When a conservative South Carolina State Senator introduced a bill that would have required bathroom use be dictated by biology, then-Governor Nikki Haley opposed it.
This was in 2016.
“I don’t believe it’s necessary,” Haley said. “Like it or not, South Carolina is doing really well when it comes to respect and when it comes to kindness and when it comes to acceptance.”
Liberals celebrated her answer:
“You can criticize Haley for her evasions and elisions here, but at bottom, her wording is pretty brilliant,” wrote Slate. “Yes, it would be nice if Haley explicitly endorsed trans rights. But given her political limitations — and the tribulations of her northerly neighbor — she did a wonderful job leading her state away from the dark path of discrimination.”
Less than 10 years later, as she runs for President, Haley is now saying things like…
“How are we supposed to get our girls used to the fact that biological boys are in their locker room?”
Two very different answers from the same person. Except one of those people — the Governor version of Haley — had the ability to actually do something about the issue. And the other, the conservative version, is a person running for office pretending to search for an answer to a problem they refused to acknowledge as Governor when they actually could have done something about it.
Oh, and if you’re thinking well, those answers were eight years apart — not so fast.
Haley was asked about the Bathroom Bill specifically during the same CNN event where she said:
“How are we supposed to get our girls used to the fact that biological boys are in their locker room?”
And here is what she said about the Bathroom Bill:
“We didn’t have the Bathroom Bill. Because I didn’t have the Bathroom Bill come into South Carolina because I knew that if we had a transgender child, they would come meet with the principal. The principal would give them their own private bathroom so that they were safe. And the majority of the student body didn’t even have to deal with it. So I didn’t want us to say, ‘OK, you go to this bathroom, you go to that one.’ You just deal with them individually. That was the safest way for everybody. We do need to be humane about it.”
That contradicts Haley’s answer from 2016 when she said she wasn’t aware of any situations like that happening in South Carolina.
This is a pretty basic issue. And it was even more basic in 2016. The fact Haley has struggled to address it with clarity is more than cause for concern, it’s cause for zero consideration for the White House.
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