I spent a chunk of my morning watching Nikki Haley's kickoff speech in South Carolina, a task that forced me to endure the evangelical invocation of a man named John Hagee.
You might already be familiar with Hagee. In 2011, my colleague Tim Murphy wrote about the incendiary pastor best known for bashing Catholicism and declaring that the anti-Christ would be gay. "Readers will be shocked by the clear record of history linking Adolf Hitler and the Roman Catholic Church in a conspiracy to exterminate the Jews," Hagee once wrote. (He apologized later.) Now, you'd think that a figure like Hagee would be too much for Haley, a Republican commonly—and in my opinion, wrongly—referred to as a moderate. But there he was in South Carolina this morning, basking in glowing praise. "Pastor Hagee, I still say I want to be you when I grow up," Haley told him.
That embrace is chilling stuff. It's also one of endless reasons I believe that, as Haley reminded today, Republicans keep losing the popular vote. But Haley, of course, doesn't see that; she apparently believes that it's crappy candidates like Donald Trump who keep the GOP from winning the popular vote.
But as I explain here, the GOP continues to oppose policies overwhelmingly popular with American voters, including abortion rights and gun control. For me, it's this relentless opposition, and the embrace of awful people such as Hagee, that plays a much bigger role in their losing streak. Well, Trump took the bait anyway—and that might be the only thing that matters to people like Haley.
—Inae Oh
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