By MEG KINNARD (Associated Press)
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley was requested by a New Hampshire voter in regards to the motive for the Civil War, and she or he didn’t point out slavery in her response — main the voter to say he was “astonished” by her omission.
Asked throughout a Wednesday night time city corridor in Berlin, New Hampshire, what she believed had precipitated the warfare — the primary pictures of which have been fired in her house state of South Carolina — Haley talked in regards to the function of presidency, replying that it concerned “the freedoms of what people could and couldn’t do.”
She then turned the query again to the person who had requested it. He replied that he was not the one working for president and wished as an alternative to know her reply.
After Haley went right into a lengthier rationalization in regards to the function of presidency, particular person freedom and capitalism, the questioner appeared to admonish Haley, saying, “In the year 2023, it’s astonishing to me that you answer that question without mentioning the word ‘slavery.’”
“What do you want me to say about slavery?” Haley retorted earlier than abruptly transferring on to the following query.
But 12 hours later, Haley walked again her feedback, along with her marketing campaign disseminating a Thursday morning radio interview through which she stated, “Of course the Civil War was about slavery,” one thing she known as “a stain on America.” She went on to reiterate that “freedom matters. And individual rights and liberties matter for all people.”
Haley, who served six years as South Carolina’s governor, has been competing for a distant second place to Donald Trump for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. She has ceaselessly stated throughout her marketing campaign that she would compete within the first three states earlier than returning “to the sweet state of South Carolina, and we’ll finish it” within the Feb. 24 main.
The marketing campaign of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, one other of Haley’s GOP foes, recirculated video of the unique alternate on social media, including the remark, “Yikes.”
DeSantis confronted criticism of his personal over slavery early within the marketing campaign, when Florida enacted new training requirements requiring lecturers to instruct center faculty college students that slaves developed abilities that “could be applied for their personal benefit.” U.S. Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, the one Black Republican within the Senate and DeSantis’ then-rival for the GOP presidential nomination, rejected that characterization, saying as an alternative that slavery was about “separating families, about mutilating humans and even raping their wives.”
Issues surrounding the origins of the Civil War and its heritage are nonetheless a lot of the material of Haley’s house state, and she or he has been pressed on the warfare’s origins earlier than. As she ran for governor in 2010, Haley, in an interview with a now-defunct activist group then generally known as The Palmetto Patriots, described the warfare as between two disparate sides preventing for “tradition” and “change” and stated the Confederate flag was “not something that is racist.”
During that very same marketing campaign, she dismissed the necessity for the flag to return down from the Statehouse grounds, portraying her Democratic rival’s push for its removing as a determined political stunt.
Five years later, Haley urged lawmakers to take away the flag from its perch close to a Confederate soldier monument following a mass capturing in Charleston, South Carolina, through which a white gunman killed 9 Black church members who have been attending Bible research. At the time, Haley stated the flag had been “hijacked” by the shooter from those that noticed the flag as symbolizing “sacrifice and heritage.”
South Carolina’s Ordinance of Secession — the 1860 proclamation by the state authorities outlining its causes for seceding from the Union — mentions slavery in its opening sentence and factors to the “increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery” as a motive for the state eradicating itself from the Union.
On Wednesday night time, Christale Spain — elected this yr as the primary Black girl to chair South Carolina’s Democratic Party — stated Haley’s response was “vile, but unsurprising.”
“The same person who refused to take down the Confederate Flag until the tragedy in Charleston, and tried to justify a Confederate History Month,” Spain stated in a put up on X, of Haley. “She’s just as MAGA as Trump,” Spain added, referring to Trump’s ”Make America Great Again” slogan.
Jaime Harrison, present chairman of the Democratic National Committee and South Carolina’s celebration chairman throughout a part of Haley’s tenure as governor, stated her response was “not stunning if you were a Black resident in SC when she was Governor.”
“Same person who said the confederate flag was about tradition & heritage and as a minority woman she was the right person to defend keeping it on state house grounds,” Harrison posted Wednesday night time on X. “Some may have forgotten but I haven’t. Time to take off the rose colored Nikki Haley glasses folks.”
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This story has been corrected to indicate 9 individuals, not eight, have been killed on the church.
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Meg Kinnard could be reached at http://twitter.com/MegKinnardAP
Source: www.bostonherald.com”