By George Fallar 
“What do you think the cause of the civil war was?” asked a man of Nikki Haley at a December 27, 2023 campaign event in North Conway, New Hampshire.
The Republican politician, a former governor of South Carolina, answered.
Well, don’t come at me with an easy question.
I mean, I think the cause of the Civil War was basically how government was going to run, what you could and couldn’t do, the freedoms in what people could and couldn’t do.
Nikki Haley – NH Primary Campaign Event 12/27/2023
The blowback to her answer was swift, so Haley tried to walk it back the next day.
Of course the Civil War was about slavery. We know that. That’s the easy part of it. What I was saying was what does it mean to us today? What it means to us today is about freedom. That’s what that was all about.
Nikki Haley – 12/28/2023
MAGA Racism
The only remaining Republican candidate opposing the former president hesitated a few beats. Then she made a mistake answering the American Civil War question. Haley knew the correct answer. She knew she should acknowledge slavery as the root cause of the war.
Nikki Haley didn’t answer “slavery” because she knew the MAGA people she needed on her side would object. She knew the “states rights” answering people would punish her. Haley knew her opponent would make her pay for the answer, so she needed a heartbeat or two to formulate an answer acceptable to the MAGA crowd.
During her attempted repair of that answer the following day, the former governor of South Carolina diminished the role racism has played in the history of our country. That position on American racism is required of a Republican candidate hoping to win. The former president and nearly every other registered Republican candidate are culpable for the same thing.
Don’t Like The Label? Fix It.
The current push to relieve ourselves and our forebears from the burden of that responsibility is a denial of history. Anyone visiting Mount Vernon or Monticello and seeing the enslaved people’s quarters should feel that weight and perhaps reflected on our attitude toward people who are “not like us.”
All of that is why MAGA people are painted with a racist brush. It’s something that has been well earned. People who object to that should do something to correct the root cause or find another group with which to align themselves.
Neighborhood Unwelcome Wagon
The Washington Post published a story Friday about a cross burning in South Carolina.
A husband and wife couple bought their retirement home in South Carolina near Myrtle Beach. Both are Black U.S. Army veterans. Their experience wasn’t what they hoped for. Most of their neighbors were welcoming and friendly. However…
But within hours of moving into their three-bedroom house near Myrtle Beach in 2021, the Williamses said their next-door neighbors, a White couple, started scowling at them. The uncomfortable stares eventually led to racial slurs and a bitter two-year dispute. Then, on the day after Thanksgiving, they discovered a cross set on fire just outside their yard.
Cross burning in South Carolina stirs debate over hate-crimes laws – Washington Post 01/26/2024
Despite the neighbor hollering racial epithets while police and firefighters were on the scene, no charges were filed. The initial police report of the incident was “for informational purposes only.”
Missing Hate-Crime Laws
The next-door neighbors were eventually arrested and charged with a harassment. The point of the Post piece is South Carolina has no hate-crime laws that should have covered something so obvious as burning a cross.
Both the House and the Senate in South Carolina have a controlling Republican majority. Last year, the House overwhelmingly passed hate-crime legislation adding five years to any sentence for a crime involving hate for race, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, or physical or mental disability.
The Senate refused to pass the bill. The story gives some clue as to why.
State Sen. Josh Kimbrell (R) has been opposed to the hate-crimes bill but said he’s open to considering it this year — if it removes protections based on sexual orientation. He believes hate-crimes protections for the LGBTQ+ community will lead to “censorship of free speech.”
“Right now, anything to do with sexual orientation or gender identity is a very prickly subject,” Kimbrell said in an interview. “I am open to a discussion but as of now, the language is far too broad and I can’t support it.”
Cross burning in South Carolina stirs debate over hate-crimes laws – Washington Post 01/26/2024
Not MAGA-Safe Legislation
Senator Kimbrell said the quiet part out loud. Gender identity is a “prickly subject” and any legislation mentioning it will be quashed. It’s the politics of pleasing the leader of the MAGA movement and his followers. There’s no other explanation.
It’s the same thing that had the word “slavery” stuck in the throat of Nikki Haley. She KNEW using that word would cost her power and money.
Haley was responsible for eventually removing the Confederate flag from the South Carolina state capitol grounds in 2015. Her state was the last in the nation to do so, but she did it during the aftermath of a mass shooting at a Black church in her state.
So, Haley knows better or she was appeasing a different group when she finally made the decision to support the removal of the Confederate flag.
Federal Cowardice
Mitch McConnell and most Republicans in the U.S. Congress have made the same decision recently when they announced immigration legislation will be dead on arrival. Why?
McConnell told GOP senators that before border security talks began, immigration policy united Republicans and Ukraine aid divided them. “Politics on this have changed,” McConnell said of solving the crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border. That’s because former President Donald Trump wants to run his 2024 campaign focusing on immigration.
“We don’t want to do anything to undermine him,” McConnell said of Trump, a one-time collaborator turned nemesis.
Punchbowl News
There it is. Out in the open.
The MAGA influence is so strong that the leader of the movement drops a clue and they all scurry to make it so. You know, like a strongman autocrat would do in a fascist state. MAGA people blindly follow a guy using multiple court appearances for felonies and an $83.3 million fine as campaign stops.