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EXCLUSIVE: As she crisscrosses the country helping fellow Republicans running in next year's midterm elections, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley is spotlighting a new conservative roadmap for the 2022 election cycle.

Haley, who served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations during President Trump's administration, is releasing her first policy book, which is titled "American Strength: Conservative Solutions Worth Fighting For."'

NIKKI HALEY ON MULTIPLE MISSIONS TO HELP THE GOP WIN BIG IN 2022

The book, shared first with Fox News on Wednesday, includes a broad coalition of conservative voices, with both domestic and foreign policy chapters written by friends of Haley who are considered experts in their fields. Haley, whom pundits view as a potential 2024 Republican presidential contender, is releasing the book through her Stand for America nonprofit advocacy organization.

Former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley is spotlighting a new conservative roadmap for the 2022 election cycle in a new book titled "American Strength: Conservative Solutions Worth Fighting For."

"My greatest passion is lifting people up," Haley writes in her introduction to the domestic section of the book. "So it's frustrating to see that in America today, there are so many barriers blocking the way, with new ones arising at a worrying pace."

Among those contributing to the domestic section of the book are fellow South Carolinian Sen. Tim Scott, who penned a chapter titled "A Plan for Safety and Healing in America." Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania wrote a chapter titled "Our National Debt: Why Should We Care and What Can We Do About It?" And Sen. Dan Sullivan of Alaska penned a chapter on "An Energy, Jobs, and Climate Plan That Strengthens America."

WHAT TO KNOW ABOUT NIKKI HALEY

The domestic portion of the book also includes a chapter titled "Bidens Border Crisis" by Rep. Tony Gonzales of Texas; "Restoring Life in a Post-Roe America: A Policy Vision," by Marjorie Dannenfelser, a leader of the anti-abortion movement; and "The Tragedy of American Education," which was penned by popular conservative talk radio host and writer Dennis Prager.

Former GOP Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina, who served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in the Trump administration, addresses the Republican Jewish Coalition's annual leadership meeting, on Nov. 6, 2021, in Las Vegas. (Fox News)

Throughout her domestic introduction, Haley emphasizes her goal of empowering people rather than the federal government.

"Theres no combination of elected or unelected experts, elites and do-gooders who are smarter than the American people. The more than 330 million women and men and children who call America home are infinitely creative and capable of creating opportunities for themselves and their communities. They simply need the chance to prove it by pursuing their passions, something socialism only stifles," Haley writes.

And she stresses that "instead of giving Washington control over people, we should be giving the people control over their own lives and futures, like I did as governor of South Carolina."

HALEY, AT MAJOR GOP CONFAB, TARGETS BIDEN ADMINISTRATION ON FOREIGN POLICY

Haley, striking a chord thats extremely popular with conservative voters, argues that "it's deeply worrying that anger and hatred toward America are growing. This problem runs deeper than so-called wokeism, and it's bigger than critical race theory. The moment we reject the principles at America's heart and accept the lie that our country is racist and rotten to the core, we throw away any chance of national progress."

She notes that "by all means, let's root out discrimination and injustice wherever they exist, and lets do it by applying America's principles more fully. Take it from me, the first female governor of South Carolina and the first minority female governor in the United States: America is not a racist country."

Nikki Haley speaks during a campaign event for Glenn Youngkin, on July 14, 2021, in McLean, Virginia. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

The foreign policy section of the book includes chapters written by retired general H.R. McMaster, who served as national security adviser during the Trump administration; former ambassador Paula Dobriansky, a top State Department official during President George W. Bush's administration; and John Charles Hagee, a leading pastor and televangelist.

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Haley, in introducing the foreign policy section, notes that "protecting America from so many threats requires military strength." But she adds that "another kind of strength is needed even more: moral strength. Its the only way to win the clash of civilizations."

And she emphasizes that "the rest of the world looks to our example. When we speak, they listen. When we lead, they follow. When we stand for whats right, we not only make our people safer and more secure, we make the world a better place too."

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Nikki Haley's new book showcases 2022 conservative roadmap and vision for future of Republican Party - Fox News

In a world where elected Republicans were not terrified of the most extreme elements of their base, the response to Representative Lauren Boeberts open Islamophobia would have been swift public condemnation. We do not live in that world.

Kevin McCarthy, the leader of the House Republicans, has not denounced Boeberts comments comparing Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota to a suicide bomber. He knows that scolding her could anger the base, divide his caucus, and threaten his dream of someday being crowned speaker of the House. Other congressional Republicans recognize this reality too, which is why so few of them denounced Boeberts jihad squad comments or Representative Paul Gosars creepy video in which he murders an anime version of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. So far, only a handful of Republican lawmakers have explicitly condemned these incidents, including two well-known Trump critics: Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, whos retiring in the face of a primary challenge, and Liz Cheney of Wyoming, whose home-state Republican Party no longer recognizes her as a member.

Another was freshman Republican Nancy Mace. On CNN this week, the South Carolina lawmaker called Boeberts rhetoric disgusting. Two weeks ago, she told MSNBC that Gosars video was reprehensible (though she did not vote to censure him). Mace is not exactly a member of the anti-Trump caucus; her position in the GOP ecosystem is harder to nail down. After the January 6 Capitol riot, Mace said that Donald Trump had no future in the Republican Party. She quickly backed away from that position, though, and has spent the rest of the year engaging in petty fights with Ocasio-Cortez, shouting about antifa, and going on Fox News to riff on GOP talking points. This summer, Mace voted to oust Liz Cheney from her leadership position after Cheney was critical of Trump. In the past few months, Mace has seemed to accept the reality that not only is there a role for Trump in her party, but also that he is still its unrivaled leader.

Mace, in other words, appeared to have fallen back in line. So why, then, has she chosen to help police her partys most Trumpian figures? I asked her office and didnt hear back. But knowing the answer to this question could help illuminate why so few Republicans have taken the kinds of risks that she has. I profiled Mace in July, and Ive followed her career closely. She could have any number of motivations, but my reporting points to one in particular.

Read: How a rising Trump critic lost her nerve

Its possible that Mace is genuinely disgusted by Boeberts anti-Muslim comments. Perhaps her gut reaction was to address them head-on. Sometimes politicians do the right thing simply because it is the right thing to do. That same impulse could be what drove Mace to criticize Trump after January 6, before she seemed to change her mind.

More cynically, Mace might see some sort of political benefit here. Her district, which runs from Charleston to Hilton Head, isnt quite as conservative as the rest of South Carolina. Her voters are a bit more socially moderate and environmentally conscious, and Mace ran on a platform that didnt line up neatly with that of her Republican peers. She might have figured that the voters in her district would be turned off by Boeberts Islamophobia, and that they would give her credit for calling it out. Inserting herself in Twitter spats is probably good for fundraising too: Maces condemnation of Boebert has already been retweeted by at least one Democratic legislator, who held up her tweet as an example of a GOP lawmaker caught being good and recommended that people read Maces book. In the coming weeks, Mace might see an ensuing increase in donations. Shes already expecting at least one primary challenge next year, so she needs all the financial help she can get.

Feel free to believe either of those theories. But something else could also be at work here. Mace is charismatic, smart, and ambitious, and it must be disheartening for her to be constantly overshadowed by colleagues who traffic in racism and conspiracy theories about Jewish space lasers. It must be exhausting, having to fight for attention while people like Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene become the new faces of the American right. Getting involved in this beefor any beefis perhaps the best way for Nancy Mace to get her name out there. Conflict makes for good stories; it attracts the attention of TV producers and Atlantic editors. Throwing punches is a good way for a neglected politician to get ahead. Mace would be far from the first politician to have recognized this.

Maces political evolution has been difficult to track. She cannot be perfectly categorized as a moderate Republican, nor as apro-Trump member. But one thing seems clear: She recognizes that that the Republican base wants AOC-type celebrities in office, one South Carolina GOP consultant told me earlier this year. A Republican commentator from her home state told me that he wished Mace would keep her head down. You have the option of not being available for comment or [not] taking their call, he said. She seems to be addicted to the cable-news scene. A local Democratic strategist told me that hed rarely seen a lawmaker positioning themselves so openly for a shot at stardom. She wants to grow her list and go on TV every day and raise money and sell books. She isnt thinking about staying in the House, he said. Shes thinking about whats next. Maces decision to participate in my July profile of her is more evidence for this theory. Most politicians dont agree to spend time with reporters, let alone go to the gun range with them, unless they see some sort of advantage to doing so. A politician who grants that sort of access to a reporter may not like the resulting story, but when youre a freshman member of Congress who wants to be well-known, all publicity is good publicity.

Read: The Texas Republican asking his party to just stop

Maybe in the end, Maces motive for calling out Boebert and Gosars bad behavior doesnt matter; maybe everyone should appreciate the simple fact that she is doing it. But if youre looking for hopeful signs that the Republican caucus has grown more willing to crack down on its most extreme members, Maces critiques of her peers are not compelling evidence.

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Nancy Mace and the Hunt for the Republican Spotlight - The Atlantic

In October of 1860, The Atlantics first editor, James Russell Lowell, wrote of Abraham Lincoln that he had experience enough in public affairs to make him a statesman, and not enough to make him a politician. Lowell, in his endorsement, was mainly concerned not with Lincolns personal qualities but with the redemptive possibilities of his new party. The Republicans, Lowell wrote, know that true policy is gradual in its advances, that it is conditional and not absolute, that it must deal with facts and not with sentiments.

Check out the full table of contents and find your next story to read.

There is insufficient space in any one issue of this magazine to trace the Republican Partys decomposition from Lincolns day to ours. It is enough to say that its most recent, and most catastrophic, turntoward authoritarianism, nativism, and conspiracismthreatens the republic that it was founded to save.

From the October 1860 issue: James Russell Lowell endorses Abraham Lincoln for president

Stating plainly that one of Americas two major parties, the party putatively devoted to advancing the ideas and ideals of conservatism, has now fallen into autocratic disrepute is unnerving for a magazine committed to being, in the words of our founding manifesto, of no party or clique. Criticism of the Republican Party does not suggest an axiomatic endorsement of the Democratic Party, its leaders and policies. Substantive, even caustic, critiques can of course be made up and down the Democratic line. But avoiding partisan entanglement does not mean that we must turn away from the obvious. The leaders of the Republican Partythe soul-blighted Donald Trump and the satraps and lackeys who abet his nefarious behaviorare attempting to destroy the foundations of American democracy. This must be stated clearly, and repeatedly.

There will be no recovery from this crisis until the Republican Party recommits itself to democracy, says this magazines David Frum, who was one of the first writers to warn that America possessed no special immunities against demagoguery and authoritarianism.

In 2020, we asked another of our staff writers, Barton Gellman, to examine the ways in which Trumpism was weakening the norms and structures of American democracy. We published his cover story The Election That Could Break America before the election, and well before the insurrection of January 6. Something far out of the norm is likely to happen, Gellman wrote. Probably more than one thing. Expecting otherwise will dull our reflexes. It will lull us into spurious hope that Trump is tractable to forces that constrain normal incumbents.

The Big Story: Join Barton Gellman, along with staff writer Anne Applebaum and Atlantic editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg, for a live virtual conversation about the threats to American democracy on December 13.

As we know, the system held, but barely, America having been blessed, once again, by dumb luck. (The bravery of police officers on Capitol Hill, and the wisdom of a handful of state and local officials, also helped.) When President Joe Biden was safely inaugurated, two weeks after the attack on the Capitol, a belief took hold that Trump, and Trumpism, might very well go into eclipse.

But that belief was wrong. Which is why we asked Bart to examine, once again, the state of our democracy and the various attempts by Trump and other leading Republicans to claim power through voter suppression, subterfuge, and any other means necessary. His current cover story, January 6 Was Practice, suggests that we are closecloser than most of us ever thought possibleto losing not only our democracy, but whats left of our shared understanding of reality.

You will find in this issue other essays and reporting that illuminate the political, moral, and epistemological challenges we face today, including an investigation by Vann R. Newkirk II into Republican voter-suppression efforts, and an article by Kaitlyn Tiffany on a child-sex-trafficking panic intensified by the far rights descent into conspiratorial thinking. The crisis is in good measure a crisis of the Republican Party. A healthy democracy requires a strong conservative party and a strong liberal party arguing for their views publicly and vigorously. What we have instead today is a liberal party battling an authoritarian cult of personality. As David Brooks writes in his essay I Remember Conservatism: To be a conservative today, you have to oppose much of what the Republican Party has come to stand for.

The Atlantic, across its long history, has held true to the belief that the American experiment is a worthy one, which is why were devoting this issue, and so much of our journalism in the coming years, to its possible demise.

This article appears in the January/February 2022 print edition with the headline A Party, and Nation, in Crisis.

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Jeffrey Goldberg: The Republican Party, and America, Are in Crisis - The Atlantic

Its understandable if you thought the threat had gone. Donald Trump left office nearly a year ago, is no longer serving up daily outrages by tweet, and is reduced to appearing with Nigel Farage on GB News. But the menace he represented lingers, and not only because Trump remains the most likely Republican presidential nominee for 2024, a contest he could well win given the parlous approval ratings of the current incumbent.

Trumpism lives on in the legacy he left behind, its most visible incarnation perhaps the three ultra-conservative judges he selected for the supreme court, who this week began hearing a case on abortion one that many expect to result in the removal of American womens constitutionally protected right to end an unwanted pregnancy.

But Trumpism endures too in the party he remade in his own image. He has left behind a Republican party no longer committed to democracy. That sounds hyperbolic but, if anything, it understates the case. Republicans are breaking from the principle that precedes the idea of democracy and is even more fundamental: the belief that arguments between citizens should be resolved by peaceful means. Todays Republican party is normalising the notion of violence as a means of securing a political outcome.

Start with the case of Paul Gosar, the Republican member of Congress for Arizona. He retweeted an anime-style video that depicted him murdering his Democratic colleague, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, as well as swinging a sword at Joe Biden. Appalling though that was, especially at a time when AOC and others face constant threats of violence, more telling was the response of Gosars party. When Democrats moved to censure him, only two Republicans voted with them. The 200-odd others gave Gosar their blessing.

Earlier, Republicans had had to make a similar decision. Before her election to Congress in 2020, Marjorie Taylor Greene had posted on Facebook a photograph of herself holding a gun next to an image of AOC and two other members of the so-called Squad, made up of left-leaning Democratic women of colour. Taylor Greene also all but called for the execution of the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi. Yet when Democrats voted to kick the Georgia Republican off the various congressional committees she sat on, only 11 members of her party voted with them. The rest stood with her.

Of course, the pattern was set with the Republican response to Trump himself, and his encouragement of the attempt to overturn a democratic election by force earlier this year. Republicans could have repudiated the storming of the Capitol on 6 January by joining their Democratic colleagues in voting to impeach the outgoing president for inciting an insurrection. But only 10 Republicans did so.

Since then, those 10 dissenters have been pilloried and ostracised by their fellow Republicans. Among the shunned is Liz Cheney, who was stripped of her House leadership role and expelled from the state Republican party in her native Wyoming. Shes an arch-conservative like her former vice-president father, but that didnt matter. Cheney believes in respecting elections and that was enough to put her beyond the pale.

These responses coddling the advocates of violence, punishing those who denounce it prove the truth of the declaration that Taylor Greene made this week: We are not the fringe. We are the base of the party.

Shes right. She and Gosar are in lockstep with a Republican party whose face can be seen in the death threats now routinely meted out not only to nationally famous politicians such as AOC, but to the officials and volunteers who serve in public health, local government or on school boards across the country.

Trumps downplaying of the dangers of the pandemic and his hostility to mask-wearing made those stances articles of faith among his most ardent supporters who now threaten murderous violence against those who cross them, their fury directed especially at schools that require their pupils to wear masks. In early October, the US attorney general, Merrick Garland, felt it necessary to send in the FBI to help protect school administrators, who were facing what the National School Boards Association calls a form of domestic terrorism.

To be clear, not every Republican in the House or Senate agrees with Gosar, Taylor Greene or the Republican candidate in Pennsylvania who promised to bring 20 strong men to a school board meeting because this is how you get stuff done but they are terrified of them, just as they are terrified of Trump and his supporters. They know that if they step out of line, they will soon face an internal, primary challenge for their own seat. So they say nothing.

The espousal of, or acquiescence in, political violence is the sharpest expression of Republicans steady march away from democracy, but it is not the only one. At the milder end is the unabashed gerrymandering under way in many of the states where Republicans are in control, redrawing boundaries to give themselves permanent and insurmountable majorities.

More troubling still are the hundreds of voter suppression measures advanced by Republican state legislatures, nakedly designed to make voting harder for groups that tend to vote Democratic, especially low-income Americans and those from ethnic minorities. Whether its demanding stricter proof of identity, reducing early or postal voting say, by allowing only one dropbox in each county, no matter how many people live there or how large it is the desired goal is the same: to shrink the franchise, hurting Democrats and helping Republicans.

The drive is, once again, fealty to Trump. Polls show that 68% of Republicans believe the former presidents big lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him and they are determined to make sure it wont happen again. To ensure there is no risk of Trump losing in 2024, Republicans are both making it harder for Democrats to vote and working to install reliable allies as election scrutineers: they want no repeat of 2020, when Republican officials allowed the votes to be counted fairly and declared Biden the winner.

What is fuelling this shift is not solely the cult of personality that still envelopes Donald Trump, though that devotion is a mighty force. Studies have long shown a potent authoritarian impulse on the American right drawn to the notion of a strong leader imposing order and guarding the nation against outsiders one greater than in comparable countries. As always with the US, race plays a central role. Enough white Americans fear a future in which they are no longer the dominant majority and are ready to do what it takes to stay in charge: to avert demography, theyll sacrifice democracy.

This represents a mortal threat to the American republic. But the US remains the worlds most powerful nation. As of now, only one of its two governing parties is committed to democracy and that poses a danger to us all.

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The Republican party is embracing violence in the name of Trump - The Guardian

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Texas Republicans are increasing their involvement in local races, hoping to do more to influence municipal and school board elections that have turned into political battlegrounds during the coronavirus pandemic.

The state Republican Party announced Monday it had formed a new Local Government Committee to work with county parties on backing candidates in nonpartisan local elections, where issues like mask mandates and the teaching of what some conservatives call critical race theory have become flashpoints.

"That's really been the match that totally" ignited this, said Rolando Garcia, a member of the State Republican Executive Committee who chairs the new group. "School board races have always been important, but it's been hard to get the attention and resources to them, and so they've been sleepy affairs."

The state GOP is emboldened by recent wins in places like Carroll Independent School District, where opponents of a district proposal to address racism in schools captured a majority on the school board last month. Republicans are also looking to build on victories like that of Javier Villalobos, a Republican who won his election earlier this year as the mayor of McAllen, which traditionally votes for Democrats.

"Democrats across the country see the importance of local elections in the fight for America, and so does the Texas GOP," Matt Rinaldi, chair of the Texas GOP, said in a statement.

The state Democratic Party has been supporting local nonpartisan candidates through a program, Project LIFT, that started in 2015. The program, which stands for Local Investment in the Future of Texas, recruits, trains and provides resources to people running for municipal offices and school board.

"We've got to take an aggressive approach in these races," said Odus Evbagharu, chair of the Harris County Democratic Party. "Our democracy's on the line, and it starts at our most local level."

In recent months, school boards have gained new attention in Texas and nationwide amid raging debates over pandemic rules. Even though Gov. Greg Abbott has banned public schools from requiring masks, some school boards have defied him and sought to mandate masks anyway, prompting legal action from the state.

This year, parents have turned their attention to the perception that "critical race theory" is being taught to their children and have pushed to remove books from school libraries that contain offensive content. Critical race theory is a concept teaches that racism is embedded in society, and while there is no evidence it is widely taught in K-12 schools in Texas, the Legislature passed a law aiming to crack down on it that went into effect Thursday. That law is behind a GOP state lawmaker's recent investigation into the types of books that school districts have.

Additionally, Abbott has been on a hunt to root out any "pornographic" material in public schools, telling the Texas Education Agency to investigate it last month.

Garcia is from Houston, where the Harris County GOP has already charged into local contests. The county party backed three challengers who ousted members of the Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District school board in November. The county party has also endorsed three candidates in the Houston Independent School District school board runoffs that are happening Saturday.

For example, one of those candidates, Bridget Wade, opposes mask requirements for students and has said she is against schools teaching "our children that one race is better than the other."

Evbagharu said the party is "in it to win it" when it comes to the Houston ISD runoffs. He denounced the GOP crusade against critical race theory as "classroom censorship," saying Republicans are "trying to disrupt democracy and disrupt the way history is taught."

Garcia said the Local Government Committee is focused on educating county parties that they can indeed endorse in local nonpartisan races and then giving them guidelines on how to support a candidate if they do choose to endorse. Typically, a majority of precinct chairs must approve before a county party can formally support a candidate in a local election.

After a county party gets behind a candidate, the state party may come in with its aid like a mailer but Garcia emphasized that "these are conversations that each county party needs to have" first.

In the meantime, school boards are continuing to garner statewide GOP attention. Some Republican state lawmakers have called on the Texas Association of School Boards to sever ties with the National Associations of School Boards after it asked the Biden administration to look at recent parental hostility toward school board members as "domestic terrorism."

On Monday, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick called for the resignation of the co-chair of Fort Worth Independent School District's Racial Equity Committee after she shared personal information about parents who sued the district to stop its mask mandate. (Patrick referred to the committee member, Norma Garcia-Lopez, as a school board member, but the committee is separate from the school board and advises it.)

Disclosure: Texas Association of School Boards has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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Texas Republicans getting involved in local school board, city elections - The Texas Tribune