GOP presidential candidate and Confederate flag enthusiast Nikki Haley was once a little-known South Carolina legislator when her campaign for governor was endorsed by former GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.
Yup, that Sarah Palin.
Haley went on to become the state’s first female, minority governor.
Sarah Palin is still Sarah Palin.
Then-Governor Haley criticized presidential candidate Donald Trump during the 2016 Presidential Campaign. After Trump was elected president, however, he asked Haley to become US ambassador to the United Nations. She accepted, resigning as governor.
Haley, it should be enthusiastically noted in her favor, was not, unlike most Trump appointees, a complete and total failure.
On October 9, 2018, she tendered her resignation as US ambassador. The New York Times‘ editorial page praised Haley as “that rarest of Trump appointees: one who can exit the administration with her dignity largely intact.”
https://www.politico.com/interactives/2021/magazine-nikki-haleys-choice/
Haley is now running for president of the United States.
Haley wants her presidential campaign to be shaped by the courage she demonstrated in ordering the removal of the Confederate flag from the U.S. Statehouse where it had hung for decades near the Capitol in Columbia, SC.
Haley decision, however, was hardly a profile in courage.
Her decision came in response to the mid-June 2015 brutal murder of nine Black churchgoers at the historic Mother Emanuel AME church in downtown Charleston by a Confederate flag-waving, white supremacist named Dylann Roof.
Haley did not demand that the flag be torn down as an affront to all that was good and decent and righteous.
No, she deferred to the Confederate-waving white supremacists of the state. She then made the decision to remove the flag only when she could not postpone action any longer. And even then — and since — she praised the flag – and continues to praise it.
https://time.com/6255503/nikki-haley-2024-confederate-flag/
In early December 2019, Haley praised the Confederate flag during an interview with conservative talk radio host Glenn Beck by saying that the flag symbolized “service, sacrifice and heritage” but that white supremacist Dylann S. Roof had “hijacked” its meaning when he murdered the nine parishioners at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church.
Haley accused the national media of “wanting to define what happened. They want to make this about racism.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/07/us/Nikki-Haley-confederate-flag.html
Haley received a sharp rebuke from Michael Steele, the African-American former chair of the Republican Party.
“Really, Nikki?!” Steele said.
“The Confederate Flag represented ‘service, sacrifice and heritage’? To whom? The black people who were terrorized and lynched in its name? You said it should never have been there. Roof didn’t hijack the meaning of that flag, he inherited it.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/07/us/Nikki-Haley-confederate-flag.html
