Stop Lying: Nikki Haley is Not the Hero Who Defeated The Confederate Flag

South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley appeared on Meet the Press Sunday to discuss a range of issues, but also to bask in the warm glow of a mainstream media that has positioned her as the courageous champion who vanquished the Confederate flag from the state capitol. Along with this narrative goes the idea that Haley represents some sort of “new face” of the Republican Party that, I guess, has caught all the way up with 1965.

An exemplar of this was MTP host Chuck Todd’s introduction of Governor Haley, in which he called her “instrumental in removing the flag,” and his assertions that, as a result, her “national star is rising,” and that the move gave her party a chance at “making inroads with another minority group — African-Americans.”

Todd is correct that this is the way the mainstream media views the events of the past week, but that view is based on lies. Chuck Todd, and everyone else in the overwhelmingly white mainstream media, seems to have forgotten the utter cowardice Haley displayed when first asked about removing the Confederate flag, the flying of which she had previously defended. Not only did she refuse to take a position, she also told the same lie that Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and others told that day, that the decision to fly the flag was something everyone had agreed to:

“The Republicans and Democrats and everybody came together on a consensus to bring the Confederate flag down off of the dome. And they put it on a monument out in front. I think that conversation will probably come back up again. And you what we hope that we do things the way South Carolinians do. Which is have the conversation, allow some thoughtful words to be exchanged, be kind about it. Come together on what we’re trying to achieve and how we’re trying to do it. I think the state will start talking about that again. We’ll see where it goes…”

But what’s your position on the issue?

“You know, right now, to start having policy conversations with the people of South Carolina, I understand that’s what ya’ll want, my job is to heal the people of this state… There will be policy discussions and you will hear my come out and talk about it.But right now, I’m not doing that to the people of my state.”

Of course, that “agreement” was only a compromise in that, like the “3/5 compromise,” it was the most that white people were willing to do. The black caucus in South Carolina voted against it, and the NAACP instituted a boycott that lasted until this past weekend. And just what did Haley mean that she wouldn’t “be doing that” to the people of South Carolina? Exactly which people would be traumatized by their governor taking a position on the removal of that flag?

Keep in mind that this was two days after the shooting, and one day after…READ MORE

By: Tommy Christopher

Tommy Christopher is The Daily Banter's White House Correspondent and Political Analyst. He's been a political reporter and liberal commentator since 2007, and has covered the White House since the beginning of the Obama administration, first for PoliticsDaily, and then for Mediaite. Christopher is a frequent guest on a variety of television, radio, and online programs, and was the villain in the documentaries The Audacity of Democracy and Hating Breitbart. He's also That Guy Who Live-Tweeted His Own Heart Attack, and the only person to have ever received public apologies from both Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck.