Conservatives Roast Kari Lake for Racist Attack on Nikki Haley After Attempted Rebrand: ‘UnChristian and UnAmerican’

Isaac SchorrMar 6th, 2024, 1:14 pm
 

LEFT: Nikki Haley (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall) RIGHT: Kari Lake (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Perennial candidate Kari Lake’s attempted rebrand as a unifier is not going well, and her racist attack on Nikki Haley did not help.

First, Lake, who is now running for the U.S. Senate, sought a rapprochement with the family of the late Republican Senator John McCain and “McCain Republicans” whom she derided during her failed campaign to become Arizona’s governor in 2022.

McCain’s daughter, Meghan McCain, sent that attempted olive branch back to Lake in flames.

“Kari Lake is trying to walk back her continued attacks on my Dad (& family) and all of his loyal supporters after telling them to ‘get the hell out’. Guess she realized she can’t become a Senator without us. No peace, bitch. We see you for who you are – and are repulsed by it,” said McCain.

Lake responded by appealing to McCain’s maternal instincts. “As mothers, (both with two kiddos) I’m [sic] know we both agree that our children’s future is too important to let it slip away over past grudges or hurt feelings,” wrote Lake.

“NO PEACE, BITCH,” repeated McCain in reply.

Nevertheless, Lake has insisted that she’s intent on unifying the party, telling reporters at CPAC that she really does “want peace” and to “come together.”

“I don’t want to fight with Americans,” she added.

But the limits of her attitude were on display Wednesday morning when she attacked Nikki Haley ahead of the former South Carolina governor’s announcement that she was dropping out of the Republican presidential primary.

“Reports: Nimrata Haley will suspend her campaign today after more humiliating, landslide loses on Super Tuesday,” observed Lake on X. “Nimrata” is presumably a misspelling of “Nimarata,” Haley’s given first name. Haley has gone by her middle name “Nikki” since childhood, but her political opponents on both the left and right have frequently referred to her as “Nimarata” in a not-s0-veiled attempt to either mock her for her Indian heritage or to baselessly imply that she’s ashamed of it.

Conservatives took notice of Lake’s reversion back to her divisive instincts.

“Ms. Lake, there is nothing wrong with Niki Haley’s given first name–it’s quite a beautiful name, really. But, like former president Trump, you use it in a prejudicial manner to make her seem foreign. That’s wrong. It’s unChristian and unAmerican. It appeals to the worst in us,” submitted Princeton professor and longtime conservative thought leader Robert P. George.

“Nominating Kari Lake is baffling to me. She is obviously off-putting to anyone outside of the Republican right. She has a record of losing winnable races,” argued The Daily Wire’s Frank Fleming. “And she’s a grifter who you can’t trust actually cares about conservative issues. It’s all downside outside of the spectacle.”

“Looks like Ruben Gallego just clinched the top seed and the bye week,” declared Jim Geraghty of National Review and The Washington Post. Gallego is Lake’s anticipated Democratic opponent in November’s general election.

“Genius move making racist attacks on Haley. Now that Sinema is out you can’t win without her non-MAGA voters,” posited Marc Thiessen, a former Bush administration official. “But you do you.”

And perhaps most amusingly, Jewish Insider’s Josh Kraushaar quote-tweeted Lake, calling her attack on Haley the “Chaser” to a Politico piece that asserted that “Lake has also been drifting toward the center, making overtures to the moderate wing of the Arizona Republican Party that she viciously attacked during her 2022 governor campaign.”

As The Washington Post‘s Aaron Blake pointed out, a study conducted after Lake’s loss in 2022 revealed that “40k people in Maricopa County who otherwise voted mostly Republican didn’t vote for her” while Lake ultimately lost by around 17,000 votes statewide.

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