Why have anti-Trump Republicans chosen Nikki Haley as the one who should beat Trump?

I see, in the NYT, "Some Republicans Have a Blunt Message for Chris Christie: Drop Out/Several anti-Trump Republican donors and strategists are pushing Mr. Christie to end his presidential campaign and back Nikki Haley."

Obviously, it's getting late, and it doesn't seem as though anyone (other than Trump himself) can stop Trump from getting the nomination, but why this convergence on Haley? When I click on my "Nikki Haley" tag to see what I've found notable about her over the course of the campaign, I see nothing I like. She wanted to require everyone on social media to post under their real names. Her idea for the war against Hamas was, bluntly, "Finish them. Finish them." She called Vivek Ramaswamy "scum." He called her "Dick Cheney in 3-inch heels." And she's talked about her heels repeatedly. (She announced her candidacy with the statement: "I don’t put up with bullies. And when you kick back, it hurts them more if you’re wearing heels.")

Googling "Why is Nikki Haley the best choice to beat Trump," I got: "Senate anti-Trump GOP see Haley as best hope to avoid disaster." That was published yesterday in The Hill. The idea there is:

The man famous for being shot in the face by Dick Cheney has died.

There is a NYT obituary for Harry Whittington, who was, otherwise, simply "a wealthy and well-connected lawyer" who — it says here — "typified the breed of Texan known as the good ol’ boy." 

The unfortunate event occurred in 2006. He lived 17 more years and died at the age of 95.

I blogged about the event at the time, mainly because Cheney was getting criticized for not going on camera and apologizing. A Republican defended Cheney, saying Cheney keeps his personal feelings to himself and doesn't care what the public thinks.

I said:

"That music makes the ad sound like an SNL bit. Dude, you're Darth Vader. Pay for the rights to 'Enter Sandman.'"

Said Kate in the comments to my 8:03 post "You know that Dick Cheney ad would be better without that music in the background...."

In honor of Kate's delightful comment, I've made this playlist... because even as Dick Cheney has variations — from Darth Vader to dear old Wyoming dad — "Enter Sandman" has its many moods:

"You know that Dick Cheney ad would be better without that music in the background"/"Oh, yeah? How much better?"

Overheard at Meadhouse.

“In our nation’s 246 year history there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our Republic than Donald Trump.” Dick Cheney pic.twitter.com/erBPBNy8ah

— Liz Cheney (@Liz_Cheney) August 4, 2022

I'm seeing that ad this morning, because WaPo dragged me in with a lurid headline: "That Cheney ad speaks volumes about the GOP’s rot." That's a column by Jennifer Rubin. Does she say that Dick Cheney used to be considered the GOP's rot and now he looks like the virtuous one, but it's just a matter of comparison, and that goes to show how rotten the GOP is?

Now, I've read the piece, and the answer to my question is no. Dick Cheney's reputation as the "dark lord" has evanesced. To refresh your memory, here's an Atlantic article that worked hard — back in August 2011 — to refresh the memory of the evil of Cheney: "Remembering Why Americans Loathe Dick Cheney/As the former vice-president releases his memoir, it's useful to recall the many reasons Americans disapproved of his tenure" (by Conor Friedersdorf):

"What has surprised me most about the history I have lived through is how often we get dragged on demented, destructive rides by leaders who put their personal psychodramas over the public’s well-being...."

"To prove that there were W.M.D.s in Iraq, Putin said, 'the U.S. secretary of state held up a vial with white powder, publicly, for the whole world to see, assuring the international community that it was a chemical warfare agent created in Iraq. It later turned out that all of that was a fake and a sham, and that Iraq did not have any chemical weapons.'  Hard to argue with that. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney let their own egos, gremlins and grandiose dreams occlude reality. W. wanted to outshine his father, who had decided against going into Baghdad when he fought Saddam. And Cheney wanted to kick around an Arab country after 9/11 to prove that America was a hyperpower. So they used trumped-up evidence, and Cheney taunted Colin Powell into making that fateful, bogus speech at the U.N., chockablock with Cheney chicanery. Though Donald Trump was Putin’s lap dog, upending traditional Republican antipathy toward Russia, Putin no doubt has contempt for the weak and malleable Trump. Putin could have been alluding to Trump in his speech Thursday when he accused the U.S. of 'con-artist behavior,' adding that America had become 'an empire of lies.' Certainly, Trump was the emperor of lies."

Writes Maureen Dowd, in "Rash Putin Razes Ukraine" (NYT).

"This is my father. . . . This is dad."

Said Liz Cheney, quoted in "Dick Cheney returns to the House and receives a warm welcome … from Democrats" (WaPo).

Lots of political theater yesterday. At least that was hilarious.

Just so we're clear...

Just so we're clear, "Dick Cheney" is trending because people want ted Cruz to be shot.

Twitter is a cesspit of sociopaths.

— IMPERATOR_NASDAQ (@ImpNasdaq) December 30, 2020

Ted, I enthusiastically encourage you to go hunting with Dick Cheney next time.

— Mrs. Betty Bowers (@BettyBowers) December 29, 2020

Backstory: "Dick Cheney hunting accident" (Wikipedia).

Dancing in the streets.

Gee, where have we heard this before. In 2003, Dick Cheney assured us we'd be "greeted as liberators" in Iraq. https://t.co/gLXbQVsL5D

— Adam Jentleson 🎈🐢💧 (@AJentleson) January 3, 2020

And yet if I put it in the post title, Google will demonetize this page. And you're (half) censoring it in your tweet! And The Atlantic censors it in its headline.

Beto saying "fucked up" isn't profane because f--- is no longer profane in any sense an anthropologist would recognize. It's just salty -- and honest, and sometimes le mot juste. Slurs are our modern profanity, not sex and body words. https://t.co/c0PUjCF1Jf

— John McWhorter (@JohnHMcWhorter) September 6, 2019

From "The F-Word Is Going the Way of Hell/In today’s world, slurs are the real profanity, not the use of an 'F-bomb' to describe a mass shooting":

Why, then, would clean-scrubbed former Representative Beto O’Rourke pop off with the likes of “What the fuck?” in response to an annoying question from a reporter after the shooting in El Paso? Or, after the shooting in Odessa, “We don’t yet know what the motivation is … but we do know this is fucked up."

It strikes me as particularly shallow to use the word in that context. But the correct answer to McWhorter's question is that Beto is desperate at this point. He's got to do something. That is emphatically not what McWhorter says:

O’Rourke’s “F-bomb,” then, was less a matter of swearing than his seeking a note of sincerity. The F-word these days may not be truly profane to many of us, but it remains potent, a way of indicating genuine feeling. That is a common note from O’Rourke, paralleled by his display of his Spanish-speaking skills during the first Democratic debate in June. Related to this sincerity is that his F-bomb was downright articulate: “We don’t yet know what the motivation is … but we do know this is fucked up.” The word untenable would have sounded too formal; problematic too weak; troubling too uncommitted; egregious too Mr. Mooney. “Fucked up,” combining pungency with a streak of impatient dismissiveness, conveys exactly the sentiment O’Rourke intended, as well as precisely the one his supporters share.

Sincerity! I'd've never thought of that.

ADDED: This made me wonder if Trump uses "fuck" in his public speech. I found "The Profanity President: Trump’s Four-Letter Vocabulary" from last May in the NYT.

In a single speech on Friday alone, he managed to throw out a “hell,” an “ass” and a couple of “bullshits” for good measure. In the course of just one rally in Panama City Beach, Fla., earlier this month, he tossed out 10 “hells,” three “damns” and a “crap.” The audiences did not seem to mind. They cheered and whooped and applauded....

“No one has debased the civil discourse in this country more than President Trump, and the president really does set the tone in the country,” said Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California. “We see it reflected in our offices by the hateful, belligerent, obscene and violent calls that we get now that we didn’t used to get.”...

Schiff has a personal beef: Trump called him "little Adam Schitt."

[Trump] has either coarsened the public discourse or reflected it, or perhaps both, depending on your view of him, but he is not alone....

During a campaign event in 2000, George W. Bush was heard over a live microphone talking with his running mate, Dick Cheney, calling a Times reporter he did not particularly like a “major-league asshole.” In 2004, as vice president, Mr. Cheney told a senator on the Senate floor to “go fuck yourself.” His successor, Joseph R. Biden Jr., was overheard in 2010 using a variation of that profanity to tell Barack Obama what a big deal passage of health care legislation was.

Interesting that the Times saw fit to print Cheney's "go fuck yourself" and not Joe Biden's "This is a big fucking deal."

Neither Cheney nor Biden were making a public remark. Here's Biden:

The Times article doesn't have any examples of Trump publicly using the word "fuck."

"Dick Cheney was the safe-cracker, the professional you brought in who knew all the ins and outs of our government. He was the ultimate gamesman. With Trump..."

"... the front door to the White House is wide open. There's deer and dogs and hyenas running around. And this guy is like an orangutan just throwing shit around. But Cheney was the grand master who finished the deal. Donald Trump has no belief system. So I would take the hyenas, the random wild animals running through the White House over Cheney any day of the week. If Cheney had stayed in office — let's say we didn't have term limits, and he was able to go another four, eight years — they would have invaded Iran."

Said Adam McKay, quoted in "The Dick Cheney Dossier: Inside Adam McKay’s Searing Exposé of D.C.'s 'Ultimate Gamesman' in 'Vice'" (Hollywood Reporter).

"Yup – we were duped. Ya’ got me, Sacha. Feel better now?" — says Sarah Palin.

"I join a long list of American public personalities who have fallen victim to the evil, exploitive, sick ‘humor’ of the British ‘comedian’ Sacha Baron Cohen, enabled and sponsored by CBS/Showtime.... Out of respect for what I was led to believe would be a thoughtful discussion with someone who had served in uniform, I sat through a long ‘interview’ full of Hollywoodism’s disrespect and sarcasm – but finally had enough and literally, physically removed my mic and walked out, much to Cohen’s chagrin... The disrespect of our US military and middle-class Americans via Cohen’s foreign commentaries under the guise of interview questions was perverse.'"

Quoted at Deadline Hollywood.

By the way, the standard expression is "much to my chagrin." I think each individual is entitled to give his own report of his own chagrin. I'll wait to hear from Sacha Baron Cohen about whether he was chagrined. No I won't! He wasn't chagrined. Does Sarah Palin even know the meaning of the word? "Acute vexation, annoyance, or mortification, arising from disappointment, thwarting, or failure" (OED).

Palin is once again looking dumb. And here she is trying to defend herself in advance from some comedy clip that, I'll bet, makes her look dumb.

As for the quality of the humor and whether it's evil... I'll wait and see the show for myself. I'm impressed that Cohen is able to trick anyone anymore. His face is famous and his game is old. I've greatly enjoyed his interviews in the past, and when he goes after famous people, especially those who seek to exercise political power, I give him plenty of leeway. Puncture the pretentious. We need comedians to do that.

pic.twitter.com/ngkMhXeReK

— Sacha Baron Cohen (@SachaBaronCohen) July 8, 2018

A message from your President @realDonaldTrump on Independence Day pic.twitter.com/O2PwZqO0cs

— Sacha Baron Cohen (@SachaBaronCohen) July 4, 2018

A Trump pardon for Scooter Libby?

Didn't George W. Bush already pardon Scooter Libby? No, Bush just commuted the 30-month prison sentence. Why is President Trump (reportedly) going to do what Bush did not?

I. Lewis Libby Jr., VP Dick Cheney's chief of staff, "was convicted of four felonies in 2007 for perjury before a grand jury, lying to F.B.I. investigators and obstruction of justice during an investigation into the disclosure of the work of Valerie Plame Wilson, a C.I.A. officer.... Mr. Libby was not charged with the leak itself and has long argued that his conviction rested on an innocent difference in memories between him and several witnesses, not an intent to deceive investigators."

Mr. Libby’s case has long been a cause for conservatives who maintained that he was a victim of a special prosecutor run amok, an argument that may have resonated with the president. Mr. Trump has repeatedly complained that the special counsel investigation into possible cooperation between his campaign and Russia in 2016 has gone too far and amounts to an unfair “witch hunt.”...

Does anyone want to see a biopic about Dick Cheney? And can you picture Christian Bale in the role?

Apparently, this is something Hollywood is attempting to do.

Mr. Bale, 43, is a three-time Oscar nominee and a one-time winner (for his crack-addled boxer in “The Fighter”), but he is best known for playing Batman in Christopher Nolan’s “Dark Knight” trilogy.

And Dick Cheney has been called "The Dark Knight":

1. "Cheney is the Dark Knight." ("I loved The Dark Knight.... And Christian Bale plays an excellent Batman.... But its message was deeply statist, and the movie really reflects the sort of fear that scares Americans most, post-9/11.... This fantasy is precisely the Cheney/Bush approach to fighting the war on terror. The Bush administration couldn't find better cultural-ideological support for this approach than The Dark Knight and its chaos-driven bad guy and its omnipotent hero.")

2. "Dick Cheney is the Dark Knight." ("The Dark Knight, however, is conservative fantasy – someone who cuts through the red tape and throws bad guys off of balconies.")

3. "The Dark Knight: An Allegory of America in the Age of Bush?" ("Batman is a vigilante who works outside the law in order to combat crime; operating in the dark policy corridors to which Vice-President Dick Cheney alluded in speeches following 9/11.")

4. "Dark Knight: Former Vice President Cheney in the Global War on Terror." ("In a world of suicide bombers, weapons of mass destruction (WMD), covert financial sponsors, and enemies unconstrained by the laws of armed conflict, Cheney emerged as the man in the shadows who would do whatever he deemed necessary to address these threats. The power he acquired, however, and its implications for the future of a democratic society, caused many Americans to fear a greater potential threat from within.")

5. "The Dark Knight Turns Out to Be a Dick Cheney Fantasy." ("But as the film reached its climactic denouement, I found myself getting more and more perturbed at its underlying message, which seemed straight from the office of the Vice President.")

Quite aside from the specific connection to Batman/The Dark Knight, Cheney has been relentlessly characterized as "dark":

1. A NYRB review of 3 books about Cheney is titled "In the Darkness of Dick Cheney." ("[S]ecret power. Untrammeled power. Hard power. The power behind POTUS. The Dark Side.")

2. Just last November, Steve Bannon said: "Darkness is good. Dick Cheney. Darth Vader. Satan. That's power. It only helps us when they (liberals) get it wrong. When they're blind to who we are and what we're doing."

And I don't know what Dick Cheney thinks of the comparison to The Dark Knight, but "Dick Cheney embraces the Darth Vader meme":

While attending his granddaughter’s high school rodeo in Casper, Wyoming, Cheney showed reporters a trailer-hitch cover in the shape of the infamous “Star Wars” villain. “I’m rather proud of that,” he told them with a smile....

President George W. Bush also cracked a joke about it during Halloween season in 2007 while he was still in office. ”This morning I was with the vice president... I was asking him what costume he was planning. He said, ‘Well, I’m already wearing it.’ Then he mumbled something about the dark side of the force.” That same year Cheney said, “I’ve been asked if that nickname bothers me, and the answer is, no. After all, Darth Vader is one of the nicer things I’ve been called recently.”

Sad!

If the press would cover me accurately & honorably, I would have far less reason to "tweet." Sadly, I don't know if that will ever happen!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 5, 2016

AND: Asked about Trump's tweeting, Dick Cheney said:

I think one of the reasons people get so concerned about the tweets is it is sort of a way around the press. He doesn't have to rely upon, uh, rely upon [the press]. This is the modern era, modern technology. He's at the point where we don't need you guys anymore.

Who is Hillary like?

After shifting policies to mirror Trump... now she copies his hair! pic.twitter.com/2cAQYGBb7m

— MATT DRUDGE (@DRUDGE) August 15, 2016

Drudge says she's emulating Trump, but Maureen Dowd says Hillary — and not Trump — is carrying on the George W. Bush tradition:

All these woebegone Republicans whining that they can’t rally behind their flawed candidate is crazy. The G.O.P. angst, the gnashing and wailing and searching for last-minute substitutes and exit strategies, is getting old.

They already have a 1-percenter who will be totally fine in the Oval Office, someone they can trust to help Wall Street, boost the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, cuddle with hedge funds, secure the trade deals beloved by corporate America, seek guidance from Henry Kissinger and hawk it up — unleashing hell on Syria and heaven knows where else.

The Republicans have their candidate: It’s Hillary.... 

"My brother is a big boy. His administration was shaped by his thinking, his reaction to the attack on 9/11."

"I think my dad, like a lot of people that love George, want to try to create a different narrative, perhaps, just because that’s natural to do."

Said Jeb Bush, who's trying to run for President and has to deal with his very elderly father saying some awkwardly critical things relating to his older brother.

George H.W. Bush, writing in his diary in 1988, called Michael Dukakis "midget nerd."

I'm looking for things in the the NYT article "Elder Bush Says His Son Was Served Badly by Aide" that you may not have already noticed.

After defeating the "midget nerd" in 1988, Bush wound up a one-term President, losing to Bill Clinton. I don't know what 2-word epithets he may have aimed at Clinton, but I see that, instead of going on to fight for the second term, he considered — over a year and a half before the election — announcing that he was not going to run for a second term:

He would “call a press conference in about November and just turn it loose,” he said in the audio diary. “You need someone in this job” who could give his “total last ounce of energy, and I’ve had” that “up until now, but now I don’t seem to have the drive.”

Energy. That's Trump's favorite buzzword, used most notably against Elder Bush's son Jeb.

More from the diary, making the job of President sound horrible:

“Maybe it’s the letdown after the day-to-day” 5 a.m. calls “to the Situation Room; conferences every single day with Defense and State; moving things, nudging things, worrying about things, phone calls to foreign leaders, trying to keep things moving forward, managing a massive project.... Now it’s different, sniping, carping, bitching, predictable editorial complaints.”

As for the criticism of Cheney and Rumsfeld, I'll briefly note Elder Bush's tendency to call everyone "iron-ass":

"[Dick Cheney] just became very hard-line.... Just iron-ass...."

“I’ve concluded that Lynne Cheney is a lot of the eminence grise here – iron-ass, tough as nails, driving,” he said...

“I think [Rumsfeld] served the president badly... I don’t like what he did, and I think it hurt the president having his iron-ass view of everything...."

Making Cheney look like the kiss of death.

Near the top of Memeorandum right now:

"Chris Wallace Presses Cheney on Iran: Didn’t You ‘Leave President Obama with a Mess’?"

"Why no, no he didn’t. In fact, things were going so well as late as 2010 that the Obama Administration was bragging about Iraq as one of its big foreign policy successes.... Obama blew it in Iraq, which is in chaos, and in Syria, which is in chaos, and in Libya, which is in chaos."

3 Pinocchios for Dick Cheney's assertion that we did not prosecute Japanese soldiers for waterboarding.

WaPo's Fact Checker Glenn Kessler says:

Cheney dismissed too cavalierly [Chuck] Todd’s question about the prosecution of Japanese soldiers for waterboarding. One could quibble about whether these practices were exactly like the techniques practiced by CIA interrogators. But Todd raised a legitimate question and, contrary to Cheney’s assertion, waterboarding was an important charge in a number of the lesser-profile cases. Moreover, waterboarding also resulted in at least one court martial during the Vietnam War.