By Meta-content Generator A.J. Liebling with Florida Correspondent Jenny Herk
The national media's endless search for the Great White Moderate Republican continued in Miami this week, where the usual suspects thought they had spotted one on the Miami debate stage answering to Nikki “You're Scum” Haley.
In comparison to the other clowns, ne'er do wells, and Canadian girlfriend lovers up there, you could perhaps understand the error. But there's no doubt that rumors of a sighting of the likely-extinct moderate Republican were disproven by – your eyes and ears.
Let's take a quick look at the excited reports of alleged moderation, starting with long-time useless Washington Post bloviator Kathleen Parker (famous for telling us that we'd be fine no matter who won the 2016 Presidential election):
Come on, Republicans. Debate-wise, Haley outdid the competition — again.
On foreign policy, she’s plainly the strongest Republican candidate....
On the key Democratic issue, abortion, she managed to thread a microscopic needle. Though pro-life, Haley said she doesn’t want to judge pro-choice women or be judged for her position. She urged letting states determine their own destinies while the country works toward consensus.
To which we'd like to borrow Desi Lydic's rejoinder: What The Actual F***?
Nor was Parker the only gasbag who fell for Haley's empty platitudes on the right of women to control their own bodies. When the New York Times Opinion gang convened a Republican-dominated panel to assess how the five nitwits did in Miami with predictably tragic results, this is what our Wonderful Republican Ally and Lincoln Project stalwart Sarah Longwell had to say:
She is at her best when demonstrating her foreign policy expertise (or swatting aside Ramaswamy). She falls flat when she’s delivering canned lines about her footwear. Her answer on abortion was thoughtful and seemed likely to connect with both primary and swing voters. There is a real chance she may overtake DeSantis as the main challenger to Trump.
Thoughtful? Foreign policy expertise? Hoo-kay.
And after 100 years of dispensing Republican-friendly conventional wisdom, Time said:
On stage, Haley understood the rules. She has a hawkish instinct on national security, giving her a leg up during a debate that toured the globe’s crises in Ukraine and Israel as well as threats from the southern border and China. She’s a pragmatic realist when it comes to social issues, smartly reasoning that Congress passing a federal abortion ban is as realistic as finding the Loch Ness Monster.
Hard to believe – that Time is still in business, that is.
And the sad clueless shills and gasbags of Hacks on Tap called her word salad a “master class.”
Start by unpacking her supposedly thoughtful, pragmatic, moderate position on forced birth. By the way when she was Governor of South Carolina, she had a position on abortion rights. She was against them:
Before reading the polls and election returns, the voice of moderation would try to dress up forced birth as somehow a feminist position, in this bit of pretzel-like anti-choice invective:
Nikki Haley took the stage as the keynote speaker Monday night at an anti-abortion group’s annual gala, saying that allowing women to have autonomy over their bodies “is not real feminism.”
Speaking from the Susan B. Anthony List’s Campaign for Life Gala in Washington, D.C., the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations asserted that groups supporting abortion rights were creating hostility among women and trying to force their values on others.
“Unfortunately, many on the left use the abortion debate to divide women and demand conformity,” she said. “They do this in the name of feminism. But that is not real feminism.”
Really? Have you ever heard an advocate of reproductive freedom telling a woman she must or even should have an abortion? It's horses***.
Now that she understands that forced birtherism could cost Republicans plenty at the polls, she spouted a ridiculous effort to avoid the issue by pointing out that the President cannot enact an abortion ban, and therefore – what, exactly?
Lunatic House and Senate Republicans are already considering national abortion bans, not to mention unilateral action to pressure Biden into restricting women's rights, such as Sen. Tommy Tuberville's subversive effort to bring down the US military by blocking all promotions.
And what's her position on those ravings? Notice she didn't come out against them. Instead, she issued a witless call for “consensus” over an issue that by definition is not susceptible of compromise. And she is perfectly OK with women's rights being violated and their lives ruined by accident of state residence. That's not a thoughtful pragmatic position; that's an empty stupid pander.
Let's turn to her supposed foreign policy expertise, obtained by shilling for the insane Trump Administration during a short stint as UN Ambassador, where she achieved – nothing.
Her “hawkish instinct” combines the worst of neocon warmongering with anti-immigrant bigotry, which is pretty rich considering that she doesn't look Native American to us.
There is no “threat” at the Southern Border. Anyone who equates the immigration issue with real threats to U.S. national security like Trump's BFF, Vladimir Putin, is perforce disqualified from being taken seriously on foreign policy.
She's threatened to “close” the southern border whatever that means. Beyond crippling trade with Mexico and letting hundreds of thousands of desperate refugees cower in agony and terror on the south bank of the Rio Grande.
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| Invade Mexico? That worked out great before! |
We also heard her threaten a trade war with China unless it did something or another about the US love affair with fentanyl. Advocating tanking the US economy, while creating simultaneous inflation and recession, over chemicals that can be and are made anywhere in the world is not an advertisement of your foreign policy bona fides. Rather the opposite.
And that was her being moderate. She threatened a real invasion of Mexico. She knows that won't happen, but that she would try to fluff Republicans with yet another war disqualifies her from being taken seriously.
The idea that anyone who served the Tangerine-Faced Defendant during his disastrous term could be taken seriously doesn't hold up on even a moment's consideration, no matter how huge and powerful her heels are.
So why is this bundle of angry empty talking points being taken seriously by supposedly legitimate media? We suspect two reasons: (1) they are desperate to build up someone, anyone as a credible threat to the Tangerine-Faced Defendant, ol' Puddin' Fingers having face-planted on the national stage and (2) they want to show once again how fair-minded they are, by not calling out extremist hacks like Haley as the threats and frauds they are.
As this country faces what could be its last at least partly-free election next year, the media has a choice: they can maintain a facade of objectivity by taking equally seriously the Democratic and Republican candidates. Or they can tell the truth, which is that each and every Republican running for office represents a clear and immediate danger to our nation and to humanity.
They can choose an aesthetic of objectivity, or they can tell the truth. So far they're making the wrong choice. And we are paying the price.
UPDATE, Nov. 12 – After we went to press, the New York Times Sunday Opinion section chose to join the dumb party with this gem from Kathleen Miller: [Who? – Ed.]
And [Haley] is running the campaign she’s run before: hard-core conservative on fiscal matters and immigration, kitchen-table pragmatic on basically everything else.
Does that mean she'll advise women in Texas and other forced-birth states to be pragmatic and lie down on the kitchen table with a coat hanger?
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