58 Comments

Keep up the good work

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Haley said nothing in the debate that anyone could walk away with other than an amorphous feeling of being "reasonable." When you ask someone, what policies / laws would she enact regarding our, well, our actual rights to equality and autonomy, you get crickets. Because she's sneaky. She was actually the most dangerous one up there, IMHO. And the democrats need to out her.

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EXACTLY! ANd it’s a given when testifying in court that you NEVER agree with a lawyer that says “wouldn’t you agree with me that…….” Nice try Ms Haley…..

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To add some context, I dislike Ms Haley for two reasons, based on news I have read. While governor, she vetoed funds for battered women's services, saying "Domestic violence isn't a problem." As UN ambassador, she threatened her diplomatic colleagues, demanding they accept Trump's policies, adding, "We'll be watching you."

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Nikki Haley only cares about Nikki Haley. She will do and say whatever she must to advance Nikki Haley. She has always been thus. And again, she will not be the nominee no matter how much the media helps her. The Republican base will not nominate a female presidential candidate. If 45 is the nominee, I don’t think he’d tap her as VP, but others would.

(I have lived in South Carolina for 50 years, and I was involved in Republican politics in my 20s and 30s. She did whatever was required to advance to the governorship.)

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Interestingly that probably makes her less threatening to liberals. Right now people who just want power for themselves and for its own sake are less scary than the ones who really want to establish Gilead. (The problem of course is the two groups need each other and we haven't been able to sever that connection).

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This is a helpful perspective. Still, I don't think it is 100% fair to criticize Haley for being self-serving. That seems like par for the course for anyone who runs for president, or at least for any Republican candidate. Nikki probably had to work a lot harder and smarter than any white male politician did to advance in SC politics. But It is sad she sells out her gender for people who will never respect her.

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founding

This late term abortion bullshit is unfortunately quite effective and it’s good to keep educating on it. Someone may think to themselves “sure, I’m against third trimester abortions and could agree to that” but most pro-birthers are thinking *way* earlier than third trimester. Also, third trimester abortions are extremely rare, and many are caused by (you guessed it!) lack of access to abortion resources. We must support all abortion.

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Exactly! And thank you!!! Many many times over!!!!

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We can never forget that a woman-hater is a woman-hater. It's time to think like warriors and for those who have the physical ability to become warriors ready to do battle. Sadly my body is too old to become a physical warrior. I have to work on warrior talk. All women who value women need to learn warrior talk. The NOW and Feminist Majority approach is a total waste of effort.

I need to rewrite some of my work. I'm glad I haven't put it out for public consumption in it's present form.

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founding

I want to move the Overton window. So I am making a statement of what I want, not what I don't want.

I want free contraceptives for everyone who needs or wants them. I want abortion care covered by insurance or medicare or medicare for all or whatever system we are working with. I want contraceptive and abortion services covered for all in every state in the union. I want to end the ban on providing same in other countries. Anywhere people want contraceptives and abortion care they should be able to access it whether they are rich or poor.

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Yeah. The standard is dumb men making ill informed and hypocritical laws against women. That’s the saddest thing. Still qualified to lead this country??!?!

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I think people also like to avoid talking about abortion so this gives them an easy out. It makes them feel like they really came together and aren’t being too political. And lord knows with those ridiculous men next to her she does look like the sane choice.

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I have said this before, and in this forum as well, that whether it's Jake Tapper during a CNN interview or Fox News during the latest Republican presidential candidate debate, the retort to Nikki Haley's mantra that Dems want to allow abortions up until the moment of live birth must be countered with the fact that, according to the CDC, 93% of abortions occur during the first trimester – that is, at or before 13 weeks of gestation, and less than 1% of abortions take place after 21 weeks of pregnancy. What are some of the reasons that third trimester abortions happen at all? Because the pregnant woman receives a late diagnosis that a fetus's brain is not developing (note: a great deal of fetal brain development happens after the 24th week of pregnancy). Or a pregnant woman develops a health risk. Or now, post-Dobbs, a ban will translate into more people being pushed into needing abortion care in a far away state that will require time to gather the necessary financial resources, set up childcare for children they already have, and pay for transportation.

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Yes. These numbers are so important to broadcast. I get so angry when they say a 15 week ban is "reasonable" -- it would take us back in practice to what Roe was anyway, BUT it would be extraordinarily cruel to women who need abortions for the most dire of reasons.

And all for what ?? So the Grand Oppressive Party can own the narrative in blue states? Red states would still ban abortion earlier than 15 weeks. So it's all a ruse. And meantime women are suffering and the whole lot of us have been cast as chattel.

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I was waiting for this one! All the people calling her 'reasonable' has been making me want to vomit. Her talking points were a magic trick. Everyone here knows that Republicans would axe the filibuster if they ever get 51 votes in the Senate. Unfortunately, tons of people are politically illiterate and that's the biggest problem. At least Mike Pence and his clone Tim Scott are honest about their reprehensible beliefs. Nikki Haley doesn't give a shit about other women, considering she's called transgender people in sports "the biggest women's issue of our time.' I'm glad she was on the stage but I'm also glad she has .0001% chance to be president.

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They are seeing the gender and the color of the speaker and not listening to the words that are coming out of her mouth.

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"Can't we all agree . . . "

Lady, you and I cannot agree on a goddamn thing, largely because I'd trust a pit viper before I'd trust you.

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Pit viper in boucle.

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founding

I'm pro pit viper and I vote.

But I would never vote for Nikki Haley.

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Nikki Haley will be the Republican presidential nominee should Donald Trump fall into a deep, open pit. And if she is the nominee, she will be our next president.

Haley came across as tough, smart, dignified, principled, experienced. Her earnestness around abortion appealed to Republicans who, themselves, want to seem to be tough, smart, dignified, principled. They are desperate for a woman candidate who is not Sarah Palin.

So, be afraid. Be very, very afraid.

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A South Asian woman will be the GOP nominee when pigs fly (an apt metaphor I believe).

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She'd be devastating if the Establishment had any influence over the party. However it doesn't. MAGA hates all those things- smart, dignified, principled and experienced. It's a tragedy and it honestly mystifies me, but they do. Vivek is the one that popped for them.

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I agree with your second sentence, because the media would love it and give her every advantage they could. Not so sure about your first sentence, because I think it will be very hard to make that big of a pivot in such a short time. But I suppose it depends on exactly how Trump is undone (or would be, in this scenario). I'm not sure most Republicans are looking for the qualities that she is supposed to represent.

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Haley's trying to have it both ways, to have anyone and everyone think she agrees with their position on abortion. (It's a good political trick if you can pull it off. Obama in 2008 was similar in getting voters to see whatever they wanted to see in him.) Who knows what she really thinks. It's incredibly disingenuous for her to suggest that it doesn't matter though. The next time one party has the trifecta (White House, House, and Senate), 60 votes for cloture is gone and a simple majority will pass any bill in the Senate. And it would be almost impossible for a Republican to win the presidency next year and not have both houses of Congress. So any Republican running to win is running to make policy, along with the rest of their party.

The other thing going on, and this is REALLY important, is that the media is not willing to deem 30 to 40 to 48 percent of the American public beyond the pale, no matter WHAT they think. So the media is going to insist on continuing to do the "both sides" thing. Because they're committed to that, they DESPERATELY want there to be TWO political parties that are not racist and not misogynist. This is why they love Nikki Haley. Her presence helps support that fiction.

But it is a fiction. Haley is not going to get more than a smidgen of Republican support because their voters want a hardcore conservative who will blow the system up and reverse all the changes of the past 60, or 160, years. A woman, and a person of color - well that would just look too much like progress to these folks, no matter how extreme she really is. And when she gets praise from the mainstream media, that actually HURTS her with Republican voters, because they've already decided the mainstream and the system and the establishment and everything are hopelessly corrupted, irredeemable, and out to get them.

Make sense?

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I’ll say it again. Republicans will not elect a female president. She’d be formidable as a VP candidate, though.

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That’s what I think. I can see Trump picking her. If she accepted that role, she could Laos claim to moderates that she’d be the adult in the WH. In spite of how that worked out last time, they’d buy it, too

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The Dems will axe the filibuster when pigs fly.

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Something has to change in senate rules; there isn't really any other option if we're keeping this constitution. It would be far worse for the Democrats if they won the trifecta next year and did nothing with it, and that will be made very clear to them. At the very least reproductive rights and voting rights are essential. They would be lucky to have the opportunity though. It's quite unlikely Democrats will enter the next Congress with 50 senate seats, even if Biden is winning handily and they flip the House.

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The only way to handle the filibuster is to grant carve outs on certain laws. Getting rid of it entirely would lead to utter chaos, with the laws changing every other years depending on who has control of the Senate.

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In principle, yes. The problem is I have no idea how to do that in practice. What gets the carve out and what doesn't; the two parties will never agree on that. Republicans are far more satisfied with the status quo, at least on things that can't be addressed through reconciliation, (they do have the federal judiciary after all), and they also have a much better chance of ever having 60 seats, so it's less urgent to them. If Democrats were to get lucky enough to have the trifecta though, I don't know how they could sell the idea that we still have to wait decades for reproductive rights and voting rights.

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Creating a carve out only takes a majority, not 60 votes, IIRC. That’s how Harry Reid was able to do it for judicial appointees, and McConnell did it for SCOTUS appointees

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I think you vote to overrule the parliamentarian. In practice it's unclear what precedent that would set for the future. Saying you'll only do it on a certain bill doesn't bind the other party to anything. And when it's done once it's much harder not to do it again.

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