Following former UN Ambassador and South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley’s official announcement on Tuesday of her 2024 bid for the White House, political talking heads promptly made pronouncements and predictions about how Haley would fare and if she could stake out a successful path to the nomination.
Many wondered aloud about whether Haley would take it to the paint against Donald Trump — she won’t; at least not in the beginning — and how she’d attempt to draw a distinction between herself and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. While DeSantis has remained mum on whether he’ll run in 2024, safe money should be put on: “of course he’ll run.”
While some Republican voters suggest DeSantis should “wait his turn” until 2028, there’s no such thing as “a turn” in politics, and on the contrary, windows of opportunity can close as fast as they open. Team DeSantis is well aware of that political reality.
As to a path to the nomination for Nikki Haley, we got a preview of coming attractions on Friday when the former Trump official declared that Gov. DeSantis’s Parental Rights in Education Act doesn’t go far enough.
As reported by Fox News, Haley highlighted the controversial Florida law, which critics have dubbed the “don’t say gay” bill, in comments at a packed town hall in New Hampshire on Thursday.
There was all this talk about the Florida bill — the ‘don’t say gay bill.’ Basically what it said was you shouldn’t be able to talk about gender before third grade. I’m sorry. I don’t think that goes far enough. When I was in school you didn’t have sex ed until 7th grade. And even then, your parents had to sign whether you could take the class. That’s a decision for parents to make.
The audience applauded in approval.
On the other hand, DeSantis has seen his popularity soar among conservatives across the country over the past three years due in large part to his forceful pushback against draconian COVID pandemic restrictions, his standing up to public schools, the media, and corporations, most notably Disney. Moreover, the popular Florida governor garnered national attention in 2022 for signing the parental rights legislation into law.
Haley was asked by Fox News Digital if she thought the national praise heaped on DeSantis for the parental rights bill and other culture wars actions are warranted. She replied: “I think Ron’s been a good governor. I just think that third grade’s too young. We should not be talking to kids in elementary school about gender, period.” She continued:
And if you are going to talk to kids about it, you need to get the parents’ permission to do that. That is something between a parent and a child. That is not something that schools need to be teaching. Schools need to be teaching reading and math and science. They don’t need to be teaching whether they think you’re a boy or a girl.
As a political writer, it sometimes strikes me how we often write from nuanced positions about controversial issues as radical as the left’s metastasis within the public education system in a brazen attempt to gain control of America’s young children through indoctrination, when we should instead be screaming from rooftops about the left’s broader goal of destroying America as we know it, but I digress.
Finally, while Haley hasn’t directly gone after Trump —yet — the same can’t be said in reverse. As my colleague Becca Lower reported on Wednesday, Team Trump attempted to smear Trump’s former UN Ambassador with an out-of-context quote about Hillary Clinton.
In addition, the expected personal attack against Haley, courtesy of Taylor Budowich, head of Make America Great Again Inc.:
Nikki Haley is just another career politician. She started out as a Never Trumper before resigning to serve in the Trump admin. She then resigned early to go rake in money on corporate boards. Now, she’s telling us she represents a ‘new generation.’ Sure just looks like more of the same, a career politician whose only fulfilled commitment is to herself.
I’d point out the irony of that last sentence, given where it came from, but let’s just leave it alone — for now.