Catching Up with Nikki Haley on the Campaign Trail: September 8, 2023, Holy City Brewing, North Charleston, SC

Nikki Haley is feeling good about her campaign right now. Poll numbers are rising. Media coverage is increasing. Attendance at her campaign stops is multiplying. In a CNN/SSRS poll released Thursday Haley, the former Governor of South Carolina, is the only GOP candidate who would beat President Joe Biden. Not only would Haley beat Biden in a hypothetical 2024 contest, but she would beat him decisively by six points – with 49 percent of voters polled preferring Haley over the 43 percent of voters who still favor Biden. Haley is the only Republican candidate to defeat Biden beyond the poll’s 3.5-point margin of error. All of this should translate into a nice bump in Team Haley fundraising for the quarter.

Haley’s Friday night message to the crowd of approximately one thousand supporters and seekers in attendance at Holy City Brewing in North Charleston, SC came across as fresh even though she has delivered the message hundreds of times since hitting the campaign trail. Her enthusiasm and energy were undeniable. Nikki Haley is on a mission to save America by establishing some real fiscal sanity in Washington DC. She is right to point out the foolish spenders within the GOP who are as responsible for our $32.9 trillion national debt as the liberal democrats.

Haley says she’ll secure the southern border. She’s been there, having toured four hundred miles of the border. That’s four hundred miles more than both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris visited combined. Securing the southern border is an easy sell for any Republican candidate, but not all of them would actually get it done, especially if he or she is handicapped by a Democrat controlled Congress. Despite obstacles placed in her way, Haley would likely succeed at closing Biden’s illegal immigration floodgates.

Haley will continue to refine her message into 2024 as will the other candidates. The window for testing how the crowd will react to certain topics and talking points is closing. There were a few segments of Haley’s speech last night that need refinement. She should avoid promising things politicians have been promising for decades while never getting close to delivering. The one thing many politicians consistently say America needs, and America agrees with them, is term limits. Haley says she’ll get term limits passed. No, she will not! She didn’t get term limits passed when she was Governor. She will not get term limits passed if President either. Nobody will.

In 1977, Democratic Sen. Dennis Doconcini of Arizona said he wanted to limit Senators to two six-year terms and Representatives to seven two-year terms. Freshman Republican Rep. Dan Quayle of Indiana said in 1977 that he supported a term-limit amendment. Republican Sen. S.I. Hayakawa of California and Sen. John Danforth of Missouri also said they supported a term-limit amendment. This was forty-six years ago! Every two years many politicians, especially the challengers to incumbents, say they support term limits, or will get term limits passed if elected. If it was going to happen it would have already.

With far too many lawmakers over the age of seventy-five, and twenty members of Congress over the age of eighty, the mood of the country makes this a great time to be talking about senior age limits. A senior age limit of seventy-two on election day is no more arbitrary than the minimum age requirements of twenty-five, thirty, and thirty-five to become a representative, senator, and president accordingly.

Haley also proposes cognitive testing for senior members of Congress and the President. There is nothing wrong with this proposal. The devil will be in the details though. Who will administer the test? Which cognitive test will be required? What if the President or member of Congress contests the results? Who provides a second opinion? All of this is messy. A clean cut-off at age seventy-two on election day would solve much that is wrong with Congress and the White House.

Whether a term-limit amendment to the U.S. Constitution is required is subject to debate. If a senior age limit can be enacted by law, there are enough members of Congress who will see the opportunity for leadership positions if the senior end of the House and the Senate are forced into political retirement because they aged out. The aging out creates a type of term limit, and better protects the American people from people with dementia making life and death decisions about our national security. Haley should drive the senior age limit message and leave the term-limit fantasy to candidates more experienced at promising things they know they will never be able to deliver.

Haley is all in with supporting Ukraine. She says “A win for Russia is a win for China”. She talks about the amount of aid the United States has provided Ukraine to fight Russia as a mere 3.5 percent of our defense budget. That makes the amount of aid to Ukraine sound miniscule, but when considering the size of the 2023 annual defense budget, $813,300,000,000 (eight hundred thirteen billion, three hundred million dollars), that’s a ton of money!

Haley knows Ukraine’s history of corruption. She must understand that for most Republican voters, Ukraine, corruption, Burisma, bribes, and the Biden’s are all intertwined. She is correct to say that a win for Russia is a win for China. However, to gain more support within the GOP, she needs to include in her messaging how she would enact accountability for the $78 billion the United States has given Ukraine to date. By the time the next President is sworn in, the total amount of aid could exceed $150 billion. Taxpayers want to know that all of that money is being spent wisely to fight back the Russian invasion. They also want to know that ending the war and achieving a lasting peace is a priority of the next President.

Haley smartly subscribes to Reagan’s “peace through superior firepower” philosophy. She will restore our military’s mission focus, rid it of liberal wokeness, and strengthen military readiness. When it comes to the war between Russia and Ukraine, Haley needs to show that she is a willing lead negotiator with our adversaries to end wars instead of just funding them. The Biden Administration has failed to achieve diplomatic solutions to end the military conflict between Russia and Ukraine. In addition to supporting Ukraine, enacting accountability measures for all of the U.S. military and humanitarian aid packages delivered to Ukraine, Haley needs to talk about how she would relentlessly seek to end the conflict through diplomacy while simultaneously keeping Ukraine strong in the fight.