Nobody competing in Paris in a couple of weeks is going to match the dive taken by Nikki Haley on Tuesday. From Politico:
“The nominating convention is a time for Republican unity,” Haley will say in a statement. “Joe Biden is not competent to serve a second term and Kamala Harris would be a disaster for America. We need a president who will hold our enemies to account, secure our border, cut our debt, and get our economy back on track. I encourage my delegates to support Donald Trump next week in Milwaukee.” Asked if Haley is attending the convention, Haley spox Chaney Denton said that Haley “was not invited, and she’s fine with that. Trump deserves the convention he wants. She’s made it clear she’s voting for him and wishes him the best.”
This should be the end of Nikki Haley in national politics. This should consign her to the Island of Misfit Candidates with the likes of Bobby Jindal, Scott Walker, and Rick Perry. She clearly is ambition through and through, alloyed only by a deep and abiding political cowardice. There was no reason for her to take the step she did. She had only ninety-seven delegates, and apparently she wasn’t going to the convention anyway. She could have simply let those delegates go with the flow. Chances are most of them would follow the crowd and vote for the vulgar talking yam anyway. (The ones who didn’t would be found in an abandoned grain elevator at the old Blatz brewery shortly before Christmas.) She could have skipped the self-abnegation festival entirely. Unless...
There has been more than a little talk concerning the possibility that the Republican National Convention might be a little feistier than we thought it would be. Some pro-lifers are angry that the new party platform supports IVF and some forms of contraception and makes no mention of a national abortion ban. It does, however, support fetal personhood as derived from the Fourteenth Amendment, which would make a national ban moot. Nutty former Trump lawyer and future government witness Jenna Ellis seems particularly peeved. From The New Republic:
Ex–Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis was among those who were left disappointed by the new policy, and Ellis took to X (formerly Twitter) to share her furious reaction across several tweets. “The RNC is trading Lila Rose for Amber Rose. Pro-life for pro-abortion. Live Action for Slut Walk. That’s a reflection of Trumpworld over God’s truth,” she wrote, referring to Amber Rose organizing a 2015 SlutWalk protest in Los Angeles to raise public awareness of gender inequality. Rose is reportedly scheduled to speak at the upcoming Republican National Convention. “Christians and conservatives should not support this,” Ellis added.
It also seems that a number of members of the Republican National Committee are beginning to resent being pushed around by the MAGA know-nothings. Also from TNR:
WISN12 News’s political director Matt Smith spoke with Gayle Ruzicka, a disgruntled member of the Republican National Committee platform committee from Utah. Ruzicka is also the president of the Utah Eagle Forum, the conservative lobbying group founded by Phyllis Schafly, who opposed the 1972 Equal Rights Amendment. “It’s never happened before. I mean, I guess I’ve done this several times. There was no committees. We always had subcommittees, where we can go in and rework…a section of the platform; we can propose amendments, debate them, add them. It always happens,” said Ruzicka. “They didn’t allow any amendments. They didn’t allow any discussion. They rolled us. That’s what they did. “You know, we spent thousands of dollars to be here, and everything they told us they were going to do isn’t what happened. None of it happened. I’ve never seen this happen before. I don’t understand why they did it. And I’m extremely disappointed that we do not have any pro-life language,” she said.
So it’s possible that someone leaned on Haley to do this to forestall any unexpected resistance in Milwaukee. They knew they could count on her to fold.
