CNN chief political correspondent Dana Bash welcomed former Ambassador to the U.N. and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley to the 2024 GOP Primary on Tuesday’s Inside Politics by claiming that is “fascinating” that the non-white Haley would include Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other non-white progressives while embracing GOP “culture wars” in her announcement video.
Host John King was more focused on the horse race aspect of Haley’s announcement. After playing a clip of the video where she highlighted her Indian-American heritage and emphasized the need for racial unity, he asked:
Again, it's, you know, that part of her biography is compelling. Will she choose or will she try to be all things to all slices of the Republican primary? Because if she's a general election candidate, her argument and her team argues we can get back a lot of those suburban women who just cannot vote for Trump, we can get back independents who are looking for fiscal conservatives, maybe are pro-life on abortion, but don't want someone hitting them in the head with it. Where is her lane?
Bash responded by claiming that Haley is instead competing in the activist lane, “Well, like you were saying, it's not where she's going right now, which I guess in a lot of ways is understandable because that's not the electorate she's appealing to, it's Republicans.”
Returning to the video, Bash pointed out, “The part right after what you played in the video, she talks about the need to not talk about the differences so much and talk about similarities when it comes to race and other parts of America, she has an image of AOC looking angry and she has another image of an African-American woman.”
What Bash left out is that this second woman was on MSNBC talking about The 1619 Project. Still, Bash declared, “I thought that was absolutely fascinating because she is a woman of color.”
How is that fascinating? Are people just to uncritically accept The 1619 Project or AOC’s latest ramblings in the name of racial unity? Apparently so, as Bash elaborated, “And she's trying to show that she's with the Republicans when it comes to the culture wars and everything that Ron DeSantis and you name it have been talking about when it comes to trying to exploit the differences on ethnicity and race as opposed to bringing them together.”
Or maybe AOC and The 1619 Project are the ones exploiting racial differences and Haley, DeSantis, and others are simply pointing this out.
This segment was sponsored by Safelite.
Here is a transcript for the February 14 show:
CNN Inside Politics with John King
2/14/2023
12:22 PM ET
JOHN KING: Again, it's, you know, that part of her biography is compelling. Will she choose or will she try to be all things to all slices of the Republican primary? Because if she's a general election candidate, her argument and her team argues we can get back a lot of those suburban women who just cannot vote for Trump, we can get back independents who are looking for fiscal conservatives, maybe are pro-life on abortion, but don't want someone hitting them in the head with it. Where is her lane?
DANA BASH: Well, like you were saying, it's not where she's going right now, which I guess in a lot of ways is understandable because that's not the electorate she's appealing to, it's Republicans.
The part right after what you played in the video, she talks about the need to not talk about the differences so much and talk about similarities when it comes to race and other parts of America, she has an image of AOC looking angry and she has another image of an African-American woman. I thought that was absolutely fascinating because she is a woman of color. And she's trying to show that she's with the Republicans when it comes to the culture wars and everything that Ron DeSantis and you name it have been talking about when it comes to trying to exploit the differences on ethnicity and race as opposed to bringing them together.
