Haley‘s comments are pathetic beyond words. Even if Trump is somehow eliminated from the ballots, or if he dies before the November 2024 election, there is no Republican who can be trusted with the presidency of this country. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Chris Christie’s comments were a perfect encapsulation of this sick allegiance to Trump. I was never a Christie fan, and he did some corrupt things as governor of New Jersey, as well as serving as one of Trump‘s cronies early on, but I’m glad he saw the light.
She was doing pretty well when she took down the flag of the rebellion from the SC statehouse and became Ambassador to the UN. She lost any vestige of respectability the first time she rolled over for the failed insurrectionist and she's been rolling back and forth ever since.
She took down the flag of treason only after extensive temporizing, and following the massacre of worshippers at a Black church in Charleston by an avowed white supremacist. Hardly a profile in courage.
I think what Dave means is that, compared to these other Republicans in Congress, who have sold their souls to Trump, she had the “appearance” of retaining a certain amount of dignity. We know better now. Personally, I never liked her and the point you make about the confederate flag is completely accurate. That is when I realized what a phony she is and how fearful she is of her own constituents. No Republican can think independently anymore. They are as much a part of this cult as are Trump‘s citizen mob.
Robert, thank you for clarifying that Article 3 of the 14th Amendment does not require Congress to write enabling legislation for its enforcement. Thank you also for highlighting Haley’s showing us who she is, a reactionary opportunist who shamelessly wants to frame the Civil War for what it wasn’t by supporting an earlier Big Lie, the “lost cause.”
And because we won’t have a stress-free election, I am less fixated than many on the trials of tRump or the challenges faced by Biden. I’m writing postcards every day for Activate America to flip NY’s 3rd Congressional District from red to blue after George Santos was finally dislodged. Let’s elect Democrat Tom Suozzi, who held the seat for six years before running for governor.
Activate America is driving postcard campaigns for several candidates. I’m getting my writing hand in condition for running this marathon through election day. Let’s get it done!
Me, too, Gary, as regards writing postcards for Tom Suozzi to NY's 3rd District! I was planning on sending them out soon after the New Year, figuring that most folks would be better focused after the holidays are over. The special election is February 13. They say mailing postcards up until February 3 would be timely.
For this project, you have to get the postcards and stamps yourself. The link provided by Gary will give a place to sign up and they will send you a mailing list. I got my cards of Etsy for a pretty good price. https://www.etsy.com/market/postcards_to_voters
Activate America has addresses for NY-3. "The Democrat running for the seat is Tom Suozzi, who held the seat for 6 years before he left to run for governor. Please mail these cards as you complete them and by Feb. 3 at the latest."
My thoughts, too, Lynell. We no longer live in a world where we are inundated by Christmas cards (sadly, to my mind), but I still think there will be more focus after the new year. I sent a few earlier, and then decided to wait on mailing the rest.
Thanks Gary! I signed up to write in support of Tom Suozzi. I am so weary of hearing about the defendant and want to go into 2024 more focused on what we can do to secure a big win for Democrats.
And Robert, I do not mean I am tired of getting updated info from you regarding the defendant. I feel I am successfully kept up to date on these events through your newsletter. I depend on hearing from you and Joyce Vance in these matters. Perhaps it is because the 2 of you are so efficacious in translating these current events that I have no patience for hearing it constantly in the news. (Though it must not be ignored and is all newsworthy.)
The sun rises...the sun falls. Until it doesn't. Deer roam. Comedians tell jokes. Birds fly. It's a kind of universal thing no one questions. Children don't act like children. Children are children. Sharks are sharks. Its inherent. It's their essence, their character. What people say, and what people do is what and who people are. It's not political. It's not a judgement. Listen. Watch.
Today's Republicans are today's Republicans. How they arrived at this juncture is mightily complex and best left to historians. Suffice to say, as a party, Republicans have evolved into a homogeneous disaster - singular glob-like organism of despise, anger, frustration leading to vengeful disregard for law, sense, and sensibility. This is what Hillary Clinton meant, identifying the Republican Party and cohorts as made up of 'deplorables'. She did not decry their political stance or policy differences. She saw through that to a painful reality. Republicans are psychically cemented. They are a singular, self-serving, in lock-step, pseudo-religious, authoritarian colony of thoughtless survivalists. They are who they are. Do not expect anything other. Their days are numbered.
I totally "Like" all of your statement. The only phrase I would change is "...Republicans have evolved..." to "... have devolved...". I, too, hope that the days are numbered for this incarnation of Repubs.
You left out that there are millions of them who believe and support the peoples you described. South Carolina is a racists state always will be and remember Lindsey Graham is their senator.
Excellent closing remarks regarding Haley, and I especially like the quote from Frederick Douglass:
With GOP presidential candidates waffling on the Civil War, rejecting history curricula in their states and launching political fusillades against “woke” culture, it remains for the rest of us to reaffirm the wisdom of Frederick Douglass, who in the last years of his life stated:
“Death has no power to change moral qualities. What was bad before the war, and during the war, has not been made good since the war. … Whatever else I may forget, I shall never forget the difference between those who fought for liberty and those who fought for slavery.”
Nikki Haley wants to forget “the difference between those who fought for liberty and those who fought for slavery.” In pursuit of the presidency, she recasts “fighting for slavery” as “noble traditions of history, heritage, and ancestry.” Shame on her.
“fighting for slavery” as “noble traditions of history, heritage, and ancestry” is an Old South meme that predates Nikki Haley. The daughter of immigrants, Haley evidently absorbed Old South culture.
To make a long story short, let us be aware of the general tendency of the Republican party to load the burden of the economy on the people instead of on the 1% where the real money is. Chris Christie may sound more reasonable but he will never support the average worker. I think that he is the voice of those Republicans who see the danger of Trump and his supporters to their money, because chaos and violence is never good for the stock market, but they will never change their ultra capitalist tactics.
Ah the Corrine vs Christie election! Your summary of Christie is spot on but too gentle.
He is the orange monster without the Russian money; with too many inches around the waist; with a nasty personality void of snake oil salesperson appeal and without a major network to air his miserable existence!
Corrine loses in the election because the faux democratic bosses in south Jersey and Essex county ‘sat’ out the election. They were insulted because corzine dis not need their $$$ to fund his campaign!
You might well be right about the Corzine debacle, I find it hard to find evidence though, but it was frustrating. And no, I do not trust Christie one bit. However, the inside machinations in the GOP are well described by Robert and should be closely watched.
Not that there is any likelihood that this Supreme Court would rule Trump off the ballot, but the Supremes need to get involved as soon as possible. 50 states plus DC making separate decisions about who can be on the ballot is chaotic.
As for Nikki Haley, her response was incomprehensible. Whose freedom was she talking about?. The Civil War was begun by the South's attempt to leave the United States to defend slavery. The people of the United States of America responded for mixed reasons: Some because they opposed slavery; some because they loved the Union/the United States of America and opposed its dissolution. By the time Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, it was clear. Ending slavery and retaining the Union were one and the same.
She's talking about the freedom to be racist, without the government telling someone they can't. That's the subtext of their "freedom". Everything else follows from that, like talking about the Civil War without mentioning slavery - that's verboten for racists.
Talking about the Civil War without mentioning slavery actually was once a major stream of historical interpretation. For a long time, hostility leading to the Civil War was attributed to economic differences between the North and the South (a genuine but minor factor).
Thanks for noting the potential chaos of having "states rights" make decisions about whom to allow on the ballot. I'm from Colorado so I've been thinking a lot about the issue. As much as I would like to see DJT gone forever, having a patchwork of ballot laws across the states will be destructive. The presidential election is the only actual national election where we are all voting for the same slate of candidates. We Dems like federal laws on many other subjects (conservation, clean air and water, reproductive rights, etc, etc.). It seems illogical to support state choice on this issue. Plus, I can just imagine Wyoming or Idaho or South Carolina deciding to take Biden off the ballot.
However, they would have to twist themselves into multiple pretzel shapes to conclude that President Biden engaged in insurrection in any way, notwithstanding Robert Hubbell's reference in this newsletter to a court's possible "finding that Joe Biden “engaged in insurrection” on a pretextual ground".
Regarding the Nikki Haley situation, I'm not sure that people understand that most native Southerners simply don't believe the Civil War was about slavery. It wasn't taught that way in schools, and if they're asked about it, the first answer they’ll give is that it was about State's rights. As a southern Republican politician, Haley has had to walk this tightrope her entire career. The irony, of course, is that South Carolina’s formal succession has the most vigorous slavery defense language of any state, with the possible exception of my current home of Mississippi. Haley’s problem was that, in an unscripted moment, she was particularly inelegant in her response.
Of course, the majority of the rest of the country takes the sane view that there is no way to describe the causes of the Civil War without mentioning slavery. Therein lies the problem for Southern Republicans running for national office. Given that, I'm not sure that Haley’s answer was a gaffe but was instead a failure to pivot to her national audience.
All of that said, any politician running for President should be raked over the coals for not being able to articulate the actual cause of the Civil War as Haley has been. Still, it’s naive to think that a majority of Southern Republicans don’t have a different view, no matter how absurd that might seem to the rest of us, and that politicians from those states are acutely aware of it. In this case, we’re fortunate that Haley is bad at walking that tightrope.
Very good point about the widespread belief in the South that the Civil War was about states's rights. Which makes Haley's perpetuation of the myth all the more dangerous. Southerners will continue to believe the "state's rights" nonsense as long as their leaders lack the moral courage and intellectual honesty to say otherwise.
Of course, the "states' rights" issue that Southerners believe was the cause of the Civil War was the right of states to continue the legality of slavery.
Unlike you, I am a 76 year old privileged native Mississippian, raised and educated in the segregated Delta, graduate of Ole Miss, a fraternity boy, and on and on. I now live in the Jackson area. I appreciate your genteel approach to Southern Republicans (back then Democrats) States Rights version of the Civil War versus Slavery. No doubt many believe and tout that.
But, at their core, the lopsided majority of white guys I grew up with are racists through and through. By my actual experience, I’m at best, 1 in 8 white males here who is a Democrat and believes in equality and real opportunity for all. When alone, half will tell me their hatred of Black Americans (not the term they use) with the other half being more nuanced. I’ve uncoupled from most of them. They all comprise what is now the Republican/MAGA party, and it’s not just in the South, it’s across the country, both male and female. Nikki Haley, in one way or another, is just one of them.
Demographically, in 10 or so years, whites will no longer be the majority. White Republicans have long recognized this and are now seizing the opportunity to go for it all...total control in whatever form it takes; they don’t care. This is simply where we are, as chronicled in recent books by Stuart Stevens, Heather Cox Richardson, even Liz Cheney. Dr. Richardson, Dan Rather, Robert Hubbell, Jennifer Rubin and so many others are writing about it virtually every day.
I’m fortunate that I actually have a couple of like minded old neighbors, who each have a couple more friends; we meet in our weekly Summit, surrounded by MAGA World. It helps us remain positive, above all the noise, that only our votes can save our democracy. Can you picture a group of old guys, sitting around a table, writing postcards to voters in Arizona and Nevada in the 2020 election! Of course, we couldn’t pull off the recent Mississippi Governorship, but we tried.
Yesterday, Jennifer Rubin summed it up so well: “When tens of millions of Americans reject the premise of our Constitution, resort to fascist methods to hold power and demand the country be redefined along racial and religious lines, no structural remodeling nor crop of virtuous politicians can save the republic.”
Thank you for sharing this, and I have great respect for Jennifer Rubin and read her opinion columns all the time. I have traveled through the south and deep south a few times, and I get the gist of what you write here just being a visitor to these places. There are times when I think that not much has changed since the mid-1800s.
I do think it was a gaffe if you use Michael Kinsley's definition that a gaffe is "when (a politician) accidentally reveals something truthful about what is going on in his or her head." Her error was that she said what she says to her white supremacist supporters, only to a different group of people.
Please do not combine “native southerners”, many of whom are people with level heads and good sense, with politicians and lifelong racists in the South. MOST Southerners believe in racial equality. We may be southerners but we are NOT ignorant. Painting all of the South with the same brush does an injustice to the majority, who know the civil war was about slavery.
I didn't say that most Southerners didn't believe in racial equality, I believe that’s true, even among Republicans, but it has been my experience that most believe that the war was over State's rights. My wife, who is 56, said she never heard slavery referred to as the primary cause of the conflict until she got to college. In fact, in school she always heard it referred to as the War of Northern Agression. Of course, there is a large percentage who understand the truth, but I've never had a conversation with a Southern Republican who can get through a discussion of the Civil War without mentioning State's rights as the cause.
Not sure what happened to my first reply but I’ll repeat it here. All that you say is fair. It hasn’t been my personal experience but I can see how many Southern Republicans would cling to that notion. I’m from Houston and, not that you did this, but I am just exhausted by the constant generalizations made about the South as full of backwater racists. It just deepens the divisions. Guess you hit a nerve with the “most native southerners” phrase. Drives me crazy that so many people can be so blind, especially in their adult lives, when good information is everywhere, to still deny slavery was the reason for the Civil War. I wasn’t taught the proper info either but it didn’t take my getting out of high school before I knew the truth. Thank you for a respectful conversation.
Replies are ranked by number of "likes." When you posted your first reply, it went to the bottom of the Comment section. Or, if you are replying to a specific Comment, it goes to the bottom of the thread for that Comment. Both of your comments remain posted in today's Comments section, just in different places.
I’ll add that most of my closest friends were born and raised in the South and are some of the finest people I’ve ever met, and they would argue against the Lost Cause nonsense far more articulately than I can. All I was saying is that there is a large percentage who believe differently.
1. In the south, the Civil War is still referred to as the War of Northern Aggression. When we lived in South Carolina, this truism played out in many ways, including open and proud display of the confederate flag by prominent citizens.
2. Nikki Haley said on Thursday she would pardon Donald Trump for all offenses should she be elected president. This is as equally concerning as her transparent sucking up to white supremacists. She said the country would benefit from not having Trump sitting in jail. She is unfit to be president.
That’s more than enough reason to not vote for her or any Republican. I never thought I would live to see the day when the entire Republican party falls at the feet of a narcissistic madman.
She's a complete fool if she actually believes a pardon would make a "clean cut" and remove that man from the arena. I doubt she does believe it. I believe she is saying that (as are other R candidates) in order to suck up to tffg.
I am so PROUD of my friend & Secretary of State Shenna Bellows! She walked from the Canadian border to the NH border in her campaign to unseat the weasel Pearl clutching bottom feeder Susan Collins.
There was a time when candidates from both major parties were, if not perfect, at least not frightening. Now we are faced with a Republican Party which seems to have only objectionable candidates. Trump is, of course, the most dangerous. Haley has taken some (very) bad positions on important issues. DeSantis is ridiculous in the extreme. Only Christie is saying the right things, but his past history… So who is the Republican who those of us on the other side would not worry about?
The Republicans who are still Republicans not cultists or outright liars. If I were inclined to want to be a Republican, Adam Kinzinger would be my source of inspiration. We cannot nor should we even want Republicans to give up their allegiance to the rich, many Dems feel the same way, just to other members of the country club. We should want (demand) Constitutional Republicans. That we disagree on other things is to be expected but we as American citizens must demand that we be ruled by the Constitution not the whims of a cult.
The Republican party, is not just scary because of its embrace of racism, but also its denial of climate change, its embrace of guns and its anti-Abortion stance. The conservative agenda is a frightening one to people like me who see the world differently. Taxing the poor and protecting the wealthy is not democratic and in that it is scary how the billionaires fly the Republican flag as they destroy our freedoms. As far as I can see, that is what the Republican party stands for.
Amidst the abhorrent conduct and statements of the top 2 GOP Presidential contenders, I am choosing to focus on the sheer eloquence of Maine’s Secretary of State’s decision excluding Trump from the ballot. Magnificent!
My wife and I went on a tour of Charleston SC several years ago. The official tour guide, a deacon of his church and 9th generation South Carolinian, started by telling the tour group, all Northeners, he always enjoys telling the true history of the "War of Northern Aggression". What continued was a long description of how the North intentionally ruined the South, destroyed its way of life, and its economy and continues to victimize the region. The words "slavery", or "Civil War" never came up. Just descriptions of Southerners being victims.
That's the mentality Nikki Haley is supporting with her ommision of the word "slavery," We should recognize the Civil War, as we know it is on going.
Yet, in classic cognitive dissonance, those who refer to the Civil War as the War of Northern Aggression conveniently ignore that it was the south which fired first, on the Union forces at Fort Sumter, initiating the actual aggression.
The reason for the Civil War was the election of Lincoln and his position to prevent the spread of Slavery to the western territories albeit minimizing the power that the slave states held in the Federal Government. The southern narrative of “the Cause” was the start of mid-information in American Politics.
Hi, Christopher. You are right in your description of the cause of the Civil War. Indeed, South Carolina's secession statement had a long title, but the title describes itself as a "Declaration of the Immediate causes which justify succession" --emphasis on "immediate."
Southern slaveholding states held a convention in 1850 to consider secession (among other remedies) to protect the legality and political benefits of slavery. So, Lincoln's election was a precipitating cause of the secession of Southern states, but that explicit threat had existed for at least a decade.
The beginning-beginning of the Civil War was a meeting of White slaveholding men (instigated by brothers) who met in a stone basement in Beaufort, SC (pronounced Byoo-fert locally). This was the birthplace of the "blood oath" because they cut their index fingers and wrote their names in blood on the walls, pledging their allegiance to the Confederacy. You can see this for yourself; it's a tourist attraction 😵💫.
Agreed, Lincoln’s election was the trigger of issues stemming from the Missouri Compromise. Yes just like our present day issues that we face, especially November 2024 have a long and perhaps subtle beginnings like cancer that is only discovered until it’s too late. Thanks Robert
I think yours is the most accurate articulation of the proximate cause of the Civil War... the election of Lincoln because of his opposition to the expansion of slavery to the western territories and states.
For some reason, this seems not to be taught in schools - and I grew up in Illinois, not the South! I learned this as an adult who reads a lot.
I also grew up in Illinois, but I had a high school American history teacher who pressed and pressed us to get in the heads of all sides of what was going on, whether we thought they were reasonable or not. She was not even an American by birth but had come from Austria as a child with her parents in the 1930s to get away from Hitler.
You were lucky to have such a good teacher. I suspect her background had an impact on how she taught her classes and that she went beyond what was required by the curriculum.
She was amazing. I knew little about her story at the time--just small snatches but mostly that she was a phenomenal teacher. When she died a couple of years ago, someone in a Facebook group posted a Storycorp video where she sat down with her niece and told the whole thing. It was great to hear her voice again. I had several memorable teachers, but if I had to choose one, it would be her. And the way she pushed a bunch of northern kids to understand and be able to articulate multiple viewpoints about the Civil War, even the ones that horrified us, has always stuck with me. I can still see her sitting at her desk not accepting simple answers during class discussions.
I had two particularly memorable and impactful teachers. My third grade teacher and my high school journalism teacher. Both received accolades (on Facebook) from their former students after they died. Good teachers (and bad ones) can have a huge impact on their students.
So true. My fifth grade teacher was probably the earliest one who helped me name the writer inside me. I don't think he ever got to know I actually did become one.
Politically, there were (are still?) two states of Illinois, “upstate” and “downstate”. Upstate – overwhelmingly liberal and Democratic – downstate – overwhelmingly conservative and Republican.
It might help if natives of Illinois stated what part of the state they hailed from.
I'm from an "upstate" suburb of Chicago. My parents were conservative and Republicans. I've considered myself to be an independent, but voted mostly Republican in national elections until 2016.
Haley performed a public service in her conclusive demonstration that there are no "good Republicans" left.
Haley‘s comments are pathetic beyond words. Even if Trump is somehow eliminated from the ballots, or if he dies before the November 2024 election, there is no Republican who can be trusted with the presidency of this country. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Chris Christie’s comments were a perfect encapsulation of this sick allegiance to Trump. I was never a Christie fan, and he did some corrupt things as governor of New Jersey, as well as serving as one of Trump‘s cronies early on, but I’m glad he saw the light.
Did anyone ever characterize her as the last good Republican?
She was doing pretty well when she took down the flag of the rebellion from the SC statehouse and became Ambassador to the UN. She lost any vestige of respectability the first time she rolled over for the failed insurrectionist and she's been rolling back and forth ever since.
She took down the flag of treason only after extensive temporizing, and following the massacre of worshippers at a Black church in Charleston by an avowed white supremacist. Hardly a profile in courage.
I didn't suggest it as a profile in courage Jon, we're talking about Republicans here.
I think what Dave means is that, compared to these other Republicans in Congress, who have sold their souls to Trump, she had the “appearance” of retaining a certain amount of dignity. We know better now. Personally, I never liked her and the point you make about the confederate flag is completely accurate. That is when I realized what a phony she is and how fearful she is of her own constituents. No Republican can think independently anymore. They are as much a part of this cult as are Trump‘s citizen mob.
And that is why the party is in a death spiral.
And the sooner we bury them, the better.
Exactly right! And she has always "temporized" on race.
Actually yes, they have, trying to get non-Trumpers to support her.
Robert, thank you for clarifying that Article 3 of the 14th Amendment does not require Congress to write enabling legislation for its enforcement. Thank you also for highlighting Haley’s showing us who she is, a reactionary opportunist who shamelessly wants to frame the Civil War for what it wasn’t by supporting an earlier Big Lie, the “lost cause.”
And because we won’t have a stress-free election, I am less fixated than many on the trials of tRump or the challenges faced by Biden. I’m writing postcards every day for Activate America to flip NY’s 3rd Congressional District from red to blue after George Santos was finally dislodged. Let’s elect Democrat Tom Suozzi, who held the seat for six years before running for governor.
Activate America is driving postcard campaigns for several candidates. I’m getting my writing hand in condition for running this marathon through election day. Let’s get it done!
https://volunteerblue.org/action-recipe/postcards-george-santos-is-out-flip-his-old-congressional-seat-blue/
Me, too, Gary, as regards writing postcards for Tom Suozzi to NY's 3rd District! I was planning on sending them out soon after the New Year, figuring that most folks would be better focused after the holidays are over. The special election is February 13. They say mailing postcards up until February 3 would be timely.
✍️ If anyone’s up for a postcarding project now, Tom Keen is running for Fl House, D35, Orlando area. Special Election is JANUARY 16th !!
Request addresses from Postacrds To Voters: ➡️https://postcardstovoters.org/
Nice postcards and shipped quickly:➡️https://www.etsy.com/shop/VoterMailbag
Thanks !💙
I've been writing postcards for Keen this week while I'm off of work! Mailing 50 today. Thanks for being in the fight with me :-)
Thanks, Kathy. I lost sight of Keen's campaign, so I'm glad you brought it up!
Where do I get postcards?
For this project, you have to get the postcards and stamps yourself. The link provided by Gary will give a place to sign up and they will send you a mailing list. I got my cards of Etsy for a pretty good price. https://www.etsy.com/market/postcards_to_voters
They're good quality cards too, with nice art work.
Yes! Etsy provides a nice selection and they are excellent quality with options re: design. And they arrive quickly.
Thank you!! Was racking my brain for a design and didn't know that was an option.
Activate America has addresses for NY-3. "The Democrat running for the seat is Tom Suozzi, who held the seat for 6 years before he left to run for governor. Please mail these cards as you complete them and by Feb. 3 at the latest."
https://www.activateamerica.vote/postcards?sourceid=1041199&emci=cd333799-f51e-ec11-981f-0050f271a1a2&emdi=f6a09605-fe1e-ec11-981f-0050f271a1a2&ceid=6122232
Field Team 6 has a register to vote for precinct 3 in NY. You can order postcards there and get names and addresses as well.
My thoughts, too, Lynell. We no longer live in a world where we are inundated by Christmas cards (sadly, to my mind), but I still think there will be more focus after the new year. I sent a few earlier, and then decided to wait on mailing the rest.
Thanks Gary! I signed up to write in support of Tom Suozzi. I am so weary of hearing about the defendant and want to go into 2024 more focused on what we can do to secure a big win for Democrats.
And Robert, I do not mean I am tired of getting updated info from you regarding the defendant. I feel I am successfully kept up to date on these events through your newsletter. I depend on hearing from you and Joyce Vance in these matters. Perhaps it is because the 2 of you are so efficacious in translating these current events that I have no patience for hearing it constantly in the news. (Though it must not be ignored and is all newsworthy.)
You need to hear it from all sides because it’s the alternative truth.
Amen!
The sun rises...the sun falls. Until it doesn't. Deer roam. Comedians tell jokes. Birds fly. It's a kind of universal thing no one questions. Children don't act like children. Children are children. Sharks are sharks. Its inherent. It's their essence, their character. What people say, and what people do is what and who people are. It's not political. It's not a judgement. Listen. Watch.
Today's Republicans are today's Republicans. How they arrived at this juncture is mightily complex and best left to historians. Suffice to say, as a party, Republicans have evolved into a homogeneous disaster - singular glob-like organism of despise, anger, frustration leading to vengeful disregard for law, sense, and sensibility. This is what Hillary Clinton meant, identifying the Republican Party and cohorts as made up of 'deplorables'. She did not decry their political stance or policy differences. She saw through that to a painful reality. Republicans are psychically cemented. They are a singular, self-serving, in lock-step, pseudo-religious, authoritarian colony of thoughtless survivalists. They are who they are. Do not expect anything other. Their days are numbered.
I totally "Like" all of your statement. The only phrase I would change is "...Republicans have evolved..." to "... have devolved...". I, too, hope that the days are numbered for this incarnation of Repubs.
You left out that there are millions of them who believe and support the peoples you described. South Carolina is a racists state always will be and remember Lindsey Graham is their senator.
And, don’t forget Joe Wilson, the Representative from SC who yelled out “You lie!” during President Obama’s State of the Union speech.
Bravo!
Excellent closing remarks regarding Haley, and I especially like the quote from Frederick Douglass:
With GOP presidential candidates waffling on the Civil War, rejecting history curricula in their states and launching political fusillades against “woke” culture, it remains for the rest of us to reaffirm the wisdom of Frederick Douglass, who in the last years of his life stated:
“Death has no power to change moral qualities. What was bad before the war, and during the war, has not been made good since the war. … Whatever else I may forget, I shall never forget the difference between those who fought for liberty and those who fought for slavery.”
Nikki Haley wants to forget “the difference between those who fought for liberty and those who fought for slavery.” In pursuit of the presidency, she recasts “fighting for slavery” as “noble traditions of history, heritage, and ancestry.” Shame on her.
I agree but honestly how many Republicans are paying any attention. Not many I presume
“fighting for slavery” as “noble traditions of history, heritage, and ancestry” is an Old South meme that predates Nikki Haley. The daughter of immigrants, Haley evidently absorbed Old South culture.
Having lived in New Jersey for thirteen years, I still have an allergic reaction to the name Christie. At the time of his election as Governor, I was a volunteer at the Dem HQ and I still remember the silent resignation when all was lost. Well, the MF Global debacle was not helpful to give Corzine a second chance. Christie promised a lot and of course used the Republican way of doing things: cuts and cuts (' to public workers' pensions and a cap on property taxes. [However,] Christie's popularity soared after he led New Jersey through Hurricane Sandy, one of the worst disasters in the state's history' https://www.vox.com/2015/1/8/18089128/chris-christie-scandals-explained .) Well, victims of Hurricane Sandy might feel different about that https://abcnews.go.com/US/jersey-residents-waiting-hurricane-sandy-rebuilding-money/story?id=20371933#amp_tf=Von%20%251%24s&aoh=17038430502290&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&share=https%3A%2F%2Fabcnews.go.com%2FUS%2Fjersey-residents-waiting-hurricane-sandy-rebuilding-money%2Fstory%3Fid%3D20371933
To make a long story short, let us be aware of the general tendency of the Republican party to load the burden of the economy on the people instead of on the 1% where the real money is. Chris Christie may sound more reasonable but he will never support the average worker. I think that he is the voice of those Republicans who see the danger of Trump and his supporters to their money, because chaos and violence is never good for the stock market, but they will never change their ultra capitalist tactics.
Ah the Corrine vs Christie election! Your summary of Christie is spot on but too gentle.
He is the orange monster without the Russian money; with too many inches around the waist; with a nasty personality void of snake oil salesperson appeal and without a major network to air his miserable existence!
Corrine loses in the election because the faux democratic bosses in south Jersey and Essex county ‘sat’ out the election. They were insulted because corzine dis not need their $$$ to fund his campaign!
You might well be right about the Corzine debacle, I find it hard to find evidence though, but it was frustrating. And no, I do not trust Christie one bit. However, the inside machinations in the GOP are well described by Robert and should be closely watched.
Haley didn’t just fail this test on the history. She failed this test of character, reinforcing that she is manifestly unfit for the Oval Office.
But they love her in South Carolina and being unfit for office is not a Republican requirement.
Let her stay in SC, then. And being terribly unfit for office is increasingly the rule not the exception for GOP contenders.
Not that there is any likelihood that this Supreme Court would rule Trump off the ballot, but the Supremes need to get involved as soon as possible. 50 states plus DC making separate decisions about who can be on the ballot is chaotic.
As for Nikki Haley, her response was incomprehensible. Whose freedom was she talking about?. The Civil War was begun by the South's attempt to leave the United States to defend slavery. The people of the United States of America responded for mixed reasons: Some because they opposed slavery; some because they loved the Union/the United States of America and opposed its dissolution. By the time Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, it was clear. Ending slavery and retaining the Union were one and the same.
She's talking about the freedom to be racist, without the government telling someone they can't. That's the subtext of their "freedom". Everything else follows from that, like talking about the Civil War without mentioning slavery - that's verboten for racists.
Talking about the Civil War without mentioning slavery actually was once a major stream of historical interpretation. For a long time, hostility leading to the Civil War was attributed to economic differences between the North and the South (a genuine but minor factor).
Thanks for noting the potential chaos of having "states rights" make decisions about whom to allow on the ballot. I'm from Colorado so I've been thinking a lot about the issue. As much as I would like to see DJT gone forever, having a patchwork of ballot laws across the states will be destructive. The presidential election is the only actual national election where we are all voting for the same slate of candidates. We Dems like federal laws on many other subjects (conservation, clean air and water, reproductive rights, etc, etc.). It seems illogical to support state choice on this issue. Plus, I can just imagine Wyoming or Idaho or South Carolina deciding to take Biden off the ballot.
However, they would have to twist themselves into multiple pretzel shapes to conclude that President Biden engaged in insurrection in any way, notwithstanding Robert Hubbell's reference in this newsletter to a court's possible "finding that Joe Biden “engaged in insurrection” on a pretextual ground".
You are right, but I never count the Republicans out when it comes to making things up. Can you please point me to this Roberts reference? Thanks!
I should have written Robert Hubbell, it's in this newsletter. I'll correct it so it's more clear.
Regarding the Nikki Haley situation, I'm not sure that people understand that most native Southerners simply don't believe the Civil War was about slavery. It wasn't taught that way in schools, and if they're asked about it, the first answer they’ll give is that it was about State's rights. As a southern Republican politician, Haley has had to walk this tightrope her entire career. The irony, of course, is that South Carolina’s formal succession has the most vigorous slavery defense language of any state, with the possible exception of my current home of Mississippi. Haley’s problem was that, in an unscripted moment, she was particularly inelegant in her response.
Of course, the majority of the rest of the country takes the sane view that there is no way to describe the causes of the Civil War without mentioning slavery. Therein lies the problem for Southern Republicans running for national office. Given that, I'm not sure that Haley’s answer was a gaffe but was instead a failure to pivot to her national audience.
All of that said, any politician running for President should be raked over the coals for not being able to articulate the actual cause of the Civil War as Haley has been. Still, it’s naive to think that a majority of Southern Republicans don’t have a different view, no matter how absurd that might seem to the rest of us, and that politicians from those states are acutely aware of it. In this case, we’re fortunate that Haley is bad at walking that tightrope.
Very good point about the widespread belief in the South that the Civil War was about states's rights. Which makes Haley's perpetuation of the myth all the more dangerous. Southerners will continue to believe the "state's rights" nonsense as long as their leaders lack the moral courage and intellectual honesty to say otherwise.
Of course, the "states' rights" issue that Southerners believe was the cause of the Civil War was the right of states to continue the legality of slavery.
“….any politician running for President should be raked over the coals for not being able to articulate the actual cause of the Civil War…”
It only took 4 words from Prez Biden.➡️ “ It was about slavery.”
https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1740221284284256645
💙
Dean,
Unlike you, I am a 76 year old privileged native Mississippian, raised and educated in the segregated Delta, graduate of Ole Miss, a fraternity boy, and on and on. I now live in the Jackson area. I appreciate your genteel approach to Southern Republicans (back then Democrats) States Rights version of the Civil War versus Slavery. No doubt many believe and tout that.
But, at their core, the lopsided majority of white guys I grew up with are racists through and through. By my actual experience, I’m at best, 1 in 8 white males here who is a Democrat and believes in equality and real opportunity for all. When alone, half will tell me their hatred of Black Americans (not the term they use) with the other half being more nuanced. I’ve uncoupled from most of them. They all comprise what is now the Republican/MAGA party, and it’s not just in the South, it’s across the country, both male and female. Nikki Haley, in one way or another, is just one of them.
Demographically, in 10 or so years, whites will no longer be the majority. White Republicans have long recognized this and are now seizing the opportunity to go for it all...total control in whatever form it takes; they don’t care. This is simply where we are, as chronicled in recent books by Stuart Stevens, Heather Cox Richardson, even Liz Cheney. Dr. Richardson, Dan Rather, Robert Hubbell, Jennifer Rubin and so many others are writing about it virtually every day.
I’m fortunate that I actually have a couple of like minded old neighbors, who each have a couple more friends; we meet in our weekly Summit, surrounded by MAGA World. It helps us remain positive, above all the noise, that only our votes can save our democracy. Can you picture a group of old guys, sitting around a table, writing postcards to voters in Arizona and Nevada in the 2020 election! Of course, we couldn’t pull off the recent Mississippi Governorship, but we tried.
Yesterday, Jennifer Rubin summed it up so well: “When tens of millions of Americans reject the premise of our Constitution, resort to fascist methods to hold power and demand the country be redefined along racial and religious lines, no structural remodeling nor crop of virtuous politicians can save the republic.”
Thank you for sharing this, and I have great respect for Jennifer Rubin and read her opinion columns all the time. I have traveled through the south and deep south a few times, and I get the gist of what you write here just being a visitor to these places. There are times when I think that not much has changed since the mid-1800s.
Virginia guy here who only came to understand the south was wrong after two years of enlightenment from the substacks.
That is a brave admission. Thank you.
I do think it was a gaffe if you use Michael Kinsley's definition that a gaffe is "when (a politician) accidentally reveals something truthful about what is going on in his or her head." Her error was that she said what she says to her white supremacist supporters, only to a different group of people.
Please do not combine “native southerners”, many of whom are people with level heads and good sense, with politicians and lifelong racists in the South. MOST Southerners believe in racial equality. We may be southerners but we are NOT ignorant. Painting all of the South with the same brush does an injustice to the majority, who know the civil war was about slavery.
I didn't say that most Southerners didn't believe in racial equality, I believe that’s true, even among Republicans, but it has been my experience that most believe that the war was over State's rights. My wife, who is 56, said she never heard slavery referred to as the primary cause of the conflict until she got to college. In fact, in school she always heard it referred to as the War of Northern Agression. Of course, there is a large percentage who understand the truth, but I've never had a conversation with a Southern Republican who can get through a discussion of the Civil War without mentioning State's rights as the cause.
Not sure what happened to my first reply but I’ll repeat it here. All that you say is fair. It hasn’t been my personal experience but I can see how many Southern Republicans would cling to that notion. I’m from Houston and, not that you did this, but I am just exhausted by the constant generalizations made about the South as full of backwater racists. It just deepens the divisions. Guess you hit a nerve with the “most native southerners” phrase. Drives me crazy that so many people can be so blind, especially in their adult lives, when good information is everywhere, to still deny slavery was the reason for the Civil War. I wasn’t taught the proper info either but it didn’t take my getting out of high school before I knew the truth. Thank you for a respectful conversation.
Replies are ranked by number of "likes." When you posted your first reply, it went to the bottom of the Comment section. Or, if you are replying to a specific Comment, it goes to the bottom of the thread for that Comment. Both of your comments remain posted in today's Comments section, just in different places.
I’ll add that most of my closest friends were born and raised in the South and are some of the finest people I’ve ever met, and they would argue against the Lost Cause nonsense far more articulately than I can. All I was saying is that there is a large percentage who believe differently.
Two items for discussion:
1. In the south, the Civil War is still referred to as the War of Northern Aggression. When we lived in South Carolina, this truism played out in many ways, including open and proud display of the confederate flag by prominent citizens.
2. Nikki Haley said on Thursday she would pardon Donald Trump for all offenses should she be elected president. This is as equally concerning as her transparent sucking up to white supremacists. She said the country would benefit from not having Trump sitting in jail. She is unfit to be president.
Re Nikki Haley's promise to pardon Trump if he is found guilty, see Business Insider, "Nikki Haley says she would pardon Donald Trump if she makes it to the White House," https://www.businessinsider.com/nikki-haley-pardon-donald-trump-if-elected-president-2023-12#:~:text=GOP%20presidential%20candidate%20Nikki%20Haley,the%20country%2C%22%20Haley%20continued.
That’s more than enough reason to not vote for her or any Republican. I never thought I would live to see the day when the entire Republican party falls at the feet of a narcissistic madman.
Thanks for adding the link, Robert. This story also just played on CNN (11:15 am EST)
She's a complete fool if she actually believes a pardon would make a "clean cut" and remove that man from the arena. I doubt she does believe it. I believe she is saying that (as are other R candidates) in order to suck up to tffg.
Aw...that sweet puckering sound of Nikki’s a$$ kissing.
I am so PROUD of my friend & Secretary of State Shenna Bellows! She walked from the Canadian border to the NH border in her campaign to unseat the weasel Pearl clutching bottom feeder Susan Collins.
There was a time when candidates from both major parties were, if not perfect, at least not frightening. Now we are faced with a Republican Party which seems to have only objectionable candidates. Trump is, of course, the most dangerous. Haley has taken some (very) bad positions on important issues. DeSantis is ridiculous in the extreme. Only Christie is saying the right things, but his past history… So who is the Republican who those of us on the other side would not worry about?
The Republicans who are still Republicans not cultists or outright liars. If I were inclined to want to be a Republican, Adam Kinzinger would be my source of inspiration. We cannot nor should we even want Republicans to give up their allegiance to the rich, many Dems feel the same way, just to other members of the country club. We should want (demand) Constitutional Republicans. That we disagree on other things is to be expected but we as American citizens must demand that we be ruled by the Constitution not the whims of a cult.
,”“Ain’t such an animal on the other side
The Republican party has always been overtly racist and obviously frightening. At least in the last century as they turned away from being the party of Lincoln to being the party of the wealthy. https://www.vox.com/2016/7/20/12148750/republican-party-trump-lincoln
Republicans became unquestionably the party of the wealthy, starting around Warren Harding’s presidency (1920).
The Republican party, is not just scary because of its embrace of racism, but also its denial of climate change, its embrace of guns and its anti-Abortion stance. The conservative agenda is a frightening one to people like me who see the world differently. Taxing the poor and protecting the wealthy is not democratic and in that it is scary how the billionaires fly the Republican flag as they destroy our freedoms. As far as I can see, that is what the Republican party stands for.
Amidst the abhorrent conduct and statements of the top 2 GOP Presidential contenders, I am choosing to focus on the sheer eloquence of Maine’s Secretary of State’s decision excluding Trump from the ballot. Magnificent!
My wife and I went on a tour of Charleston SC several years ago. The official tour guide, a deacon of his church and 9th generation South Carolinian, started by telling the tour group, all Northeners, he always enjoys telling the true history of the "War of Northern Aggression". What continued was a long description of how the North intentionally ruined the South, destroyed its way of life, and its economy and continues to victimize the region. The words "slavery", or "Civil War" never came up. Just descriptions of Southerners being victims.
That's the mentality Nikki Haley is supporting with her ommision of the word "slavery," We should recognize the Civil War, as we know it is on going.
Yet, in classic cognitive dissonance, those who refer to the Civil War as the War of Northern Aggression conveniently ignore that it was the south which fired first, on the Union forces at Fort Sumter, initiating the actual aggression.
The reason for the Civil War was the election of Lincoln and his position to prevent the spread of Slavery to the western territories albeit minimizing the power that the slave states held in the Federal Government. The southern narrative of “the Cause” was the start of mid-information in American Politics.
Hi, Christopher. You are right in your description of the cause of the Civil War. Indeed, South Carolina's secession statement had a long title, but the title describes itself as a "Declaration of the Immediate causes which justify succession" --emphasis on "immediate."
Southern slaveholding states held a convention in 1850 to consider secession (among other remedies) to protect the legality and political benefits of slavery. So, Lincoln's election was a precipitating cause of the secession of Southern states, but that explicit threat had existed for at least a decade.
The beginning-beginning of the Civil War was a meeting of White slaveholding men (instigated by brothers) who met in a stone basement in Beaufort, SC (pronounced Byoo-fert locally). This was the birthplace of the "blood oath" because they cut their index fingers and wrote their names in blood on the walls, pledging their allegiance to the Confederacy. You can see this for yourself; it's a tourist attraction 😵💫.
Agreed, Lincoln’s election was the trigger of issues stemming from the Missouri Compromise. Yes just like our present day issues that we face, especially November 2024 have a long and perhaps subtle beginnings like cancer that is only discovered until it’s too late. Thanks Robert
I think yours is the most accurate articulation of the proximate cause of the Civil War... the election of Lincoln because of his opposition to the expansion of slavery to the western territories and states.
For some reason, this seems not to be taught in schools - and I grew up in Illinois, not the South! I learned this as an adult who reads a lot.
I also grew up in Illinois, but I had a high school American history teacher who pressed and pressed us to get in the heads of all sides of what was going on, whether we thought they were reasonable or not. She was not even an American by birth but had come from Austria as a child with her parents in the 1930s to get away from Hitler.
You were lucky to have such a good teacher. I suspect her background had an impact on how she taught her classes and that she went beyond what was required by the curriculum.
She was amazing. I knew little about her story at the time--just small snatches but mostly that she was a phenomenal teacher. When she died a couple of years ago, someone in a Facebook group posted a Storycorp video where she sat down with her niece and told the whole thing. It was great to hear her voice again. I had several memorable teachers, but if I had to choose one, it would be her. And the way she pushed a bunch of northern kids to understand and be able to articulate multiple viewpoints about the Civil War, even the ones that horrified us, has always stuck with me. I can still see her sitting at her desk not accepting simple answers during class discussions.
I had two particularly memorable and impactful teachers. My third grade teacher and my high school journalism teacher. Both received accolades (on Facebook) from their former students after they died. Good teachers (and bad ones) can have a huge impact on their students.
So true. My fifth grade teacher was probably the earliest one who helped me name the writer inside me. I don't think he ever got to know I actually did become one.
Agreed, I grew up in Illinois too!
Politically, there were (are still?) two states of Illinois, “upstate” and “downstate”. Upstate – overwhelmingly liberal and Democratic – downstate – overwhelmingly conservative and Republican.
It might help if natives of Illinois stated what part of the state they hailed from.
I'm from an "upstate" suburb of Chicago. My parents were conservative and Republicans. I've considered myself to be an independent, but voted mostly Republican in national elections until 2016.
Thanks for another clear explanatory letter, Robert! We voters must do all we can to reelect President Biden!
The Washington Post published a transcript of the entire Haley question/response:
Opinions | Nikki Haley goes on Civil War autopilot, runs over her own campaign
The question wasn’t tricky or unfair, and the GOP presidential candidate’s reply at a town hall in New Hampshire was a mess.
Opinion by Jim Geraghty
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/12/28/nikki-haley-civil-war-slavery/
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/12/28/nikki-haley-civil-war-slavery/
Her response disqualifies her from the office she seeks. Full stop.