South Carolina governor Nikki Haley’s political capital is rising. Her leadership in the wake of the shooting in Charleston has some wondering if she’s now a contender for vice president on the GOP’s 2016 ticket.
Joseph Weber of FOX News:
Haley’s Charleston response, Confederate flag stand spark VP talkSouth Carolina GOP Gov. Nikki Haley’s response to the Charleston massacre, highlighted by her call to remove the Confederate flag from statehouse grounds, has thrust her back into the national spotlight and re-ignited talk about what role she might play in the 2016 race.Not only is Haley poised to be a powerful surrogate, there’s already chatter that she could make a solid Republican vice presidential candidate.”She’d be on anybody’s list,” Mike Huckabee, one 14 GOP presidential candidates and a former Arkansas governor, told Fox News on Tuesday. “She’s done a terrific job in South Carolina.”Haley has been a high-profile Republican since she won the governorship as part of the 2010 Tea Party wave.But her call to remove the Confederate battle flag after a white male fatally shot nine black people June 17 inside an historic African-American church in Charleston, S.C., has Republican presidential candidates, political observers and others suggesting her leadership in the aftermath shows she could be a pivotal player in the presidential race.
Here’s the speech Haley recently gave regarding the removal of the Confederate flag from South Carolina’s capitol:
Philip Klein of the Washington Examiner noted the power of Haley’s speech and what it represented:
A great moment for Nikki Haley and AmericaSouth Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley displayed strong leadership on Monday by calling on the legislature to vote to take down the Confederate battle flag from the grounds of the state capitol.The flag is an ugly symbol of treason, slavery, violence and racism, yet under the guise of “heritage” it has maintained a prominent position in a public space in a state in which 1.3 million residents, or about 30 percent of the population, is black.The move, which I argued for last week (and also on a visit to the capitol back in 2008), was long overdue. It won’t bring back any of the victims of the Charleston church shooting. Nor will it end racism in this country. But it is, nonetheless, a seminal moment in America for race relations.
Featured image via YouTube.
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