--- title: Ian Bremmer on Charleston, the Election and the Confederate Flag description: Nikki Haley's call to remove the flag from the South Carolina statehouse takes the issue off the table for the 2016 election canonical: https://time.com/3931214/republican-presidential-hopefuls-got-bailed-out-on-the-confederate-flag/ author: Ian Bremmer article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-06-23T14:43:40.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-22T08:25:53.531Z article:section: Politics og:title: How Nikki Haley Helped Save the GOP Presidential Candidates og:description: They should have had to decide on the Confederate flag og:url: https://time.com/3931214/republican-presidential-hopefuls-got-bailed-out-on-the-confederate-flag/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltfac24eb205fd3849/698857ec428a9eac3fccdd93/confederate-flag-south-carolina.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 3000 og:image:height: 1688 og:image:alt: Nikki Haley Lindsey Graham confederate flag og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: How Nikki Haley Helped Save the GOP Presidential Candidates twitter:description: They should have had to decide on the Confederate flag twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltfac24eb205fd3849/698857ec428a9eac3fccdd93/confederate-flag-south-carolina.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Republican Presidential Hopefuls Got Bailed Out on the Confederate Flag > Sponsored content. 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It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, three times a week. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters.  by [Ian Bremmer](https://time.com/author/ian-bremmer/)  ## Ian Bremmer Jun 23, 2015 2:43 PM UTC  The Confederate flag flies on the Capitol grounds after South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley announced that she will call for the Confederate flag to be removed on June 22, 2015 in Columbia, S.C. The Confederate flag flies on the Capitol grounds after South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley announced that she will call for the Confederate flag to be removed on June 22, 2015 in Columbia, S.C. Joe Raedle—Getty Images  by [Ian Bremmer](https://time.com/author/ian-bremmer/)  ## Ian Bremmer Jun 23, 2015 2:43 PM UTC South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley yesterday called for her state’s legislature to finally remove the Confederate flag from Capitol grounds. In my mind, this was as close to a gimme as they come. The only problem with Haley’s call is that it gives presidential candidates an easy out from answering tough questions they’ve been flubbing for the last five days. Prior to Haley’s announcement, Jeb Bush claimed that the Confederate flag issue was best left to the leaders of South Carolina to figure out. Ted Cruz said that the last thing South Carolina needed was “people from outside the state coming in and dictating how they should resolve it.” Marco Rubio wanted the state to “make the right choice for the people of South Carolina.” And so on and so on. They were buying themselves time in the hope that local politicians would bail them out. Mission accomplished. The fact that these candidates were equivocating on this issue at all speaks to politics over leadership, particularly on an issue as damaging as the Confederate flag flying on top of government buildings in 2015\. I understand why they were trying so hard not to say anything substantive—a 2014 Winthrop University poll found that 61 percent of South Carolina residents believed the confederate flag should still fly on state house grounds. 73 percent of whites polled said it should stay, and a downright shocking 27 percent of black respondents agree. But this is a level of nuance that the American people, and the residents of South Carolina, are allowed to have. Candidates running for president don’t get the same latitude. And with Haley’s announcement, they were given an easy out. They should have long ago ignored what the polls were saying and told us directly whether they believed the flag should continue to fly and why. Now they’ll never have to, claiming they were vindicated in allowing the state of South Carolina to make the “right” decision for themselves. These candidates should have acknowledged outright that the Confederate flag is a clear symbol of racism and hatred, the same type of racism that claimed the lives of those 9 people in the church. _Bremmer is a foreign affairs columnist and editor-at-large at TIME. He is the president of Eurasia Group, a political-risk consultancy, and a Global Research Professor at New York University. 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