"I'm Not Going Anywhere": Haley’s Hawkish Position On War Takes Center Stage In South Carolina Primary
On Tuesday, Nikki Haley vowed to remain in the Republican presidential primary race against former President Trump - telling a crowd in her home state of South Carolina: "I’m not going anywhere."
"I’m not afraid to say the hard truths out loud. I feel no need to kiss the ring. I have no fear of Trump’s retribution. I’m not looking for anything from him. My own political future is of zero concern."
The 2024 candidate - whose social media manager had a seriously bad weekend - went on to compare her race against Trump to David vs. Goliath.
What's obviously going on, given her insurmountable deficit, is that Haley needs to run as long as possible to prevent the right from gathering support behind Trump into November, which is exactly what will happen once she quits the race.
Going much deeper into the South Carolina primary is Nathan Worcester via The Epoch Times,
One doesn’t have to travel very far in South Carolina to discover reminders of its martial spirit.
Eight military bases are scattered across the state. They include Parris Island, where U.S. Marines pass through boot camp—an experience fictionalized in Stanley Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket.”
Behind glass at the Charleston Museum, a pair of intricately carved 19th-century dueling pistols stand in for an old honor culture that still hasn’t been totally extirpated from the American South.
The same South Carolina that supplied great military leaders like Revolutionary War General William Moultrie, nicknamed the “Gamecock,” produced the pro-slavery representative, Democrat Preston Brooks, who in 1856 beat abolitionist Sen. Charles Sumner (R-Mass.) half to death with a cane in the Senate chamber.
Not far away from the Charleston Museum, across the water from the spot where General Moutrie built his famous fort of palmetto logs, is the place where the American Civil War began. Fort Sumter hunkers low over Charleston Harbor.
Just outside Charleston’s airport, near the Air Force base, sits a symbol of the modern military-industrial complex: the North Charleston Boeing Plant.
Former South Carolina governor and presidential hopeful Nikki Haley’s connection to Boeing, where she served on the board of directors, has become a talking point for her foes, particularly those siding with former President Donald Trump.
Yet, while campaigning in the Palmetto State—a nickname honoring the fort created by General Moultrie—Ms. Haley has bragged about the aerospace giant’s local manufacturing activity, which came about through a deal hatched under her predecessor, former Gov. Mark Sanford.
“By the time I left, we were building planes with Boeing,” Ms. Haley told a crowd at New Realm Brewing Company on Charleston’s Daniel Island during a Feb. 4 campaign stop.
South Carolinian Bill Warren, who was waiting to hear the former governor speak, told The Epoch Times, “I think that South Carolina’s got a long history of not being afraid to mix it up.”
Ms. Haley’s hawkish rhetoric on the Russia–Ukraine war, the Israel–Hamas war, and other flash points thousands of miles away has led some critics to dub her a “neocon,” or neoconservative.
The label has also been applied to other South Carolina politicians, including Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). Of course, like almost everyone else at the top of the state’s Republican food chain, Mr. Graham has endorsed President Trump, often seen as an opponent of neoconservatism, over Ms. Haley ahead of his state’s open primary on Feb. 24.
Many voters in the state that sent an outsized share of its population to serve in the Middle East have a not-so-neocon-ish view of foreign affairs.
The conservative establishment’s assessment of President Trump’s view on foreign affairs was shaken up during the presidential debate in South Carolina in February 2016.
“The war in Iraq was a big, fat mistake,” then-candidate Trump said, fueling speculation that South Carolina’s many veterans would reject him.
Yet, Mr. Trump ultimately won the South Carolina primary, receiving almost a third of the state’s vote and raking in all fifty of its delegates. He’s on pace to trounce Ms. Haley in the state she once governed, at least judging by current polls.
“I’m a big Ron Paul guy,” Jordan Pace, a Republican state representative in South Carolina, told The Epoch Times.
Mr. Pace had just spoken after Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) at a pro-Trump press conference on Feb. 2 outside the Patriots Point Naval & Maritime Museum in Mount Pleasant. Anchored in the water behind him was a retired U.S. Navy aircraft carrier, the slate-gray USS Yorktown—another symbol of American military might, known for its role in capturing Iwo Jima and other Pacific islands during World War II.
“If you talk to former military, especially military that fought in the Middle East, the vast majority of those guys are adamantly against the Bush–Cheney neoconservative former policy—the whole saber-rattling nonsense,” Mr. Pace said.
“Honestly, the biggest draw for Trump in this current contest in my mind, besides the fact that he’s not Nikki Haley, is that he didn’t start any new foreign wars,” he said, but added that Mr. Graham’s support for President Trump is “slightly unnerving.”
‘We’ve Shifted From Your Neocon Establishment’
In the northwest corner of the state, before the Piedmont hills rise sharply into the Blue Ridge Mountains, stands Clemson University.
On the morning of Feb. 3, Trevor Tiedeman, the chairman of the Clemson College Republicans, spoke to The Epoch Times near the school’s terraced amphitheater.
He made it clear who the youthful conservatives he knows tend to like: President Trump and talk show host Tucker Carlson.
“He [Mr. Carlson] changed the American right in a way that’s been very, very positive, because we’ve shifted from your neocon establishment to your more populist type,” Mr. Tiedeman, a senior studying industrial engineering, told The Epoch Times.
He didn’t disagree with the notion that South Carolina’s Republicans often tilt neocon, observing that its GOP-dominated state legislature has earned a reputation for liberalism—a concern seconded by Clyde N. Wilson, a professor emeritus of history at the University of South Carolina specializing in the American South.
“[The legislature] is full of opportunists. They all think they’re gonna get some national position,” Mr. Wilson told The Epoch Times over the phone on Feb. 6.
“I could not tell you why South Carolina breeds the worst of Republicans,” Mr. Tiedeman said, suggesting that some in Charleston, Hilton Head, and other parts of the state’s coastal Lowcountry are “country club Republicans” committed to the status quo.
“It must be something in the water around here,” he joked.
JeAnais Mitchell, another Clemson senior who serves as the Young Republicans’ public relations chairwoman, told The Epoch Times that younger South Carolinians are moving in a more Trumpian direction on war.
“We’re just the generation that had to experience everything after 9/11—realizing so much carnage, realizing all the pain and hurt, and how so much of it could have been avoided if people didn’t have such a narrow focus on what they wanted instead of the good of the entire nation,” said Ms. Mitchell. She is studying history and legal studies and also leads outreach for the school’s Turning Point USA chapter.
“If we’re not strong and can’t do well, then it doesn’t matter what happens on the other side of the world because we won’t be able to survive,” she said.
But Clemson conservatives aren’t the only young South Carolinians sounding non-interventionist (or, to some, isolationist) on foreign policy.
At South Carolina State University, a historically black college in Lowcountry Orangeburg, Raymond James is looking forward to voting for President Trump. One of his main worries is warfare embroiling the United States across the world, a troubling recent trend.
“It’s getting out of hand,” he told The Epoch Times.
At the Citadel, a senior military college in Charleston, students walk through the campus in fatigues. Near the entrance of the library, tabletop miniatures illustrate the Carthaginian general Hannibal’s strategy against Rome.
Deeper inside, a mural depicts cadets at the Old Citadel in 1846. Those men trained their state’s Palmetto Regiment ahead of the Mexican-American War. That regiment’s members included Preston Brooks, the future congressman who caned Sen. Charles Sumner. Many Citadel graduates fought in that conflict, too.
Lewis Diggle, a freshman studying finance, told The Epoch Times he didn’t sense a lot of cynicism about war among students at the Citadel, even after decades of U.S. involvement in the Middle East.
But Colin Weldon, another freshman at the Citadel, said morale regarding the United States escalating military involvement, including with Iran, is “fifty-fifty” on campus: half positive, half negative.
“There [are] some people who are like, ‘Yeah, I can’t wait’… And there [are] some people who don’t want to be involved in a foreign conflict,” said Mr. Weldon, who is studying supply chain management.
Like Mr. Pace and others who have spoken with The Epoch Times, he stressed the lack of new wars under President Trump as a selling point for South Carolina voters.
“People definitely want to have a safer America to help rebuild it,” he said, adding that he believes President Trump has stronger support at the Citadel than Ms. Haley or incumbent President Joe Biden.
“I just feel like he has a better grasp on the youth compared to Nikki Haley,” Mr. Weldon said.
“We have some Democrats, we have some Republicans, we have some independents. I think it’s a good mix,” sophomore Kayla Cyrus told The Epoch Times.
She said her school “is not really preaching against or for” war in Iran or other places around the globe.
“It’s really just a great school. It teaches you about different perspectives,” she added.
Defense Contracting and Confederate Renaming
In North Charleston, not far from the airport and the Boeing campus, Citadel graduate and Air Force veteran Gary Jaffe leads strategy and growth at Atlas Technologies, one of many defense contractors in the Charleston area.
He spoke to The Epoch Times on behalf of the Charleston Defense Contractors Association, an industry group.
“The defense-industrial base is very strong here in Charleston,” he said.
He drew attention to the Naval Information Warfare Center Atlantic at Joint Base Charleston.
“Most of the members of our organization are seeking opportunities there,” Mr. Jaffe said.
Some numbers bear out the importance of defense to the state’s overall economy. A 2022 report from the South Carolina Department of Veterans’ Affairs found that it accounts for 1 out of every 9 jobs in the state and more than 11 percent of the economy.
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