Nikki Haley takes swipes at the country's aging politicians in 2024 kickoff: Demands 'mental competency tests' for politicians over 75 and tells GOP to back HER if 'you're tired of losing' in bid to send 'tough as nails woman' to the White House
GOP presidential hopeful Nikki Haley officially rolled out her 2024 presidential campaign with a 26-minute speech in Charleston, South Carolina. 'It's not that America is past her prime, it's just that our politicians are past theirs,' said the 51-year-old
By Nikki Schwab
Daily Mail
February 15, 2023
Republican presidential hopeful
Nikki Haley took swipes at the country's aging leaders, as she asked
voters to send a 'tough-as-nails' woman to the White House at her 2024
kick-off event Wednesday in Charleston
Republican presidential hopeful Nikki Haley took swipes at the nation's aging leaders and urged GOP supporters who are 'tired of losing' to send a 'tough as nails' woman to the White House as she kicked off her 2024 campaign.
The former South Carolina governor walked out onstage to Survivor's hit 'Eye of the Tiger' to officially launch her presidential bid in a speech attacking 80-year-old Biden, liberals and politicians 'past their prime.'
The 51-year-old mother of two didn't mention 76-year-old former President Donald Trump by name as she called for term limits and 'mandatory mental competency tests' for politicians over the age of 75.
She vowed that schools would never close their classrooms again, promised to battle China head-on, support Ukraine and said America is 'strong and proud, not woke and weak.'
The former ambassador to the United Nations enters the GOP primary race as an underdog, with Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis still the favorites for the top spot on the presidential ticket, according to opinion surveys.
Haley had a 'particular message' for her fellow Republicans.
'We've lost the popular vote in seven of the last eight presidential elections,' she pointed out. 'Our cause is right - but we have failed to win the confidence of a majority of Americans.'
Of those seven, Trump lost the popular vote twice.
'Well - that ends today,' she continued.
'If you're tired of losing, then put your trust in a new generation,' the former South Carolina governor said.
Haley strutted onstage to the '80s classic after a series of supporters - including the late Otto Warmbier's mother Cindy and Rep. Ralph Norman - introduced her.
'It's not that America is past her prime, it's just that our politicians are past theirs,' she told the crowd. 'We won't win the fight for the 21st Century if we keep trusting politicians from the 20th Century,' she added.
'Joe Biden isn't leading from behind, he's not leading at all,' she also noted at one point.
Haley made her presidential ambitions officially known in a video she rolled out Tuesday, a day before her Charleston speech.
'Our best days are yet to come if we united and fight to save our country. I have devoted my life to this fight and I'm just getting started. For a strong America, for a proud America, I am president of the United States,' she told the crowd Wednesday.
She wore suffragette-white and talked about how her election would make history.
Haley said the way the nation would get past the status quo would be 'doing some things we've never done.'
'Like sending a tough-as-nails woman to the White House,' she said.
For his part, Norman - who formally endorsed Haley earlier Wednesday - called the ex-governor 'America's version of Margaret Thatcher.'
Haley also joked to her current and future opponents: 'May the best woman win.'
'All kidding aside, this is not about identity politics - and I don't believe in glass ceilings either,' she said.
At the top of her speech, the daughter of Indian immigrants said several times that she believed the country wasn't 'racist' nor was it 'flawed, rotten and filled with hate.'
But, she added, under Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris' watch 'the self-loathing has swept our country.'
She also blasted the current Democratic administration for having the U.S. 'spiraling toward socialism.'
'America isn't perfect - but the principles at America's core are perfect,' the former U.N. ambassador said.
Haley served in the South Carolina statehouse and then as the Palmetto State's governor as a reformer demanding more transparency.
She said she'd do the same thing on a federal level - telling the crowd she was against earmarks, supported term limits and was sick of politicians mugging for the TV cameras more than getting stuff done.
'In the America I see, the permanent politician will finally retire,' she said. 'We'll have term limits for Congress. And mandatory mental competency tests for politicians over 75-years-old.'
She pushed nationwide voter ID laws.
'In the America I ssee, everyone has full confidence in our elections,' she said.
The crowd paused before cheering at that line.
Haley also backed a 'strong military' and strong immigration policies.
'Businesses must hire Americans not illegals,' she said.
Haley also vowed to stand up to China - while standing with Ukraine.
'We will stand with our allies from Israel to Ukraine and stand up to our enemies in Iran and Russia,' she said.
'In the America I see, communist China won't just lose. Like the Soviet Union before, communist China will end up on the ash heap of history,' she added.
Warmbier's introduction served as a way to both tout Haley's foreign policy prowess and also her personality.
'I came here to tell you how Nikki Haley changed my life. To tell you that Nikki was a glimmer of light in the darkest period of my life. To tell you why America woudl be lucky to have Nikki in the White House,' Warmbier said.
She said she had asked the Trump administration if she could meet Haley while a guest at the president's State of the Union address, a year after her son Otto died due to being tortured while in captivity by the North Koreans.
'There are a lot of people in pollitcs who will tell you how highly they think of themselves,' Warmbier noted, pointing out that Haley wasn't one of them. 'She wont' tell you about our private conversations - but I will.'
After the State of the Union meeting, Warmbier said Haley stayed in touch and would periodically check in. Warmbier told the crowd that the now former U.N. ambassador 'understands our fears and pushes us to conquer them.'
'I've come to tell you that we need Nikki Haley fighting for all our cihldren, as she fought for Otto,' Warmbier said.
NIKKI HALEY: THE DAUGHTER OF INDIAN IMMIGRANTS WHO WAS RAISED IN A TINY SOUTH CAROLINA TOWN
Nikki Haley was born Nimrata Nikki Randhawa on January 20, 1972 - which happens to be the date presidents are inaugurated - to Raj and Ajit Randhawa, Indian immigrants from Punjab, who worked as teachers and ran a successful foreign goods business called Exotica International Inc.
Her mother, Raj, lost her father at a young age, but came from a wealthy family.
She met Ajit at a mountain vacation area near Dharamsala, India, finding him 'a good-looking man,' and their parents decided they could be married.
Haley's father Ajit got a PhD from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada - marking his first time living in North America.
'He left India for the new world with eight dollars in his pocket,' Haley recalled in her 2012 book, Can't Is Not An Option.
Ajit landed a job as an associate professor of biology at Voorhes College, a historically black college, in Denmark, South Carolina.
He and Raj arrived in Columbia, South Carolina in 1969, with Haley recounting in her book how much trouble they had finding housing.
'When it came time for my parents to find a home, no one would rent to them,' Haley said. 'Word quickly got around that my father worked at the 'black school,' and besides that, he and my mom were obviously foreigners themselves.'
They eventually had to buy a house in the tiny town of Bamberg, South Carolina, a town of 2,500 people located between Columbia and Charleston.
'When they finally found a house they had to buy it, not rent it. And they were told there were conditions: They couldn't entertain black people in it. They couldn't have alcohol in it. And they had to sell it back to the man they bought it from,' she wrote.
Haley was born and raised in Bamberg.
'The railroad tracks divided the town by race. I was the proud daughter of Indian immigrants - not black, not white - I was different,' she recalled in her campaign announcement video, released Tuesday. 'But my mom would always say your job is not to focus on the differences, but the similarities and my parents reminded me and my siblings every day how blessed we were to live in America.'
In Can't Is Not An Option, Haley suggested being the only Indian-American in a small southern town wasn't easy.
She recalled how in kindergarten, for the Thanksgiving play, she was cast as Pocahontus.
'To this day, I'm not sure what my teachers were thinking. Did they realize I wasn't that kind of Indian?' she wrote.
In another instance, Haley recallls being disqualified - and given a beach ball as a consolation prize - from a beauty pageant, because judges didn't know if she fit in the white or black category and didn't want 'either race to get upset.'
Haley had early memories of her parents, devout Sikh, being pushed to convert to Christianity by Bamberg's residents - something Haley did herself later in life.
She also recalled being the smartest kid in the class - so much that at the end of first grade her school moved her to second grade so she could start third grade in the fall.
Haley attended the highly-ranked Clemson University and studied textile management and later accounting, explaining in her book that politics wasn't talked about at home and she never would have thought of taking a political science class.
She met the man she would marry, William Michael 'Bill' Haley, her first week at college. Bill, as he was called then, had a roommate from Bamberg, which is how they were introduced.
The couple didn't date immediately, but eventually did so for five years before Michael proposed.
In Can't Is Not An Option, Haley recalled that upon the announcement of their engagement, Haley's parents said the marriage could go forward despite Michael not being Indian if he got a job, bought a house, bought a car and cut off all contact with their daughter for a year.
The couple waited two more years, with Haley saying they 'ignored my father's ultimatum that we not see each other for a year,' and eventually received the blessing from her family to start planning a wedding.
Their nuptials at Hilton Head got canned due to Hurricane Fran, so the couple ultimately married in ceremonies in Columbia, South Carolina in September 1996.
The couple have two children, Rena and Nalin, and two dogs, Bentley and Rio.
Out of school, Haley worked at a recycling company based in Charlotte, before returning to Bamberg to work for her parents' business.
She joined the Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Women Business Owners.
At NAWBO she met the woman who could become her political mentor, Eleanor Kitzman, who first prodded Haley about what political party she might belong to.
'Oh, you are clearly a Republican,' Haley recalled Kitzman telling her after she described herself as wanting the government to leave business alone and the government to stay within its means.
Haley launched her first campaign, for the state House seat in the 87th District, in 2004, under the impression that the incumbent Republican state Rep. Larry Koon was retiring.
He was not retiring, and thus Haley was challenging the longest-serving legislator in the South Carolina Statehouse.
She beat Koon in a GOP primary run-off.
Haley recalled how Koon, who called her 'little lady,' never called her to concede - and never spoke to her again.
2 comments:
We'll see. I think she has a good chance of winning.
I see her more as a #2 (this time around) to DeSantis or Cruz, but if she lands the top spot I would be happy to vote for her.
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