NIKKI HALEY SQUISHING AROUND
As you may have guessed from the title of this post, I’m not a Nikki Haley fan. She’s a sort of conservative, which makes her way better than a Democrat, but she’s also a squish, which puts her low on my list. I also really dislike her playing the woman card to run. That’s such a Democrat thing to do. Now, my concern is that she’s attacking Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Alabama) because he’s holding the Pentagon’s feet to the fire over its illegal abortion policies.
The Hyde Amendment isn’t complicated: It says that federal funds cannot be used to pay for abortions unless the abortion will save the woman’s life or the pregnancy results from rape or incest.
In 2022, in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Supreme Court held that abortion is not a constitutional right, returning the matter to the states. (To make abortion a federal right or ban it nationwide requires a constitutional amendment.) Several states have since banned or severely limited abortion. There are military bases in many of the states that have placed full or partial bans on abortion.
The Pentagon is currently a leftist institution, from the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on down. Obama started a purge of conservatives, and Biden has been finishing it.
The Democrat party revolves around abortion, which ensures fanatic fealty from legions of American women, gay men (I don’t know why), and men who love sex without consequences.
Given the left’s devotion to abortion and the utility of childless women (who tend to give to their jobs the same focus they once gave their children), the Biden military implemented a policy to facilitate abortion for those women stationed at bases in states that limit abortion. The Defense Department won’t pay directly for abortions but will fund them indirectly by giving women up to three weeks off from their duties and travel expenses to get abortions.
It is illegal for the government to do indirectly what it cannot do directly.
Because the Defense Department is engaging in a manifestly illegal act, Sen. Tuberville has responded by saying that he will refuse to allow any military promotions until it complies with the law. He is right to do so, and this isn’t even about abortion. It’s about lawlessness at the highest levels in America (see, e.g., our southern border).
The communists in charge of the U.S. military are unhappy, but Tuberville, to his great credit, is sticking to both his principles and the law.
So, what does Nikki Haley do? Squish, squish, squish. She announces that she opposes Tuberville’s stand, framing it as a matter of compassion (of course). According to her, the Biden administration is wrong to do what it’s doing, but Tuberville is failing to show compassion for military families by holding up promotions. The Daily Wire summarizes Haley’s statements in response to Jake Tapper’s questions about the policy:
Haley responded that she disagreed with the reimbursement policy for travel for abortion and said that she would put an end to it if she becomes president.
“Secondly, we don’t need to be using military families as political pawns,” she said. “That’s a mistake.”
“The military members and families, they sacrifice enough. They don’t need to be a pawn in Congress,” she continued. “But look at the political games that continue to play. Chuck Schumer could still get this done if he went through and listed each member and had Congress vote on each member.”
She later noted that it was the Biden administration that started the entire situation, but “I’m not saying Senator Tuberville is right in doing this, because I don’t want to use them as pawns.”
Haley also says that blocking the Pentagon’s illegality needs to go through Congress,” but she’s wrong. Congress acted when it passed the Hyde Amendment. This is now a question of the Biden administration openly violating federal law. Further laws will not matter. Tuberville is acting, which is a very un-Republican thing for him to do, and Haley hates that.
"You think the military is political now? You really want to have the US Senate voting on somebody being promoted?"
CNN's Jake Tapper presses Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley over GOP Sen. Tommy Tuberville's ongoing blockade of military promotions. @CNNSotu #CNNSOTU pic.twitter.com/jFj50ccdkF
— CNN (@CNN) September 10, 2023
And this is why Republicans lose: They claim to have principles, but they refuse to act on them. The reality is that any action ends up hurting someone. Allowing the military to use taxpayer money to facilitate abortions means babies continue to get ripped from limb to limb. That’s gotta hurt, too.
When push comes to shove, Haley neither pushes nor shoves. She mouths fine-sounding platitudes and then collapses in a little squishy heap on the ground. If she ends up being the last Republican standing, I’ll vote for her, but I’ll feel sick to my stomach doing so.
Andrea Widburg is deputy editor of American Thinker.