GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley's comments about the Civil War and slavery will likely be the "epitaph" for her campaign, political consultant Dick Morris told Newsmax on Saturday.
"In every cemetery where they should mark the grave of a presidential contender, there's an epitaph about a stupid quote that they did; and this is what Nikki Haley's epitaph will be," Morris said on Newsmax's "Saturday Report."
"I think that Nikki's comments will hurt her very badly. And, more importantly, they reflect the idea of an inexperienced candidate, of somebody who's not used to handling this stuff," he added. "When they're scripted and they get a question on the script, they're OK. But when it comes from nowhere, they don't handle it."
Haley came under fire this week when she made no mention of slavery as the cause of the Civil War in response to a question at a New Hampshire town hall, instead pinning the blame on states' rights and the role of government.
The next day, she blamed the question as coming from a Democrat plant in the audience and said that she does agree that slavery brought about the war.
"It's important to understand that her failure to mention slavery, instead talking on rights, on what government can and can't do ... is reminiscent and, in fact, echoing the propaganda of the Confederacy after the Civil War, which was widely taught in schools," Morris said about Haley, a former governor of South Carolina.
"The South worked very hard on editing textbooks and censoring them to exclude mentions of slavery because that was a bad word and to say the Civil War was about individual rights," said Morris. "Haley probably was in that environment for a long time, living in South Carolina."
Morris added that he does not believe Haley's comments were a "careless mistake" but instead echoed what she had been taught in school. She was born in Bamberg, South Carolina.
"They were taught that the Civil War was basically a conflict of individual rights and state rights against the federal government," said Morris. "In fact, they didn't even call it the Civil War. They tended to call it the 'war between the states.' Some called it the 'war of Northern aggression' ... The Daughters of the Confederacy took all the textbooks out, scrubbed them, and made sure that there was no mention of slavery as a cause of the Civil War. And they propagated that throughout the South."
And as that was a "big deal in the late 19th century and carried over through the entire 20th century," Morris said he believes Haley was "echoing that sentiment."
Meanwhile, Morris discussed the polls that are showing former President Donald Trump as the clear front-runner in the Republican primary race and said he believes Trump will clinch the nomination in March.
"The drop-dead date is March 5, which is Super Tuesday," said Morris. "After Iowa, you won't have anyone drop out; but after New Hampshire and Iowa, I think you will. Trump has a 33-point lead in Iowa, a 24-point lead in New Hampshire, and a 53-point lead nationally."
But after the first two races, "you may see a bunch of dropouts. And the race will be over then, and everybody will agree that Trump is going to win it. So I think this will have an early conclusion. I think we'll be able to say Trump clinches the nomination in March and has a very good chance of winning it after the middle of January."
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