The Iowa Caucuses are on Monday, 4 days from now, and its right down to a two individual races Nikki Haley versus Donald Trump. Sure, Ron De Santis has not formally conceded but, and he could even place second in Iowa, however his marketing campaign is all washed up. He invested a yr and way more than $100 million on successful in Iowa, and he’s going to lose huge time to Trump. He. might be fortunate if he even locations second. And, after investing his complete marketing campaign on successful Iowa, he has nowhere else to go. De Santis is in a distant third place in New Hampshire and South Carolina. The true query now’s whether or not Haley can pull off an upset with sturdy finishes in New Hampshire and South Carolina. With Chris Christie out of the race, my wager is that Haley will win an upset in New Hampshire simply as 44 years in the past Ronald Reagan gained New Hampshire after George H.W. Bush gained Iowa.
So, as a die exhausting Reaganite, I’ve to ask who would Ronald Reagan assist in 2024 if he had been nonetheless alive? Reagan’s view was that the US was a beacon of liberty to the remainder of the world—a shining metropolis on a hill, which was an instance to each different nation on earth. Nikki Haley believes as a result of she, like me, is the kid of immigrants. Our households got here to the US as a result of it stood for freedom and democracy. I thank God day-after-day that I’m an American and never an Italian, and I wager Nikki Haley thanks God day-after-day that she is an American and never a citizen of India, a rustic with is backsliding into dictatorship.
Ronald Reagan can be thrilled that Nikki Haley needs to see freedom and democracy triumph in Ukraine. Reagan labored exhausting to win the liberty for Central and Japanese Europe that Donald Trump needs to throw away. Ronald Reagan can be repulsed by Trump’s affection for dictators like Vladimir Putin who via Deutsch Financial institution bailed Trump out of many a enterprise chapter whereas providing him a Trump Resort in Moscow.
I’m going to cite under three paragraphs of Ronald Reagan’s Farewell Tackle to the American folks, which vividly present Nikki Haley’s and Ronald Reagan’s imaginative and prescient of America not remoted from the world however because the LEADER of the free world:
“And that’s about all I have to say tonight, except for one thing. The past few days when I’ve been at that window upstairs, I’ve thought a bit of the “shining metropolis upon 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 an early Pilgrim, an early freedom man. He journeyed here on what today we’d call a little wooden boat; and like the other Pilgrims, he was looking for a home that would be free.
I’ve spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don’t know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That’s how I saw it, and see it still.
And how stands the city on this winter night? More prosperous, more secure, and happier than it was 8 years ago. But more than that: After 200 years, two centuries, she still stands strong and true on the granite ridge, and her glow has held steady no matter what storm. And she’s still a beacon, still a magnet for all who must have freedom, for all the pilgrims from all the lost places who are hurtling through the darkness, toward home.”