SC Neocons on the National Stage

As expected, former SC Governor Nikki Haley has declared her candidacy for President of the United States. Her video announcement is an effective mix of homey and professional, caring and tough. In the three-minute promotion, she relates how her experience growing up in Bamberg as neither Black nor White taught her to look for commonalities with other people. She touts her economic record in South Carolina, and expresses a love for America and the need for a renewal of the Republican party. The video ends with Haley declaring: "You should know this about me. I don't put up with bullies. And when you kick back, it hurts them more if you're wearing heels."

Though the deft launch announcement nails the landing, it remains to be seen how far the well-calculated presentation will carry her. Often dismissed for good reason as a party hack, Haley is hated by many in her home state for her role in removing the Confederate battle flag from the State House grounds. Though video makes reference to her leadership during the Dylann Roof murder of churchgoers, it sidesteps the flag issue. Haley comments that after the Roof incident, "We turned away from fear, towards God...We must turn in that direction again."

The campaign launch did not go unnoticed by Donald Trump, who posted on his social media site Truth, "Nikki Haley had a hard time making the decision to run for President because she very publicly stated that she 'would never run against the President. He did a GREAT JOB, and was the best President in my lifetime.' I told Nikki to follow her heart, not her ambition or belief. Who knows, stranger things have happened. She’s polling at 1%, not a bad start!!"

Trump also remarked that, "The greatest thing Nikki Haley did for our Country, and the Great State of South Carolina, was accepting the position of United Nations Ambassador so that the incredible then Lieutenant Governor, Henry McMaster, could be Governor of South Carolina, where he has done an absolutely fantastic job... That was a big reason why I appointed Nikki to the position—It was a favor to the people I love in South Carolina!" This claim rings true. When Trump first launched his campaign in 2016, he got an early boost in the form of a hearty endorsement from McMaster ahead of SC's first-in-the-South Republican primary. Within weeks after taking office he appointed Haley as UN ambassador, which allowed McMaster to replace her as Governor of SC.

Speaking of SC neocons, We can now add Congresswoman Nancy Mace to the list of people who claim to suffer from adverse health affects from the COVID vaccine. Though she dutifully promoted vaccinations in a spot for the SC Department of Health and Environmental Control in 2021, she now states that she regrets her own vaccination. "I now developed asthma that has never gone away since I got the second shot. I have tremors in my left hand, and I have the occasional heart pain that no doctor can explain, and I've had a battery of tests," she stated during a Congressional Oversight Committee hearing on February 8th.

Though the hearing was primarily focused on Twitter's censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story, Mace took the opportunity to grill former Twitter executive, Vijaya Gadde, about the platform's censorship of medical information that did not support the government's vaccination policy. "I find it extremely alarming that Twitter's unfettered censorship spread into medical fields and affected millions of Americans by suppressing expert opinions from doctors and censoring those who disagree with the CDC. I have great regrets about getting the shot because of the health issues that I now have that I don't think are ever going to go away, and I know that I'm not the only American who has those kinds of concerns."

Mace's misgivings about the vaccine are too little, too late to be of practical help to those who were compelled to be vaccinated against their will. Hopefully they will provide some belated validation to the "vaccine hesitant."