Nikki Haley has extremely bright future: Ryan

Lauding Indian-American Nikki Haley as an inclusive and visionary leader, US House Speaker Paul Ryan said the South Carolina Governor is the right person to deliver Republican response to President Barack Obama's last State of the Union address.
"If you want to hear an inclusive leader who's visionary, who's got a path for the future, who's brought people together, who's unified, it's Nikki Haley," Ryan told the CNN in an interview yesterday.
Haley - the two-term Governor of South Carolina - would be delivering the Republican response to the last State of the Union Address of Obama to the US Congress, in a move that has the potential of propelling her to the national scene and make her a formidable vice-presidential candidate.

"That's who we're going to hear from tomorrow night. So I think she's the perfect person for it. I had a hand in selecting her," said Ryan, who himself delivered this speech in 2011 - a year before he became a vice presidential nominee of the party in 2012.
"I did this speech in 2011, so believe me, I understand the stakes can be high for a person doing this speech. I think she's a natural. I spoke with her. I was with her on Saturday in Columbia, South Carolina. The advice I gave her is put a cough drop in the corner of your mouth. It keeps you salivating so you don't go thirsty," Ryan said.

"So, there's a lot of little pieces of advice like that that I've given her, but at the end of the day, we just said be yourself, communicate to the country, represent our party as well as you have been, and you'll be just fine. And I think she's going to do great," said the Speaker of the US House of Representatives.

"I think she's a natural (leader). I think she's a great spokesman for our party. I think the future's extremely bright for Nikki, and that's why we asked her to do it," he said in response to a question.

After Haley was selected to give GOP response to Obama's State of the Union Address, several media outlets have written that she could be one of the top Republican vice presidential contenders this year.
She is the first female and first minority governor of South Carolina.