The Iowa caucuses are on Monday, four days from now, and it will only be a two-person race between Nikki Haley and Donald Trump. Yes, Ron De Santis hasn’t officially conceded yet, and he might even place second in Iowa, but his campaign is a complete failure. He invested a year and well over $100 million to win in Iowa, and he’s going to lose a lot of time to Trump. He. will be lucky if he even places second. And after investing his entire campaign into winning Iowa, he has nowhere to go. De Santis is a distant third in New Hampshire and South Carolina. The real question now is whether Haley can pull off an upset with strong showings in New Hampshire and South Carolina. With Chris Christie out of the race, I’m betting Haley will pull off a surprise victory in New Hampshire, just like 44 years ago Ronald Reagan won New Hampshire after George HW Bush won Iowa.
So, as a staunch Reagan supporter, I have to wonder who would Ronald Reagan support in 2024 if he were still alive? Reagan’s view was that the United States was a beacon of freedom to the rest of the world – a shining city on a hill, which was an example to every other country in the world. Nikki Haley believes it because she, like me, is the child of immigrants. Our families came to the United States because this country stood for freedom and democracy. I thank God every day that I am American and not Italian, and I bet Nikki Haley thanks God every day that she is American and not a citizen of India, a country falling back into dictatorship.
Ronald Reagan would be delighted that Nikki Haley wanted to see freedom and democracy triumph in Ukraine. Reagan worked hard to win the freedom of Central and Eastern Europe that Donald Trump wants to reject. Ronald Reagan would be put off by Trump’s affection for dictators like Vladimir Putin who, through Deutsch Bank, saved Trump from numerous business bankruptcies while giving him a Trump hotel in Moscow.
I will quote below three paragraphs from Ronald Reagan’s farewell address to the American people, which vividly show Nikki Haley and Ronald Reagan’s vision of America not isolated from the world but as LEADER of the free world :
“And that’s about all I have to say tonight, except for one thing. These last few days, when I’ve been at that upstairs window, I’ve been thinking a little to “the shining city on a hill.” The phrase comes from John Winthrop, who wrote it to describe the America he imagined. What he imagined was important because he was one of the first pilgrims, one of the first men of liberty. He traveled here on what we would today call a small wooden boat; and like the other pilgrims, he was looking for a home that would be free.
I’ve been talking about the Shining City all my political life, but I don’t know if I’ve ever really communicated what I saw by saying it. But in my mind, it was a city tall and proud, built on rocks stronger than the oceans, swept by the winds, blessed by God and populated by people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that buzzed with commerce and creativity. And if there were to be city walls, the walls had gates and the gates were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That’s how I saw it and I still see it.
And how is the city doing this winter night? More prosperous, safer and happier than 8 years ago. But even more: after 200 years, two centuries, it is still strong and faithful on the granite ridge, and its shine has remained stable whatever the storm. And she is still a beacon, still a magnet to all who need freedom, to all the pilgrims from all the lost places who rush through the darkness toward home. »
