South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley isn’t angry enough to suit some within what used to be known as the Republican Party.
No. She instead called on her party brethren to not listen to the “siren call of the angriest voices.” She offered that advice in her response on behalf of her party to President Obama’s State of the Union message delivered Tuesday night.
What was the reaction among the conservatives within her party?
Anger. Lots of it. Some of it, well, bordering on hateful.
Is this what the Grand Old Party has become? The party of intense, seething anger?
She aimed her fire, without mentioning him by name, at Donald J. Trump, the GOP frontrunner who has tapped into some vein of anger within his party. The call to ban all Muslims? That suits the Republican “base” just fine, irrespective of its being totally outside the principles on which this country was founded.
Haley sought to quell that kind of rhetoric in her GOP response. It was met with hostility.
This is a remarkable set of circumstances facing the Republican Party. It is about to commence its nominating process in just a little more than two weeks with the Iowa caucuses, followed immediately by the New Hampshire primary. Its leading candidate has stirred up some intense anger among the party’s most fervent voters.
Then the party — at the invitation of House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell — listens to Gov. Haley talk sensibly while offering criticism of the Democratic president’s vision . . . only to have its most conservative members go ballistic!
The Republican Party appears to be morphing into something few us recognize.