Nikki Haley can’t beat Trump in the game of identity politics

livemint.com:

First Nikki Haley tried to eliminate slavery as a cause of the Civil War. Now she’s trying to erase racism from American history. In an interview with Fox News last week, Haley was asked if the Republican Party is racist.

She ignored the specific question and went broad. “We’re not a racist country... We’ve never been a racist country," she said, adding that while she faced racism as a kid, she ended up living the American dream.

“Our goal is to make sure that today is better than yesterday. Are we perfect? No. But our goal is to always make sure we try and be more perfect every day that we can." She is playing her version of identity politics, using her singular story of breaking racial barriers as an argument against racism.

It’s a familiar move for non-Caucasian Republicans. [In the US primaries], Haley is trying to appeal to a voting bloc that increasingly sees ‘whiteness’ as a politically salient and threatened identity. It’s a tough spot for the daughter of Indian immigrants, but Haley’s trying her best to assure these voters that she isn’t an outsider or a threat to the status quo.

And that she won’t make them feel bad about being Caucasian. But it won’t work—at least not for Haley. Not in Donald Trump’s Republican party.

That’s because Trump is the master of stoking Caucasian grievance. The former president, fresh off a big victory in Iowa, is reminding voters that Haley’s first name is Nimarata. Her given name is Nimarata Nikki Randhawa.

She took her husband Michael Haley’s last name when they got married. In fact, Trump has dusted off his entire ‘birtherism’ playbook and is deploying it against Haley. “Anyone listening to Nikki ‘Nimrada’ Haley’s wacked out speech last night, would think that she won the Iowa