Nikki Haley’s South Carolina conundrum, will she beat him or, like Tim Scott, choose to love him?

Nikki Haley is poised to lose the South Carolina by a hefty margin next week. Polls have her behind her opponent who pretends to share their values but only shares their grievances. As a New York, self-proclaimed billionaire, son of a small-time racist real estate tycoon, Trump enters South Carolina as a “scalabagger”- a carpetbagger posing as a scalawag. Haley once owned the state she was born in as its twice-elected governor.

They now are likely to abandon her, like her former friend and protege, Tim Scott, who owed his seat in the U.S. Senate in great part to Haley’s support and serial endorsements. Scott has either forgiven or forgotten that his new friend has a history of bigotry and racism that seems to run in his bloodlines, from father to son. So what is going on?

Haley and Scott have become misfits in the party that has been turned inside out. Both are dyed-in-the-wool conservatives who fit neatly into a Republican Party that once thought it could become more relevant by broadening its tent and promoting diversity and a more moderate message. A young woman governor whose parents immigrated from India and a smart and popular black senator from the same deep red state gave their party a semblance of modernity. Now we see it was a ruse. The center of gravity of the GOP pulled it back to its reactionary past. Trump was simply the vessel party traditionalists needed to end the nonsense. They had thought that they had wrung the post-Reagan “Big Tent” reformers, MAGA is the pig Sarah Palin once mockingly tried to lipstick.

The party had long ago abandoned the suburbs it once dominated for the rural towns and villages of the red-state belt where local politics retained its veiled resentment of diversity and change. These were the nooks and crannies where “the lost cause” hid amidst a futile resentment of time for passing them by. Trumpism was simply the residue of the hatred and bigotry brewing since “their war against Northern aggression.” Nikki and Tim were an aberration, the unfulfilled promise of a “new South”.

In an opinion article by senior editorial staff editor David Swerdlick, the author writes about Haley’s miscalculation of her party’s recent history. He points out her failure to understand the power of her own story in the wake of discrimination its base has demonstrated but that she attributes to one man. Those who have rejected her are surely a part of his entrenched followers but it is their tent that he was invited to represent. Her stumble trying to find a cause for the Civil War demonstrated her need to avoid ticking them off:

Nikki Haley’s insurgent run for her party’s nomination, which has left her the last credible challenger to Donald Trump, is proof of concept for her tightrope-walking approach to declining to endorse or completely rebuke him. Her biggest campaign trail fumble — not identifying slavery as the cause of the Civil War — can mostly be chalked up to a lapse on the stump.

- NYTimes, “ Nikki Haley’s Blind Spot “ by David Swerdlick

Swerdlick goes on to point out that Haley has failed to recognize the extent to which she has surrendered her own remarkable origin story — a realization that would help explain why her candidacy lacks the sting of an honorable but futile attempt to reclaim the party’s soul:

But when Haley was asked, in an interview that aired Wednesday on Charlamagne tha God’s radio show, what she didn’t like about Barack Obama’s presidency, her answer was just plain unserious.

She said that during Obama’s tenure, the country “became more about gender, it became more about race, it became more about separating Americans instead of bringing them together.”

Is she unhappy he appointed only women to the Supreme Court? Did she forget that in the wake of the Mother Emanuel massacre, he salved the nation by singing “ Amazing Grace “?

Has Haley not noticed that her reflections on race in America often sound just like Obama’s?

- Swerdlick

Tim Scott’s awkward endorsement of Trump was rewarded by the candidate’s abuse of Scott’s backing by making an embarrassed and defeated Scott choose between his honor and his ambition. The moment was chilling in its cruelty and was a shameless abuse of Scott’s endorsement:

“Did you ever think [about how] she actually appointed you, Tim? … And you’re the senator of her state,” Trump said to Scott, referring to Haley, the former governor of the Palmetto State.

“You must really hate her…”

- “Trump says Tim Scott ‘must really hate’ Haley,” by Lauren Irwin

Seeing Scott demean himself further trying to temper the words Trump attempted to place in his mouth, a flustered Scott was left without a response and with even less dignity. He could only come up with, “I just love you.” Yeesh!

Scott like Haley had forgotten who he was, and what he once represented within his party. Scott who rose from humble beginnings to become a senator and a viable presidential candidate, lost it all that day. He became just another cover for Donald Trump’s inhumanity, another victim of his brazenness.

In 2016, a Donald Trump reeling from his Access Hollywood debacle and its aftermath, reached out to minorities in response to polling that told him they were voting for his opponent. Trump famously asked, “What do you have to lose?”

Like all those who have decided to forget their better instincts and throw their support to him for the lack of better options, the answer to Trump’s plaintive question has now become clear- everything. And to those in the nation who thought what the hell, held their nose, and joined him, their apathy is also to blame. When Haley loses her home state in a landslide, one in which she was twice voted governor, we will be watching. How she handles the day after will tell us much about her character. She promises to carry her campaign to the convention hoping that the courts may accomplish what the primary Republican voters would not. But if he does win the nomination, will she debase herself like Scott and endorse the man who has called into question her American birthright to run for office? Will she bend a knee and support him even while he uses her name as a racist dog whistle to entertain his clownish base?

Nikki has made a bet that acknowledges what most Americans fear- that the future of our nation will depend on either the courts or Joe Biden’s coalition. At that point she is left with Tim Scott’s dilemma, will she use the tired excuse that has bedeviled the GOP and choose party over the national welfare- or will she decide to love him too?

Beyond accusing them all of abandoning their principles for the sake of party and political ambition, we might better question whether they ever had principles at all.

Originally published at https://vincerizzo.substack.com.