Former Rep. David Jolly said Nikki Haley’s non-answer to a question about the cause of the Civil War exemplifies the state of the Republican Party.
During a campaign event in New Hampshire on Wednesday, the Republican presidential candidate was asked, “What was the cause of the United States Civil War?”
Instead of simply saying, “Slavery,” she tried something else.
“Well don’t come with an easy question,” she said. “I mean, I think the cause of the Civil War was basically how government was gonna run. The freedoms and what people could and couldn’t do.”
Haley received backlash from liberals and conservatives before revising her response by acknowledging the role slavery played in the Civil War. However, she said, “it was also more than that.”
“That is really shocking and unsettling behavior,” Jolly said on MSNBC on Friday. “I’m a child of the south, oftentimes the rural south. And you do get exposed to this argument somehow that the Civil War was about states’ rights. And you get exposed to it. And the bad faith argument then ends the sentence there. And it takes good faith to realize, wait a minute, there’s more to that sentence. It was about a state’s right to permit human slavery. And Nikki Haley knows that.”
Guest host Jonathan Capehart asked Jolly if Haley’s response is indicative of the modern GOP.
“And David, what does
“Look, I mean, this is a party that trades on racism and xenophobia and misogyny, and tries to gloss over it as though they don’t really do so. But they do. And the reason they do is the failure of leadership from leading politicians like Nikki Haley to… stand up in the face of misogyny and racism and xenophobia. And then you’re colored with it. And she is, today, the party is today, and it’s hopefully why they lose to Joe Biden in November.”
Watch above via MSNBC.