NIKKI HALEY PROVES THERE ARE NO "GOOD REPUBLICANS"

Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, the first state to secede in 1860 and thus “the home office of American Sedition,” as Charlie Pierce describes the place, who managed to remove the Confederate flag from the state Capitol, following the white supremacist attack at Mother Emmanuel Church, but who couldn’t bring herself to mention slavery when asked at a campaign event about the cause of the Civil War, must be commended for finally driving a stake through the heart of the idea that there are any “good Republicans,” any “moderates,” in the Confederate White People’s Treason and Sedition Party currently masquerading as the Republican Party..

She gave her answer to the question “What caused the Civil War” - asked by an audience member - Wednesday evening while campaigning in New Hampshire, a state that did not secede from the Union, tacitly acknowledging the party of Lincoln has completely adapted to its status as the revanchist minority-white-supremacist Trump Party.

When she got the question, Haley raised her eyebrows, spun around, retreated upstage, then turned around to face the audience with a smile: “Well don’t come with an easy question. I think the cause of the Civil War was basically how government was going to run. The freedoms and what people could and couldn’t do. What do you think the cause of the Civil War was?”

She then asked the voter how he would answer his own question. He answered “I’m not the one running for president.”

She then went on:

“I think it always comes down to the role of government and what the rights of the people are. And I will always stand by the fact that I think government was intended to secure the rights and freedoms of the people. Government doesn’t need to tell you how to live your life. They need to make sure that you have freedom. We need to have capitalism. We need to have economic freedom. We need to make sure that we do all things so that individuals have the liberties so that they can have freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to do or be anything they want to be without government getting in the way.”

Haley went on to engage in some additional nonsensical word salad that was non-responsive to the question.

When the questioner expressed surprise she had not mentioned slavery, Haley asked: “What do you want me to say about slavery?”

“No, you’ve answered my question, thank you,” the questioner responded.

The Civil War was about government not telling you how to live your life? Really?

I will now officially puke my guts out over this statement, doing so for my Quaker Abolitionist Underground Railroad Conductor great-great- grandfather, Philip Thomas Cleaver, one of the founders of the Pennsylvania Republican Party in 1854, and his son Alem Cleaver - who left the Quaker Church in 1863 at age 18 with his father’s blessing to join the Union Army and fight for Abolition, paying the price for his beliefs of six life-changing-forever months as a “guest of the Confederacy” in the concentration camp of Libby Prison - since they are not here to projectile vomit in the face of this ignorant Confederate bimbo who thinks a South Carolina Traitor can ever be a Republican.

News accounts of Haley’s remarks awkwardly shoehorned in the basic fact-check that, yes, the Civil War was fought over slavery:

Politico: “While there were a number of contributions to the outbreak of the Civil War, the conflict, which was the deadliest in U.S. history, was fought predominantly over the South’s desire to see the preservation of slavery.”

WaPo: “Haley’s answer did not include any mention of slavery, which scholars agree was the main driver of the conflict.”

ABC News: “While several political and economic factors ultimately contributed to the start of the American Civil War, slavery was at the center of the nation’s tension.”

The NYT provided admirable context for the remarks in its writeup, but inadvertently demonstrated how bedeviled by racism we remain, calling the question “simple yet loaded.”

Just to confirm that the over-educated, under-intelligent otherwise-unemployables of the DC Press Corpse actually got something right for once, let’s let Vice President of the Confederacy Alexander Stephens clue us in from his “Cornerstone Speech delivered on March 21, 1861 (it’s called that because this is where he declares what the “cornerstone” of the new republic is):

“The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution African slavery as it exists amongst us the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the "rock upon which the old Union would split." He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the "storm came and the wind blew."

“Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science. It has been so even amongst us. Many who hear me, perhaps, can recollect well, that this truth was not generally admitted, even within their day. The errors of the past generation still clung to many as late as twenty years ago. Those at the North, who still cling to these errors, with a zeal above knowledge, we justly denominate fanatics. All fanaticism springs from an aberration of the mind from a defect in reasoning. It is a species of insanity. One of the most striking characteristics of insanity, in many instances, is forming correct conclusions from fancied or erroneous premises; so with the anti-slavery fanatics. Their conclusions are right if their premises were. They assume that the negro is equal, and hence conclude that he is entitled to equal privileges and rights with the white man. If their premises were correct, their conclusions would be logical and just but their premise being wrong, their whole argument fails. I recollect once of having heard a gentleman from one of the northern States, of great power and ability, announce in the House of Representatives, with imposing effect, that we of the South would be compelled, ultimately, to yield upon this subject of slavery, that it was as impossible to war successfully against a principle in politics, as it was in physics or mechanics. That the principle would ultimately prevail. That we, in maintaining slavery as it exists with us, were warring against a principle, a principle founded in nature, the principle of the equality of men. The reply I made to him was, that upon his own grounds, we should, ultimately, succeed, and that he and his associates, in this crusade against our institutions, would ultimately fail. The truth announced, that it was as impossible to war successfully against a principle in politics as it was in physics and mechanics, I admitted; but told him that it was he, and those acting with him, who were warring against a principle. They were attempting to make things equal which the Creator had made unequal.”

And if that is insufficient an education, consider the fact that EVERY SINGLE ONE of the eleven Declarations of Secession names the threat of the federal government to the maintenance of chattel slavery in that state as the Number One Reason for secession.

You would think someone stupid enough to be able to pass the IQ test low enough to join today’s Confederate White People’s Treason and Sedition Party, er, I mean the Republican Party, could figure this one out with that information. After all, Stephens was from South Carolina, so if Haley had been there, she would have been able to understand his mushmouthed bullshit without the needing of someone translating it from Southernish to English.

Proving once again if proof is still needed, that Harry Truman was right back in 1948 (the year the Southern Traitors bolted the Democratic Party over the party’s first step to becoming the Party of Real American Patriotism and their first step to becoming “Republicans”) when he observed, “The only ‘good Republicans’ are pushing up daisies.” It’s only more true today.

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