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When ambition trumps trust

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Bob Gaydos
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Nikki Haley had a change of mind.
Nikki Haley had a change of mind.
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By Bob Gaydos

A while back I wrote a column that focused on three basic rules to live by:

-- If it's not true, don't say it.

-- If it's not yours, don't take it.

-- If it's not right, don't do it.

The impetus for the column was the obvious fact that The Leader of the Republican Party and many of his followers had never heard of such rules and, in any event, felt no obligation to live by them.

That situation hasn't changed. But I have come up with yet another one of what I feel should be a basic rule of life: Be true to your word. The impetus, again, is questionable behavior by Republicans, one a politician, one a judge.

I realize that trusting the words of a politician is a fool's choice, but Nikki Haley has managed to lower the bar even further for acceptable if smarmy hypocrisy with her pronouncement that she will vote for Donald Trump for president.

Haley waged an aggressive primary campaign against Trump for their party's presidential nomination and, while not succeeding, had respectable results. She found there are indeed some Republicans who are not happy with Trump.

Among the arguments she made for voting for her and not Trump: "Of course, many of the same politicians who now publicly embrace Trump privately dread him. They know what a disaster he's been and will continue to be for our party. They're just too afraid to say it out loud."

She accused Trump of being "confused," "unhinged," "not qualified" and "too old" to be president.

So OK, even with her past history of flip-flops (serving as Trump's UN ambassador and then resigning after two years, saying she would not run against him for president and then running against him for president), those are pretty strong and accurate comments she made about Trump. So why does she now say she is voting for him?

Ambition. Political ambition, pure and simple. She can vote for whomever she wants in private, but in public she still wants some of Trump's followers in the party to remember her four years from now when she'll want to run for president again.

She's willing to sacrifice any personal integrity she might have to preserve that hope for the future, even though she knows full well that a Trump second term in office could change the country's political landscape drastically.

(Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who also challenged Trump unsuccessfully in the primaries, is hedging a similar bet. He tried to out-Trump Trump in the primaries, but learned that no one could do that. Now, DeSantis is raising money for Trump and waiting for 2028.)

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Bob Gaydos is a veteran of 40-plus years in daily newspapers. He began as police reporter with The (Binghamton, N.Y.) Sun-Bulletin, eventually covering government and politics as well as serving as city editor, features editor, sports editor and (more...)
 

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