Quick take: If you want politicians to say courageous things, don't punish them for doing so

 Nikki Haley was always a fraud.  The media have been trying to create a story about the 2024 Republican nomination contest, but there is no such thing.  Donald Trump is the nominee, already.  There are no debates.  There are ridiculous, circus sideshows, but no debates.  The nominee, already crowned, does not need to attend, because why bother?  Yet, the press cannot abide this simple truth, because they have a 24-hour news cycle, and they need to pretend that something is happening.  That means there needs to be a contender.  Lately, they have anointed Nikki Haley as Trump's competition, as though she ever had a chance.  She never did.  Under the spotlight, while trying to sail between the Scylla and Charybdis of competing electoral pressures, Haley was asked a simple question.  Simple, that is, for anyone who isn't running in a Republican primary.  What was the cause of the Civil War?  She fumbled the answer, because she wants the GOP nomination, and the Republican Party is no longer the party of Lincoln.  It is the party of Jefferson Davis.  The problem is that Civil War revisionism looks stupid and craven to everyone who isn't a hardcore Republican voter, hence the trap question.

Why are politicians cowards?  Because you demand it.  You punish them when they speak simple truth.

Had Haley just said, "slavery, that's a stupid question, fuck off, stop wasting my time," half the country would have crowned her Queen of the Universe right then and there.  The problem is that she was seeking the votes of the other half, but that very same half that would have licked her butthole for my snippy answer demands that their own politicians get craven and weaselly and dishonest on identity politics.

Ask any Democratic politician if Michael Brown was trying to surrender in Ferguson.  If any of them know the truth, they'll never say it.  Cowards.

Then there are the other identity categories, about which there are crazier lies to which the left demands fealty.

If you excoriate Haley for her cowardice, what cowardice do you demand of your own politicians?

Kaleidoscope, "Lie to Me."  The original is on Incredible!