Nikki Haley has been telling Democratic lawmakers to beware of two things: their leftwing wing and the impulse to undo President Trump’s Middle East peace gains.
The former governor of South Carolina and former US envoy at the UN has been boosting her political standing in the Republican party, possibly with the hope of winning the GOP nomination for the presidency (which could make for quite a spectacle should Kamala Harris be running on the Democratic side: two women of Indian heritage running to become President of the United States).
Speaking at a campaign rally for Sen. Kelly Loeffler in Georgia, Haley said: “Not enough people are talking about what happens whether the Republicans win the Senate or the Democrats win the Senate. If the Republicans win the Senate, Lindsey Graham will be our budget chair. If the Democrats win the Senate, you’re not ready, Bernie Sanders will be your Senate chair. That’s why this matters, ladies and gentleman, the Democratic Party is not your grandparent’s Democratic Party.”
It remains to be seen whether Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who would become the next majority leader should the democrats win both Georgia’s seats on Jan. 5, picks an outsider he cannot control like Bernie Sanders to head any committee, never mind the most crucial one. In fact, on several key issues including Israel policy, Sanders is more often in cahoots with Kentucky GOP Senator Rand Paul than with Senate Democrats. But Haley is right to warn the Democrats about the 20 or so members of Congress in their midst whose extreme-leftist ideology has already cost the party several seats last election.
Painting the Squad et al as the face of the Democratic party (they’re not, they’re more a hated minority), the former ambassador warned her Georgia audience: “This is the Democratic Party that believes you cancel anyone that doesn’t agree with you. They believe that you defund the police and stop taking care of those that serve us. They believe that socialism is the new way of life. And they think that you should put your lives and your healthcare in the hands of government.”
Next, Haley suggested a couple of moves the Biden administration might pursue should those two Georgia Senate seats go blue: “You know one of the first things they want to do? They want to make DC and Puerto Rico a state so that they can get more liberals in the Senate. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue are our first line of defense to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
The total population of Puerto Rico is approximately 3.2 million, which is more than any one of 20 US states. The population of Washington, DC is roughly 700,000, which is more than Wyoming’s. Should their residents—who, in Puerto Rico’s case have been citizens of the United States since 1917, and in DC since 1776—be added to the electoral college, that would mean the end of the game, as the GOP would have to win two additional states each presidential election. Also, with 4 automatically-Democratic senators and who knows how many House members, the GOP can kiss the Congress good bye.
Haley was not wrong when she said: Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue are our first line of defense to make sure that doesn’t happen,” because if both of them lose, upgrading PR and DC to statehood would be just the first thing Biden-Harris could do to establish a long Democratic rule into the night.
A little over a week ago, Nikki Haley published an op-ed in the Washington Post (Nikki Haley: Biden shouldn’t reject all of Trump’s foreign policies. Here are three he should keep), in which she advised the president-elect to keep key aspects of Trump’s China policy, keep Trump’s pressure on Latin American dictatorships, and “encourage the remarkable progress of Arab-Israeli peace.”
On that last part, the former ambassador wrote: “The blooming friendships between Israel and numerous Arab countries have been among the most beautiful developments of the past four years. The Obama administration said such a peace would never happen. But it did — because of US leadership. Trump refused to accept the tired thinking that the Palestinian cause was the key to broader regional peace. And he put strong pressure on Iran’s murderous regime, which hates the Arab world nearly as much as it hates Israel and our country. Trump’s actions aligned American, Israeli and Arab policy, with peace the result.”
“How can Biden foster a deeper peace?” Haley asked and answered: “Not by caving to Iran or turning on Israel, both of which would fray the nascent Arab-Israeli bonds that still need strengthening. The better path is to continue to isolate Iran and encourage harmony between Israel and the Arab states, which now clearly see their common interests. A peaceful Middle East depends on it and is essential to US security.”
I know you want to vote her in already, I do, too. But we’ll have to wait 4 years.
