HARRISBURG, Pa.—After a spirited address to an overflow crowd at the annual Pennsylvania Leadership Conference here in which she urged support for Mitt Romney for president, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley said she would not accept the Republican vice presidential nomination if it is offered to her.
“I promised the people of South Carolina I would do well [as governor],” said Haley, referring to her promise to the Palmetto State’s voters in 2010 to fill out her term. The 38-year-old governor added that “there are a lot of good vice presidential candidates” for Romney to choose from if he becomes the nominee and that “he doesn’t need a one-year governor”—a remark which brought a few chuckles from the crowd, who recalled that Sarah Palin had been governor of Alaska for little over a year when John McCain tapped her as his running mate in ’08 (An additional irony is that Palin in 2010 gave a pre-primary endorsement to Haley in her bid for governor, the Alaskan’s proclamation of then-State Rep. Haley as a “mamma grizzly” no doubt helping her vault over three opponents to nomination).
“The only thing I want from Mitt Romney,” Haley said, “is for him to get out of South Carolina’s way when he’s president. Right now Barack Obama is in my way”—a reference to disputes her state has had with the Administration over a variety of issues ranging from its voter I.D. law to the National Labor Relations Board’s eventually-unsuccessful attempt to thwart a Boeing plant from being built in Charleston.
Later, Haley told HUMAN EVENTS that she felt Congress should take a tougher approach to the NLRB, which pro-labor appointees control through Barack Obama’s constitutionally questionable recess appointments. When I mentioned that Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) had suggested a “get tough” approach to the NRLB through congressional action to deny it funding to operate
“Yes, the [NLRB] needs to be reined in,” Haley told us, “And I am familiar with what Pat Toomey wants to do and I support it.”
As to whether Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich should get out of the race and coalesce behind Romney, the South Carolinian said she “never tells people what to do” and “this is a democratic process.” But, she quickly added, “every day we spend attacking one another is one less day we have to go after Barack Obama.”
Photo credit: Dan Gleither, Patriot-News
