Today is the day of the South Carolina Republican primary where Nikki Haley is expected to lose handily to serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT).
The Daily Show‘s Desi Lydic says that the media is describing Haley as a moderate when she is as extreme, and on some issues even more so, than SSAT. She even boasts of the fact that she is so conservative.
So. why is the media so quick to label her a moderate? Lydic says that nowadays to acquire the label of moderate in the Republican party is to merely acknowledge the obvious, that Joe Biden won the 2020 election. Of course, that does not make you a moderate. It only means that you are not delusional.
No, she’s not a “moderate,” but she’s going to keep on pretending to be one. Can you blame her for trying? What else can she do? The extremists already hate her, so it’s not like she’s got anything to lose.
Expect more of this from Retrumplitarians, including Trump — I notice he’s just mildly rebuked Alabama for that insane decision of theirs to treat frozen embryos as “people.”
Perhaps they refer to her political nous, or to her intelligence.
(Or maybe they just mean ‘mediocre’)
As Desi Lydic shows in her video Nikki Haley says the quiet parts out loud as well as doing things that are not moderate. For a smart, ambitious woman, she’s not good at hiding her real intent.
In most cases with Republicans, it’s helpful to watch what they do, not just what they say. Larry Hogan is much, much better at it than Nikki Haley. Hogan, who’s eyeing a run for president in 2028, has just declared he’d run as a senator this time around. He did a really good job of pretending to be moderate when he was governor of his state--but if you watched him, he was playing by the Republican playbook.