By MEG KINNARD (Associated Press)
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley was requested at a New Hampshire city corridor concerning the motive for the Civil War, and she or he didn’t point out slavery in her response. She walked again her feedback hours later.
Asked throughout Wednesday night time’s city corridor in Berlin what she believed had induced the struggle — the primary photographs of which had been fired in her dwelling state of South Carolina — Haley talked concerning the position 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 operating for president and wished as a substitute to know her reply.
After Haley went right into a lengthier rationalization concerning the position 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 subsequent query.
But 12 hours later, Haley back-pedaled on her feedback, together with her marketing campaign disseminating a Thursday morning radio interview by which she mentioned, “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 regularly mentioned 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 trade on social media, including the remark, “Yikes.”
DeSantis confronted criticism of his personal over slavery early within the marketing campaign, when Florida enacted new schooling requirements requiring lecturers to instruct center college 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 a substitute that slavery was about “separating families, about mutilating humans and even raping their wives.”
Make America Great Again Inc., an excellent PAC supporting Trump’s marketing campaign, despatched out a launch saying Haley’s response reveals she “is clearly not ready for primetime.” The group additionally included an X publish from Florida Rep. Byron Donalds, a Black Republican who helps Trump, studying “1. Psst Nikki… the answer is slavery PERIOD. 2. This really doesn’t matter because Trump is going to be the nominee. Trump 2024!”
Trump himself has been accused of downplaying the historic legacy of slavery within the United States. At a 2020 occasion marking the 223rd anniversary of the signing of the Constitution, he argued that America’s founding “set in motion the unstoppable chain of events that abolished slavery, secured civil rights, defeated communism and fascism and built the most fair, equal and prosperous nation in human history.” But he didn’t point out the 2 centuries of slavery in America.
Issues surrounding the origins of the Civil War and its heritage are nonetheless a lot of the material of Haley’s dwelling state, and she or he has been pressed on the struggle’s origins earlier than. As she ran for governor in 2010, Haley, in an interview with a now-defunct activist group then often called The Palmetto Patriots, described the struggle as between two disparate sides combating for “tradition” and “change” and mentioned 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 elimination 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 taking pictures in Charleston, South Carolina, by which a white gunman killed 9 Black church members who had been attending Bible research. At the time, Haley mentioned 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 lady to chair South Carolina’s Democratic Party — mentioned 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 mentioned in a publish 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, mentioned 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, had been killed on the church.
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Meg Kinnard might be reached at http://twitter.com/MegKinnardAP
Source: www.bostonherald.com”