Nikki Haley Should Go for Broke
This shouldn’t even be a question. A great party is trying to produce its presidential nominee. Donald Trump is the leader in the contest so far, and looks likely to be the victor.
But the cycle has just started (61 delegates allocated, 2,368 to go) and the party isn’t united, it’s split, roughly 50/50 pro-Trump and not. Nikki Haley is right to stay in and fight. No one has the right to shut her down.
She’s stumping in her home state, South Carolina, and getting a lot of advice. I remember George H.W. Bush at a difficult point in the GOP primaries in 1988, after he lost Iowa.
All his friends were saying, “You have to show you’re strong!" He’d listen politely, thank them, now and then ask if they had any specific ideas on how to show “strength." They’d wave their hands and flounder. Finally Bush growled to his aides: How do they want me to show it? Maybe I’ll get off the plane, go up to the greeting party and slug ’em in the face, plaster ’em, maybe that’ll do it. That’s from memory, thus no quote marks, but I think of it when the subject is the well-meaning but useless advice candidates under pressure receive.
For useful advice I turned to my friend Landon Parvin, savant and veteran Washington speechwriter, who tore himself away from work to offer practical thoughts. Go for broke, Landon said; there’s only one subject now and it’s Mr. Trump.
Go at him, make it new. “Feel the freedom of your situation," he says to Ms. Haley.
“Self-respect is at issue. You’re not slinking off under pressure. There is something glorious about a last stand." “You alone now carry the banner.
Speak up for all the Republicans who have been demeaned, diminished and threatened by Trump. He can no longer hurt you. Pick up the sword.
Read more on livemint.com
