HALEY'S REAL PROBLEM ISN'T GIVING THE WRONG ANSWER

At a campaign appearance this week, Nikki Haley was asked to explain the cause of the Civil War and refused to say it was slavery. This is a gaffe, but not because she gave a bad answer.

It's a gaffe because she's running in Republican primaries, and if you want Republican voters to vote for you, you have to own the libs, not be owned by the libs. Haley is on the defensive now. She's backpedaled, saying at a subsequent campaign appearance, "Of course the Civil War was about slavery." When we liberals are tearing our hair out because you're getting away with something we don't like, you're winning. Republicans love the way Donald Trump makes us apoplectic. But we're scolding Haley now. We have the upper hand. Republican voters know that, and they'll think less of her for that reason.

(This is what happened to Sarah Palin starting in mid-September 2008. Republicans thought she owned the libs with her convention speech and her lack of self-doubt, but then she was asked uncomfortable interview questions and it became clear that we were no longer afraid of her. When Tina Fey started imitating Palin on Saturday Night Live, it was all over. We were the ones doing the owning. See also Ron DeSantis's 2023 campaign arc.)

Haley has tried to regain her footing by blaming the question on a "Democratic plant," but you can't combine that with an admission that the hated libs were right and expect to remain viable in a GOP contest. If she felt the need to acknowledge slavery as the cause of the war, she should have said that the enslavers were members of the "Democrat Party" and that she belongs to "the party of Lincoln."

But Haley can't do any of that, because her brand is "reasonable-seeming Republican." She's polling best in New Hampshire, where members of any party (or no party) can vote in the Republican primary, and where the Republicans are, on average, more moderate than they are in most of the country. Angry wingnuttery might alienate these voters, so she's ruled it out.

Or maybe this is just a South Carolina thing. It's a very right-wing state, but it's a state that values politeness and the appearance of gentility. I'm a liberal from a part of the country where it's okay to admit you're angry, so I find this combination hypocritical, but I see it in Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott as well as Haley. Unfortunately for Haley, it doesn't work in a national GOP campaign.