NIKKI HALEY'S SLAVERY ANSWER WASN'T THE SAME OLD WAFFLING -- IT WAS A MOVE TO THE RIGHT

Happy New Year -- and I hope it's happier than the future I've been seeing in my recent gloomy predictions. There's not much fresh news right now, but I've just read Sidney Blumenthal's Guardian column about the response Nikki Haley recently gave to a campaign-trail question on the Civil War, and I just want to note something that might be obvious, but wasn't obvious to me when she spoke.

Blumenthal characterizes Haley's response as the same old waffling Haley has done since she was governor of South Carolina:

Though it was a stumble, it was not a mistake, but a message she has delivered for years and that has served her well until now. Her carefully crafted and closely memorized garble was a deracinated version of an old lie, which she had used before to attempt to mollify hostile camps in order to skid by.

But Haley didn't say what she said in the past. She didn't try to mollify hostile camps. She came down solidly on the side of her fellow right-wingers.

Here's how she used to talk about the Civil War and slavery:

The Wall Street Journal editorially praised her in 2010 for an interview she gave to a neo-Confederate group, the Palmetto Patriots. “‘You had one side of the Civil War that was fighting for tradition, and I think you had another side of the Civil War that was fighting for change,’ she said. She did not use the word ‘slavery’ but hinted at it, saying that ‘everyone is supposed to be free.’”

... On 17 June, 2015, Dylann Roof, a 21-year-old white supremacist and neo-Nazi, murdered nine Black members of the Bible study group of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal church, intending to ignite a race war....

“For many people in our state, the flag stands for traditions that are noble – traditions of history, of heritage and of ancestry,” [Haley] stated as governor. “The hate-filled murderer who massacred our brothers and sisters in Charleston has a sick and twisted view of the flag. In no way does he reflect the people in our state who respect and, in many ways, revere it. At the same time, for many others in South Carolina, the flag is a deeply offensive symbol of a brutally oppressive past. As a state, we can survive, as we have done, while still being home to both of those viewpoints. We do not need to declare a winner and loser.”

In a Washington Post op-ed, she wrote that the flag was “a symbol of slavery, discrimination, and hate for many people”. But, she added: “Today’s outrage culture insists that everyone who holds a view that’s different from our own is not just mistaken. They must be evil and shunned. That’s wrong. I know too many good people in South Carolina who think differently about the flag but who are not the least bit racist. The tragedy of all of this is that it makes compromise far less possible.”

On the one hand ... on the other hand.... Haley's old rhetoric on this subject was really terrible -- but in her recent campaign appearance, there wasn't even an "other hand." When asked what caused the Civil War, Haley came down solidly on the side of the right.

“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,” Haley began haltingly. Then she stopped.

“What do you think the cause of the civil war was?” she asked her questioner. He replied that he was not running for president and wished to hear her thoughts. “I think it always comes down to the role of government and what the rights of the people are,” Haley continued, and continued, and continued. “And I will always stand by the fact that I think government was intended to secure the rights and freedoms of the people. It was never meant to be all things to all people. Government doesn’t need to tell you how to live your life. They don’t need to tell you what you can and can’t do. They don’t need to be a part of your life.”

She wasn't advocating slavery, but she was arguing that there was one side telling the other side how to conduct its affairs. She was mapping a contemporary right-wing framing of American politics -- "big government" vs. "freedom" -- onto the 1860s, and she was clearly coming down on the side opposed to "big government." She all but said that the correct side was the side that was pro-"freedom" -- i.e., pro-freedom to own slaves.

Haley's response was not Good people on both sides can disagree. It was that one side believed in freedom and one side was using the heavy hand of government to deny that side its freedom. How else are we supposed to interpret that than pro-Confederacy?

So Haley's rhetoric has moved to the right. In this campaign appearance, she couldn't even remember the part about the "brutally oppressive past." I don't think Haley would be as awful a president as Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis, but she wouldn't be much better. I take no comfort in the possibility that she might pull off a miracle in the primaries, or rise to the presidency as Trump's vice president. She's bad.