So far, just two Republicans have announced their intention to run for president in 2024: former South Carolina governor and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, and failed New York beefmonger Donald Trump. But more, such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former Vice President Mike Pence, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and a handful of other deluded losers are reportedly considering runs. To succeed, candidates will somehow need to bring suburban women back into the fold while also catering to Trump’s core constituency of nihilistic misogynists, which is a magic trick no one is capable of. Big tents are great in theory, but suburban mothers and feral incels remain hopelessly divided on key kitchen table issues such as affordable child care, access to health care, and when—or even if—it’s appropriate to hang Mike Pence.
Of course, we know what Trump will do: Cater to his losing coalition of incels and racists. But Haley is trying to forge a new path. She’s a new generation of awful Republican, after all. And so she’ll be itching to soften the GOP’s image.
Unfortunately she’s off to a terrible start because she’s already thrown in with the worst of the worst, and her “new path” is looking a lot like the old one—only with some of the more obvious landmines removed.
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To wit: Haley had this guy give the opening invocation at her campaign launch on Wednesday morning.
The prayer’s not so bad, actually. It’s a kindly old man leading the crowd in an anodyne bit of worship.
But wait: That’s evangelical pastor John Hagee, and hoo-boy, is he a piece of work. He has a history, though. And it’s not good, as The Recount’s Steve Morris helpfully, um … recounts:
Here’s how Mother Jones described Hagee in a January 2020 feature on evangelicals’ slavering support of Donald Trump:
One of the most prominent representatives of the Left Behind wing of the evangelical movement is San Antonio televangelist John Hagee, who has been calling for a war with Iran for more than a 15 years. In 2005, Hagee wrote a best-selling book, Jerusalem Countdown, that claimed the Bible predicted a war with Iran. (In 2011, it was turned into a movie of the same title, starring Bionic Man Lee Majors and Randy Travis.) Shortly after the book was published, Hagee created Christians United for Israel, a Christian Zionist organization that now claims to have 8 million members. It lobbies for support for Israeli settlements, military aid to Israel, and for the US to join with Israel to launch a preemptive strike on Iran.
Hagee, now 79, had once been popular with powerful Republicans during the George W. Bush administration, despite some of his more controversial statements. Among other things, he has said that gays caused Hurricane Katrina, referred to the Catholic Church as the “great whore,” called Hitler a “half-breed” Jew, and said that Hitler was part of God’s plan to get the Jews back to Israel. His star began to fall in 2008 after he endorsed Sen. John McCain for the GOP presidential nomination. McCain rejected his support, calling Hagee’s views “crazy and unacceptable.”
Ah, the good old days—when Republicans merely disagreed with you and didn’t continually prop up dominionist weirdos who want to herd you into Christian reeducation camps.
Republicans have always been awful, though; the sole notable exception might be that time Sean Spicer appeared on Dancing With the Stars looking like a Chernobyl canary trying to escape from a Dunkin’ Donuts. That was pretty entertaining. But there was once a time when most of them, anyway, at least gave lip service to perduring American values like church-state separation and not being a revanchist a-hole 100% of the time.
Those days are gone. Long, long gone.
And now we’re all forced to miss this guy:
As CNN noted in May 2008:
McCain told CNN's Brian Todd that he rejected Hagee's endorsement after Todd brought to his attention Hagee's comments that Adolf Hitler had been fulfilling God's will by hastening the desire of Jews to return to Israel in accordance with biblical prophecy.
"God says in Jeremiah 16: 'Behold, I will bring them the Jewish people again unto their land that I gave to their fathers. ... Behold, I will send for many fishers, and after will I send for many hunters. And they the hunters shall hunt them.' That would be the Jews. ... Then God sent a hunter. A hunter is someone who comes with a gun and he forces you. Hitler was a hunter," Hagee said, according to a transcript of his sermon.
In a statement to CNN on Thursday, McCain said "Obviously, I find these remarks and others deeply offensive and indefensible, and I repudiate them. I did not know of them before Rev. Hagee's endorsement, and I feel I must reject his endorsement as well."
Surely Haley, who passes for “moderate” in today’s MAGA-fried GOP, would probably love to follow in McCain’s footsteps and be her generation’s voice of reason. But she can’t because, by and large, Republicans are no longer reasonable.
There’s also this:
The Nikki Haley of 2016 would have probably been a great candidate in the 2024 general election. But any GOP candidate who wants to make it to the big show today needs to cater to a base that’s been feasting on raw meat and steaming viscera for the last six-plus years. Haley—and any candidate who hopes to seize the mantle from Trump—will need to crawl through some really noxious sewers in order to get to the finish line.
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In other words, the GOP’s 2024 presidential nominee will not be a moderate—no matter where they stood politically when they started running.
Of course, Republican candidates always swing right in the primaries before drifting to the middle in the general election—just as Democrats tend to shift left in the primaries. But this time? Republicans will have to veer so hard to the right they’ll be in a ditch before the main event even starts.
Haley’s embrace of Hagee makes it clear that the party of John McCain—who, again, found the pastor too radioactive to even deal with—is now a husk of its former self. Its moral compass is now pointed at hate and chaos, and basically nothing else.
So good luck with that whole “winning the confidence of a majority of Americans” shtick, Nikki. And enjoy debating your old boss. Just be sure to wear your flak jacket and helmet. And make sure you’re up on your COVID-19 shots before you shake his hand. Rumor has it he tried to kill the last guy he debated.
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Check out Aldous J. Pennyfarthing’s four-volume Trump-trashing compendium, including the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this link. Or, if you prefer a test drive, you can download the epilogue to Goodbye, Asshat for the low, low price of FREE.