All posts tagged: Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina

The Republican Primary Is Over

The Republican Primary Is Over

Published by skeptic

The Republican presidential primary is over. Nikki Haley, the last remaining challenger to Donald Trump, plans to leave the race today, according to reports in The Wall Street Journal and other outlets, clearing the way for the former president to claim the GOP nomination. This moment marks an astonishing return for a man who left the White House in 2021 in disgrace. Trump had attempted to steal the 2020 election and encouraged a violent attack on the seat of U.S. government. Many prominent Republicans had renounced him, and his political career appeared over. Even when he announced his current candidacy, in November 2022, his prospects looked difficult. The primary has proved, however, that despite his struggles as president, his attacks on democracy, and his legal problems, GOP primary voters still love him. Now he heads into the general election with a good chance at becoming president once more. Making sense of Haley’s campaign is less straightforward. Her candidacy lasted longer and saw more success than expected, but it also never posed a serious threat to …

The Nikki Haley Debate – The Atlantic

The Nikki Haley Debate – The Atlantic

Published by skeptic

The fourth Republican presidential debate featured lots of attacks on Haley—not Donald Trump. Justin Sullivan/Getty December 6, 2023, 11:14 PM ET Anyone watching the fourth Republican primary debate tonight would be forgiven for thinking Nikki Haley was the favorite to win the GOP presidential nomination next year. Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy sure were acting like it. Neither man had finished answering their first question before they began attacking the former South Carolina governor and U.N. ambassador. “She caves any time the left comes after her, anytime the media comes after her,” warned DeSantis, the Florida governor. Ramaswamy went much further. He called Haley “corrupt” and “a fascist” for suggesting that social-media companies ban people from posting anonymously on their platforms. The broadsides continued throughout the two-hour debate in Tuscaloosa, Alabama: DeSantis and Ramaswamy used every opportunity to go after Haley, even when they were prodded to criticize the Republican who is actually dominating the primary race, Donald Trump. “I’m loving all the attention, fellas,” Haley said at one point. What she’d love even more …

The Second GOP Debate Was Messy, Chaotic, and Sloppy

The Second GOP Debate Was Messy, Chaotic, and Sloppy

Published by skeptic

Suddenly, it just tumbled out: “Honestly, every time I hear you I feel a little bit dumber for what you say.” That was former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley’s rebuke of businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, easily the best line of Wednesday night’s messy and awkward GOP primary debate. Ramaswamy, for his part, produced his own meme-worthy quote during a heated exchange with Senator Tim Scott: “Thank you for speaking while I’m interrupting.” Such was the onstage energy at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum: Chaotic, sloppy, largely substance-free. Seven candidates desperately fought for fresh relevance; none of them came away with it. Rather than pitching themselves as the candidate who can beat former President Donald Trump, these Republicans seemed to be operating most of the time in an alternate universe, in which Trump was absent not just from the stage, but from the race. Eight years ago, so many candidates were vying for the Republican nomination that the party took to splitting primary debates into two sessions: the main event and the undercard. The latter …

Vivek Ramaswamy’s Truth – The Atlantic

Vivek Ramaswamy’s Truth – The Atlantic

Published by skeptic

Vivek Ramaswamy leaned forward in his leather seat aboard the Cessna 750. He was fiddling with his pen, talking about Donald Trump. It was the final Friday in July. In several hours he’d join his fellow Republican presidential contenders at the Iowa GOP Lincoln Dinner. Ramaswamy—not even 40, zero political experience—was the second-to-last speaker on the bill. Trump, of course, was the headliner. Ramaswamy is the author of Woke, Inc., a book-length takedown of corporations that champion moral causes along with profits. The treatise was a New York Times best-seller and is now part of the American culture-war canon. His first company, Roivant Sciences, netted him hundreds of millions of dollars by bringing a Wall Street ethos to biotech: Drug patents were prospective assets. Another Ramaswamy venture, Strive Asset Management, markets itself as a place where return-on-investment outweighs all else, including concerns about social issues or the environment. That afternoon’s flight was a short hop, Columbus to Des Moines. As the private jet barreled west, Ramaswamy sipped a Perrier and scribbled his thoughts in a …

They Are Still With Him

They Are Still With Him

Published by skeptic

Come November of next year, Donald Trump might be elected president of the nation whose democracy he attempted to overthrow. Although it’s early, Trump is polling strongly against his successor, President Joe Biden, despite having been indicted for state and federal crimes, including a conspiracy to keep himself in power after his 2020 election loss. The indictment, filed by Special Counsel Jack Smith yesterday, offers a detailed recounting of Trump’s effort to “overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election and retain power,” using as pretext claims of voter fraud that Trump knew were false—in the words of one of his advisers, “conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.” In addition to simply making unfounded allegations of electoral fraud, which is irresponsible but protected as free speech, Trump and his advisers hatched one bizarre plan after another to illegitimately seize power by overturning the election. If you’re trying to understand how, despite all of this, Trump could still be president again, you need look no further than the reactions of his primary rivals and …