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by KURT COUCHMAN & CANDACE CARROLL
Channeling Americans’ frustrations with the federal government propelled Donald Trump into the White House. In office, unfortunately, he had difficulty translating those feelings into an agenda for lasting change. Despite the presidency’s vast resources, Trump’s legislative and bureaucratic inexperience and difficulty focusing on winning strategies led to four years of mostly missed opportunities for a fundamental shift.
Now, facing legal challenges and swing voter skepticism, Trump wants another shot. It’s understandable, but conservatives would do better with a new generation of leaders. Fortunately, former governor and Trump-appointee Nikki Haley knows how to fight smart to stop DC from imposing its nonsense on the rest of the country. And she could do it for eight years.
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Back in 2004, Haley was a free-market, limited-government candidate for the South Carolina state legislature, and she defeated a long-time power player for the seat. She stood by those principles even when it annoyed her go-along-get-along colleagues. In 2010, she was the underdog Tea Party candidate for governor. In both cases, voters respected her integrity, and she came from behind and won.
In both state roles, she fought to stop wasteful spending on special interests and to use those savings to cut tax burdens on hardworking South Carolinians. She pushed to cut red tape and kept state debt from growing as the increasingly liberated economy took off.
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Haley took on the South Carolina political class and won. We need that in Washington, DC, today more than ever. State legislators used to escape accountability for bad votes by keeping them from being recorded. In the state house, Haley pushed legislation to require recorded votes on everything, and she made sure it got done as governor.
She helped the people get better behavior and better legislators. In her 2017 State-of-the-State address, she accurately said, “we brought a level of accountability to state government that never existed before” and “we changed the structure of a state government that was antiquated and broken.”
Governor Haley used the line-item veto to cancel all kinds of foolish spending. She looked for opportunities to change Columbia and forced it to serve all the people.
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“Haley is better prepared to be head of state and commander-in-chief of the armed forces than any president in recent decades…”
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When state legislators sought a gas tax increase, Haley insisted on a net tax cut and proposed reducing income tax rates by even more. Months after Haley joined the Trump Administration, the legislature overrode Gov. McMaster’s veto to increase gas taxes and various other fees.
Today, Haley calls for eliminating federal fuel taxes and embracing federalism for infrastructure and much else. Implicitly, that’s a call for ending the federal funds that choke road builders in red tape. States would be free to figure out the best investments for their people’s needs without Washington’s nonsense mandates for this or that special interest or ideological fetish.
Haley’s record as a “proven deal-maker” led Trump to entrust her to advance America’s interests at the United Nations, one of the swampiest organizations on the planet. She learned quickly to navigate this complicated and vicious corner of international politics to get results for the U.S. It probably reinforced her view that freedom at home is the best recipe for a “strong and proud America.” From this experience, Haley is better prepared to be head of state and commander-in-chief of the armed forces than any president in recent decades.
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Finally, Haley is deeply principled and committed to conserving the ideals of the nation’s founding: limited, constitutional government that protects equality before the law, freedom, and prosperity. She’s a strategic fighter whose principled-policy-based approach isn’t alienating or polarizing. She doesn’t poison relationships with personal attacks, which keeps the door open for building coalitions on different issues and putting points on the board.
By contrast, the collective “resist” efforts from the political left slowed President Trump’s ability to staff up with Senate-confirmed advisors, and their barrage on congressional offices made it almost impossible for Congress to get to work in the first two years of the Trump administration. Trump’s undisciplined Twitter habits and unfamiliarity with political work didn’t help.
Haley wouldn’t have those headwinds. She appeals to limited-government conservatives like us who want to cut a bloated government back to appropriate activities, end wasteful spending, clean the place up, and make sure bureaucrats carry out the laws instead of making them up. Haley also attracts swing voters who are exhausted by the no-boundaries progressive agenda, which matters for congressional and state races as well. She’s disciplined, understands the give and take of politics at all levels, and knows how to fight smart.
Haley already took on one swamp and won. DC’s problems are different, but she has a track record of demanding and leading a government overhaul and could do it again. Leveraging the Oval Office’s big microphone just as Ronald Reagan once did, President Haley would challenge Congress to fix itself and deliver the results that the American people expect and deserve.
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ABOUT THE AUTHORS…
Kurt Couchman advises federal and state policymakers on fiscal policy. Couchman and Candace Carroll are Senior Advisors to AFP Action, which endorsed Ambassador Haley.
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9 comments
Nice propaganda piece but Trump leads by 36 points over Haley in yesterday’s poll. American’s are still frustrated. Trump 2024.
Nice propaganda piece but Trump leads by 36 points over Haley in yesterday’s poll. Americans are still frustrated. Trump 2024.
These two bubble heads left out the part where Nikki sleeps around on her husband with the founder of this blog.
Do we really need another dishonest, adulterer, like Trump, in the White House? Hell, no!
Nonsense to your reasoning about why Trump appointed her to be UN Ambassador: Haley’s record as a “proven deal-maker” led Trump to entrust her to advance America’s interests at the United Nations, one of the swampiest organizations on the planet.
Trump appointed her so he could reward one of his lieutenants, McMaster, to be governor.
Mr. Couchman and Ms. Carroll, I am a medical doctor who, in 1992-93, while teaching Preventive Medicine at USC, devised an innovative integrated healthcare and welfare reform proposal, which I called “The Cycle Breaker” and which then-SC Governor Campbell forwarded with his endorsement to various think tanks and which then-Congressmen Floyd Spence and David Ravanel transmitted to relevant committees.
As no good deed goes unpunished, the self-serving pseudo-leftists at USC asked me to single-handedly get my proposal passed as law in the U.S. Congress IN SIX WEEKS or get fired.
I later found out that was a ploy to get employment from what then the State Insurance Reserve Fund which farmed out the state’s legal business to private lawyers including James Parham, the brother of USC’s General Counsel Terry Parham.
I did get fired and appealed it; a unanimous committee recommended my re-instatement; but my detractors went secretly and illegally to Victoria Eslinger, who wrote to Terry Parham to ensure USC fires me a second time and, when I sue USC, to hire Eslinger and her law firm to defend USC.
I later discovered that Federal Judge Joe Anderson’s brother, Jeff, was one of private lawyers benefiting from the Insurance Reserve Fund’s scheme and that then-US-Attorney Margaret Seymour’s now-late husband, Joe Shine, ran that scheme.
I later spoke to then Governor Sanford about that scheme and he responded that it is “a slush fund for politician.”
I was never reinstated but my Cycle Breaker plan continued to travel in what academia calls “the fugitive literature.”
Andy Yang, and others began talking about “guaranteed basic income” to replace all government programs.
I had written about “guaranteed basic NEEDS” to replace all government programs WITH GENIUS PROVISIONS to reward needs REDUCTION, when all government programs were, and continue to be, set up to reward need CREATION.
My ideas were timely then and are even more timely now.
Please get my email from FITS and email me so I can send you the detailed plan and perhaps arrange to explain it to you in details by phone or in person.
BTW, I tried to find a Nikki Haley campaign office in Columbia but court not.
What’s up with that?
Seriously, put down the pipe or pass it, you’ve had enough.
Both or you are full of shit.
It’s a very low bar, but Hailey is infinitely better for the country than Trump. I don’t think Hailey wants to damage the country for her personal benefit, but that is definitely not true of Trump. Republicans keep excusing his odd behavior, like calling our war dead losers and suckers, gushing praise for dictators like Putin, Xi, Kim Jung Un, and Victor Orban; and saying he should be allowed to kill his political opponents, by saying he is not a traditional politician. I agree, he is not. He doesn’t want to be a politician, he wants to be a dictator. He wants to do to America what Putin has done to Russia. Which is to steal everything he can get his hands on and make himself the richest man in the world. He admires what Putin has been able to get away with and the fact that he can kill anyone who opposes him, without repercussion.
Trump and his cult are a serious threat to this Country. He will do anything for money and power. If Civil War will make him richer he will push for that. He does not care about this Country and he never has. Anyone who can support a man who has called our war dead losers and suckers is not an American and does not love this country. Anyone who calls a man who ran around on three wives, bragged about molesting women, filed bankruptcy over and over taking money from thousands of small businesses; and who says he wants to kill people godley and a Christian is a fool, and I never use that term lightly. Trump is less like Christ than anyone who as ever served this country. In fact, he thinks Christians are suckers and plays them like a drum.
Mary, Trump violates one of Christ’s BASIC tenets: Love thy neighbor as thyself. And in the Old Testament: if a stranger comes to sojourn among you, you shall not vex him but love him. Like the native he shall be to you; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.
Another BASIC Christian tenet is that it is all God’s earth and we ALL are guests in it in this life. Indeed, one of God’s FOUNDATIONAL conversations with human beings was to Abraham: Leave your land and your people and go to the land that I show you.
Animals knew to immigrate and preserve the species. Birds even fly to warmth in winter and return in summer.
Human beings need to be told AND need to handle the species-preserving activity of migration with LOVE AND INTELLIGENCE.
It pains me to hear Nikki Haley, a daughter of first generation immigrants, talk about deporting 11 million undocumented people IN THE MIDDLE OF LABOR SHORTAGE at that.
How is that different from HAMAS, which wants ALL 11 million Jewish people, including the generations born there, to leave Israel and go nowhere to achieve Islamic “purity” of what HAMAS calls Palestine.
Barely a decade ago, HAMAS’ kissing cousins, the Moslem Brotherhood, wanted all Coptic Christians to leave Egypt to achieve that Islamic “purity” for the Egypt that was MAJORITY COPTIC until the Arab Conquest arrived in the 7th Century AD.
That is what happens when people fancy their race’s blood “superior” and the blood of others “poisoning it.”
Hitler caused Dresden and other German cities to be leveled just as Sinwar caused Khan-Yunis and other Gazan cities to be leveled.
Perhaps Trump will not cause American cities to be leveled; but he certain will cause American agriculture to crumble for lack of workers AND will cause American high-tech to fall behind by failing to appreciate and embrace foreign talent.
Nikki Haley does not become a Trump alternative by repeating in a woman’s voice what Trump says about deporting 11 million people who work and pay taxes.