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Why Nikki Haley Gets Under Trump’s Skin
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Why Nikki Haley Gets Under Trump’s Skin
Haley understands one crucial thing: if you’re facing off against the Twice Impeached, 4 times Indicted Felony Criminal Defendant Donald Trump , you have to fight dumb with dumb
It is a mark of just how low are the expectations one brings to the Republican primary race that Nikki Haley, the last woman standing against Donald Trump, appears impressive as a candidate solely by virtue of not being a lunatic.
It reminds me of the lyrics to I’m Still Here, that Stephen Sondheim standard from Follies listing all the terrible things – the Depression, J Edgar and Herbert Hoover, religion and pills – the singer has come through unscathed, only in this case it’s Chris Christie and Ron DeSantis. That leaves Haley, the 52-year-old former governor of South Carolina and one-time US ambassador to the UN, as the only thing standing between us and a Biden/Trump runoff.
The odds of a Haley victory over Trump appear vanishingly small after the Criminal Defendant’s early primary wins in Iowa and New Hampshire. Polling numbers support this, as does the unseemly pivot of Trump’s former rivals, most recently DeSantis, to lining up behind him two seconds after he has mocked and belittled them (“Ron DeSanctimonious”).
The striking thing about Haley over the last few weeks is how effective she has been in getting under Trump’s skin.
This, as we know, is a notoriously hard thing to do if one is invested in maintaining one’s dignity. Michelle Obama’s old adage – “when they go low, we go high” – doesn’t work with Trump, who keeps going lower and lower until the moral high ground is a point of light in the sky so distant it might as well be an alien life form.
Haley, unlike her male rivals, uses a very particular tone towards the Criminal Defendant that feels connected to her relative youth and also her gender.
Historically, women have had a harder time than men of bearing up under Trump’s mockery, given its leering subtext of “I wouldn’t touch her with yours”.
Haley, it strikes me, has studied Margaret Thatcher very closely and in fact, along with Hillary Clinton (and former congresswoman Gabby Giffords, and, funnily enough, Joan Jett) cites her as a personal hero.
In her public interactions with Trump, she has for years adopted a mode of condescension reminiscent of Thatcher addressing her enemies in the House of Commons, an arch response, steeped in sarcasm, to the argument that women in politics lack a tone of command. When Trump tweeted in 2016: “The people of South Carolina are embarrassed by Nikki Haley!” she replied, simply, “Bless your heart”.
theguardian.com
Haley understands one crucial thing: if you’re facing off against the former president, you have to fight dumb with dumb, says Guardian columnist Emma Brockes
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1 Reply
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The best thing the trump cancer has done to America is that it has woken up the people that are actually paying attention, and enlightening more and more to the blatant fact that republicans have always been and will always be pathetic liars, cheats, demagogues, self-serving, anti-democracy and hypocrites. VOTE!!
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