *actually* didn't understand that one person's freedom couild be another person's bondage were *actually* Democrats, those who owned those slaves.
Also very odd is the claim that MAGA Republicans don't understand the idea, when Haley's supports are not MAGA Republicans.
So...aside from being stupidly inaccurate, your comment nails it!!!
SNORT
Michael,
You are quite right about Sumter but that's not what I had in mind. I was thinking about who invaded who. The north invaded the southern states. The sout didn't invade the north until Antietem more than a year into the war.
As for freeing the slaves in Maryland and Delaware you are right, Lincoln had no constitutional power to do that. Nor did he have the constitutional power to do it in the southern states.
In any event Lincoln tended to view the constitution more as a guideline than anything set in stone.
Arguably, Lincoln had no more legal/constitutional authority to free the slaves in the south than he would have had to free the slaves in Brazil. If one accepts that the states did actually secede. It was decided that although they claimed to have seceeded, they never actually did.
John Henry
Yancey Ward:
So at some time in the recent past, and perhaps even now, you were anticipating the possibility that another Republican presidential candidate would defeat Trump in a number of primaries, and win the GOP nomination.
At which point, Trump does... what, exactly? Concede gracefully, and encourage the Party to unite around the successful new candidate? Give a beautiful concession speech in favor of DeSantis? Haley? Who?
What in the hell ever got you believing such a fiction? Trump wouldn't evere accept a defeat. He'd run as an independent, or as the nominee of some other party. Rules be damned.
But he's not going to lose this nomination. You're stuck with him. And no matter how bad it gets for Trump in 2024 -- and it is going to get unimaginably bad, for sure -- you are stuck with him. You are stuck with the permanent Trump minority. An absolute ceiling on popularity that hovers around 42%. Only an electoral college fluke could save him. But it didn't in 2020, and won't in 2024.
The best line of the week was that some in the GOP had thought late last year that with Ron DeSantis, they could get 'Trump without the baggage.' But instead they got 'Ted Cruz without the personality.'
I have no pity, no sympathy whatsoever for you. It's true that the remaining deadender Republicans with more than two brain cells to rub together were looking for a Trump alternative 12 months ago. DeSantis was widely thought to be that guy. They knew that after J6, and the criminal/civil rape/civil fraud trials, Trump would be so damaged that he'd be a guaranteed loser. But you guys never cut your ties with Trump. You never condemned him. You never called him out as a loser. So again, now you're stuck with him and the prospect of another Trump loss is a bit thrilling to me.
Left Bank of the Charles said...
"The idea that one person’s freedom, such as the 'freedom' to hold slaves, can be another person’s bondage is lost on MAGA Republicans."
Well, it's certainly true that MAGA Republicans don't agree with that mindset. It is certainly the progressive/liberal left that seems to espouse such sophistry. And it violates Natural Rights principles that inspired the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. But just because they don't espouse it doesn't mean they don't understand it.
Flubbing the easy ones: Robby SHOCKS Brie in UNHINGED Debate Over Slavery on The Hill's Rising
Pepperdine Uni has some videos with Victor Davis Hanson on various historical leaders. The link below is the talk on Sherman. It's informative. He points out the units out of the Midwest were more about abolition and also felt the poor whites in the South were treated nearly as bad
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGVCYkuTvII
I've found this from Gen Sherman's memoirs to be informative on what the Washington opinion of what was to come of the freed slaves. The time is right after Lincoln's assassination and as Sherman awaited response on the original terms for Gen Johnston's surrendering the bulk of the Confederate Army. Those terms were refused by Washington and the surrender was on the same terms as Grant offered Lee.
Memoirs of General William T. Sherman, Vol II,
Pg 373
I had a long and frank conversation, during which he [Chief Justice Chase] explained to me the confusion caused in Washington by the assassination of Mr. Lincoln, the sudden accession to power of Mr. Johnson, who was then supposed to be bitter and vindictive in his feelings toward the South, and the wild pressure of every class of politicians to enforce on the new President their pet schemes. He showed me a letter of his own, which was in print, dated Baltimore, April 11th, and another of April 12th, addressed to the President, urging him to recognize the freedmen as equal in all respects to the whites. He was the first man, of any authority or station, who ever informed me that the Government of the United States would insist on extending to the former slaves of the South the elective franchise, and he gave as a reason the fact that the slaves, grateful for their freedom, for which they were indebted to the armies and Government of the North, would, by their votes, offset the disaffected and rebel element of the white population of the South.
Usually when there's a thread like this on any blog with comments- the It Wasn't About Slavery! rushes in, en masse, to defend their delusions.
It was about slavery. Were there other factors? Why yes, yes there were. But it wasn't about them- it was about slavery.
It settled one question- states do not have the right to secede. Note that the Confederate and Federal Constitution both have ways of taking in new states, new territories, rules for states trading territory, merging, or splitting. But no provision for them leaving. And this AFTER the CSA states said they had a right to secede. They didn't. And it's rather notable they didn't include such provision in their own Constitution. In fact, the states that were part of the original founding knew that well- because the USA was founded not by the Constitution, but the Articles of Confederation. Full name- The Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union. Perpetual. Meaning joining up is a one way street. The Constitution doesn't say that directly, but since a way to leave isn't there but a way to do everything else is included, well, that's kind of a telling point.
Even so, the South had to attack Federal property before suppression of the rebellion could start. And the hotheads did it. The USA never declared war on the CSA, that would have been recognizing it as a legitimate nation- which would create all sorts of other problems, primarily diplomatic ones with European nations. Suppressing a rebellion is entirely different then fighting a war of conquest with another nation... Something the Europeans were well familiar with. The CSA Congress did declare war on the USA. One of the few really successful things the US state department has done is- it kept any nation from formally recognizing the CSA a government and exchanging ambassadors with them.
Left Bank of the Charles said...
All you have to do is read the comments here to see why Nikki Haley gave such a bad answer. The idea that one person’s freedom, such as the “freedom” to hold slaves, can be another person’s bondage is lost on MAGA Republicans.
12/28/23, 4:32 PM
Except people like YOU would still have slaves (illegals) whilst "MAGA Republicans" would be fighting for their freedom.
Have you noticed, in comment sections, the only people who bring up MAGA Republicans are about to say something stupid and bigoted and mean about them?
Nikki Halley is not the anti-Trump stalking horse. She is the anti-DeSantis stalking horse to ensure that Trump (the multi-indicted) is the GOP candidate.
The game to make Trump both the inevitable GOP candidate and broadly unelectable.
One of the takeaways I'm getting from the conversation here is that the more classic liberal commentors have a firm grasp of why the civil war was fought. Leading up to it and the execution of it. Our progressive commenters are full of their usual ignorance and snark.
Left Bank of the Charles said...
"All you have to do is read the comments here to see why Nikki Haley gave such a bad answer. The idea that one person’s freedom, such as the “freedom” to hold slaves, can be another person’s bondage is lost on MAGA Republicans."
"We hold these truths to be self evident. That all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights............."
But only if your a Democrat. But only if you are white. But only if you are a citizen.
No. What they declared was and is the birthright of every human being on this planet. Not just us.
Republicans have been fighting for civil rights since the civil war. Demoicrats have worked hard to keep the country divided and in servitude to the state.
Civil War face palm.
US Grant to Representative Washburn August 30, 1863
The people of the North need never quarrelled over Slavery. What V-P Stephens acknowledges as the corner stone of the Confederacy is already knocked out. Slavery is already dead and cannot be resurrected. It would take a standing Army to maintain slavery in the South if we were to make peace today,
I never was an Abolitionist, not even what would be called anti-slavery, but I try to judge fairly & honestly and it became patent to my mind early in the rebellion that North and South could never live at peace with each other except as one nation; and that without Slavery. As anxious as I am to see peace re-established I would not therefore be wiling to see any settlement until this question is settled forever.
One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding.
12/29 8:51 AM Rusty concisely laid the wood to the progressive left. Straight truth.
Rusty, what do you call snark? What MLB wrote?
Just to be clear, when I say “is lost on MAGA Republicans” I don’t mean “lost” in the sense that they are too dense to understand, I mean “lost” in the sense of “Lost Cause”.
Is that too dense to understand? I am still puzzling over this comment: “Except people like YOU would still have slaves (illegals) whilst "MAGA Republicans" would be fighting for their freedom.” I don’t have any illegals or slaves and I don’t see any MAGA Republicans fighting for their freedom. Or am I misunderstanding “would”? Is that the same “wood” that a later commenter speaks of being laid?
In terms of insulting people, I don't care for the use of "libtard". It was designed as a word defining a liberal as a retard. Which, in all fairness, is not very nice thing to say about our retarded people.
I am all in for MAGA -- "Making America Great Again" after the likes of Clinton the pervert and Obama the racist did their best to work in the opposite direction. I am certainly not for "Build Back Better" as nothing of the sort was improved upon after the presidency of DJT.
What the Dems, the Left, and the Traitorous Media have done to Trump before, during, and after his presidency is worthy of the gallows. They will do ANYTHING to prevent another term for the Orange Man, not because they want their man to win, but because they are afraid of his revenge for the tactics and actions the Left has used.
It saddened me, but didn't surprise me, that supposedly straight news stories used the words, "without evidence", or "lies", and, of course, "peaceful protest" versus "insurrection". May they all burn in Hell.
MarcusB. THEOLDMAN
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