Nikki Haley sounds like a presidential candidate at Iowa GOP fundraiser

WEST DES MOINES — Nikki Haley has not yet said whether she will be a presidential candidate in 2024, but her remarks Thursday night at a Republican Party fundraiser here laid a solid foundation for such a campaign.

Haley, a former governor of South Carolina and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, hit on any number of topics popular with conservatives — from withering criticism of the current Democratic administration, to flash-point topics like elections law, socialism, critical race theory and transgender student-athletes.

Haley has already made multiple appearances in Iowa, including to help Republican candidates during the 2020 election cycle.

Organizers said roughly 500 people attended the sold-out fundraiser Thursday night at an events center in this Des Moines suburb.

Haley warned of Democratic leadership giving rise to socialism. President Joe Biden has rejected the suggestion his policies are socialist and regularly points out that in the Democratic presidential primary he defeated the candidate, Bernie Sanders, who self-identified as a Democratic socialist.

That was not enough to convince Haley otherwise.

“It doesn’t matter what Joe Biden says. The Democratic Party has become the socialist party,” Haley charged.

Haley also levied criticisms of Biden’s infrastructure proposal and his pandemic relief package, calling it a blue-state bailout and “liberal wish list,” even though Republican-led states, including Iowa, also received and are dispersing the federal funds.

In her remarks on foreign policy, Haley said the U.S. should boycott next year’s Winter Olympics in Beijing.

“There is no reason America should go along with the Beijing Winter Olympics in 2022,” Haley said. “America should send a message to communist China, stand with China’s victims and boycott the Winter Olympics.”

Haley also praised Republican Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds and the GOP-led Iowa Legislature for the changes made this year to the state’s elections laws. The package included myriad changes, including a significant reduction in the time and methods for early voting.

She also touched on cultural issues, saying women are the only people who should be playing women’s sports, a reference to a debate over whether transgender women who are biologically male should be allowed to participate in women’s athletics.

“We have to save our culture and the American experiment because the Democratic Party is trying to erase it,” Haley said.

Haley pointed specifically to critical race theory, which has become a lightning rod for conservatives.

“It tells them that color is all that matters. … A 5-year-old who’s white is told she’s a racist,” Haley said. “It’s heartbreaking.”

Critical race theory is typically taught only in advanced curriculum and holds that racism is systemic in some of the nation’s institutions. It does not, as conservatives often allege, teach that all white Americans are racist.

Haley joined myriad Iowa Republican speakers during Thursday’s event in heaping praise on Reynolds, who faces re-election in 2022. Reynolds won her first election in 2018 --- after being promoted to governor a year earlier when former Gov. Terry Branstad became U.S. ambassador to China --- by just less than 3 percentage points.

In praising Reynolds, the speakers noted new state laws passed by Repubicans and signed by Reynolds, that include added protections for law enforcement and a requirement that schools offer full-time in-person instruction during a pandemic.

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