Haley gains strength while Trump looms, and Zakaria pulls no punches
Through the first half of the month, Nikki Haley and CNN's Fareed Zakaria are notable for their recent performances.
As I watched the fourth Republican presidential debate, as the opponents piled onto Nikki Haley, whose campaign has gained a great deal of steam and picked up several significant endorsements, a line of scripture kept running through my mind.
“A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.”—Proverbs 15:1
As, one by one, Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy took shots at her with frequency and vigor, Haley smiled through her teeth and took it like a champ, which was a sea change for the candidate who is seen as grape-skinned by many observers.
Last Wednesday, however, she projected an air of calmness and confidence on the stage, which was not lost on Molly Ball, who wrote about Haley’s unflappableness in The Wall Street Journal.
“Deft yet serious, quick-witted yet substantive, Nikki Haley’s debate performances are feats of political athleticism that few can match. Surrounded by men trying to shout and tear her down, she skewers foes, exhibiting a specifically female form of calm yet gleeful aggression. She floats like a fighter jet and stings like a missile.
And based on that she has surged—nearly eclipsing DeSantis in distant second place—in a Republican primary that’s anything but, she wrote. Former President Trump still holds a commanding lead (60%)nationally.
Ball continued: “There are modest signs of momentum for Haley, who has moved up in the polls (while still trailing far behind Trump) in the early states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. Last week she won the endorsement of Americans for Prosperity Action, the vast grassroots and donor network headed by the billionaire industrialist Charles Koch. Numerous big-money conservatives (as well as some Democrats) are backing her or considering doing so.
“Prominent anti-Trump voices like George Will have urged the other candidates to get out to allow her to go one-on-one with Trump, arguing it is the only way the front-runner can possibly be beaten. (While former Rep. Will Hurd endorsed Haley after withdrawing from the race, fellow dropouts Mike Pence, Tim Scott and Doug Burgum have kept their powder dry.)
“By performing strongly in yet another debate, Haley on Wednesday likely increased her appeal to those constituencies. Yet in Trump’s absence, the debates have been little more than a poorly watched sideshow.”
Leaving behind the Trump hagiography
Several of the podcasts I listen to during walks each morning feature Never Trumpers who decry the impact the former president continues to have on the party, especially as his support grows with each new conviction or untoward comment on Truth Social. A few, like Jonah Goldberg, make the point that Trump largely enjoys such great popularity because most of his supporters live in the world of siloed media, where they only hear from people who share their perspective and opinions.
Therefore, he says, they’re largely paying attention only to the great things the former president did while in office. Many see his accomplishments as being those that no other Republican president could or would do. Not so fast, writes The Wall Street Journal in a recent opinion piece that analyzed those unique accomplishments.
“Mr. Trump spent like a Democrat on domestic programs.” Including $2 trillion for COVID-19, in addition to tapping the FEMA funds to extend the enhanced unemployment benefits during the summer of 2020.
He “pushed Republicans to increase the bill’s $600 stimulus checks for each adult and child to $2,000.”
“Mr. Trump’s successes on judges, tax reform and deregulation were based on conventional conservative ideas that were teed up for him.”
“The Federalist Society gave Mr. Trump originalist judicial nominees, which Mitch McConnell made sure were confirmed.”
He failed to build the wall or fix immigration, two of his many promises, and “his tariffs didn’t change Chinese behavior but did hurt growth and American consumers.”
“Mr. Trump also didn’t rebuild the military as much as he claims. The Navy had 297 ships at the end of fiscal year 2020, far fewer than his 355-ship goal or even the 308 ships called for by Barack Obama.”
He failed to repeal ObamaCare, another of his promises.
These facts are unlikely to change anyone’s mind, but they are facts nonetheless.
Quote of the week
John Hart, writing for The Dispatch, delivers an excellent breakdown of how former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley can overtake the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, DJT. In the process, he shared one of the best takes politics overall.
“The key dividing lines in American politics today are not between Republicans or Democrats, or liberals or conservatives, but between the serious and unserious, the mature and immature, and the clowns and the competent. Not surprisingly, this distinction provides clues about where people fit into other camps: the constitutionalists and anti-constitutionalists, and authoritarians and people who still hear freedom’s ring.”
Images of the week
The rapper-turned-flautist Andre 3000 has a new album out, and it’s nothing like what his fans would expect or have been waiting for. It’s 87 minutes of flute-playing. He knows his fans are anxiously awaiting another rap album. But he doesn’t seem concerned with their goals for his music.
"I think audience is important,” he said during an interview with 60 Minutes, “but I don't think catering to an audience is important at all."
CNN’s Fareed Zakaria annihilates woke colleges and universities
Fareed Zakaria isn’t known for his willingness to take on the nation’s Left-leaning institutions or the people who populate them. But that’s just what he did recently with an opening monologue on Fareed Zakaria GPS tearing the tolerance of hate speech at elite colleges and universities.
Here are a few of the most poignant nuggets, but I highly recommend using six minutes of your time to watch the video in its entirety. You’ll be glad you did. And also surprised to hear the words coming from his lips.
Against the backdrop of the recent testimonies of three Ivy League college presidents before the U.S. Congress, where the they hemmed and hawed about whether or not calls for the genocide of Jews on their campuses violates their respective schools’ policies regarding free speech, he delivered a scathing rebuke.
His opening line: “The American public has been losing faith in these universities for good reason.”
Other nuggets:
“To understand their performance, we have to understand the broad shift that has taken place at elite universities which have gone from being centers of excellence to institutions pushing political agendas. American universities have been neglecting a call focused on excellence in order to pursue a variety of agendas, many of them clustered around diversity and inclusion.”
The shift, he said. Has resulted in the schools becoming “places where the pervasive goals of political and social engineering, not academic merit.”
“Out of this culture of diversity has grown the collection of ideas and practices that we have now all heard of, safe spaces, trigger warnings, microaggressions.”
“Universities advise students not to speak, act, [and] dress in ways that might cause offense to some minority groups. With this culture of virtue signaling growing, the George Floyd protests erupted and many universities latched on and issued statements effectively aligning their institutions with these protests. By my memory, few took such steps even after 9/11 or during the Iraq war.”
“America’s top colleges are no longer seen as bastions of excellence but partisan outfits which means they will keep getting buffeted by these political storms as they emerge. They should abandon this long misadventure into politics, retrain their gaze on their core strengths, and rebuild their reputations as centers of research and learning.”