neocons - UnHerd

Nikki Haley’s neocon pantomime

Michael Cuenco — Thu, 16 Feb 2023 00:00:36 +0000

In the run-up to the contest for a major party’s presidential nomination, a challenger emerges to run against the man widely acknowledged as that party’s standard bearer. The challenger declares that the party must be prevented from drifting too far into ideological extremes, and that only a restoration of old values can save the party from perdition. This is a description not so much of Nikki Haley but of one Henry Skillman Breckinridge, who challenged Franklin Roosevelt for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1936. Breckinridge ran on a repudiation of the New Deal and the promise of a return to the age of Grover Cleveland. He won 2.6% of the vote. In the history of that era, he is a footnote to a footnote.

This week, Nikki Haley launched her own bid for historical sub-footnote status (she is polling around 3%) when she declared her intention to seek the Republican presidential nomination in 2024. The former South Carolina governor and ambassador to the United Nations is the first official challenger to her former boss Donald Trump. Commentators and bookmakers are largely agreed on her campaign’s (wholly non-existent) chances. The real challenge to the former president’s hold on the GOP will most likely come from Florida governor Ron DeSantis. But his appeal to the base is that he is a younger and more disciplined version of Trump, who can essentially continue what Trump started in 2016. With her appeals to the conservatism of the George W. Bush era, Haley can be expected to play the same role as Breckinridge: the swansong of a dying breed and the harbinger of her party’s irrevocable transformation. But even so, for the future of Republican politics and strategy, there is more to Haley’s bid than the sense of inevitable defeat that infuses it.

Clues about the true significance of the Haley campaign may first be found in retracing the relationship between the 45th president and his one-time ambassador. Nimrata Nikki Randhawa was born and grew up in Bamberg, South Carolina, the daughter of Sikh immigrants who came to the US by way of Canada from India. After graduating from Clemson University, she rose through the ranks in local politics and married national guardsman Michael Haley, converting to Christianity and later getting elected as a Republican to the state legislature in 2004. Haley became a national figure upon winning the governorship of South Carolina in 2010 as part of a Tea Party wave. Combining traditional conservative positions on taxes and social issues with an energetic populist style, Haley and the Tea Party represented a revival of GOP fortunes in the Obama years. She is also remembered for her call to take down the Confederate flag in 2015 after the Charleston massacre, and was touted as a serious presidential contender in 2016 though she opted to stay out of a crowded field.

Of course, that was the year both mainstream conservatism and liberalism were shattered by the insurgent force of Trumpian populism. Going well beyond the Tea Party, the real-estate mogul openly repudiated Bush-era conservative shibboleths, such as the Iraq War and free trade, while vociferously rejecting the establishment’s relatively moderate stances on immigration. As one of the party’s leading figures, Haley faced a choice between calling out Trump on principle or falling in line. Like many establishment conservatives at that juncture, she chose wisely: she did both.

At times, Haley appeared to criticise Trump, such as during her 2016 state of the union response when, in a veiled reference to her party’s frontrunner, she warned against the temptation “to follow the siren call of the angriest voices”. When her preferred candidate, Marco Rubio, was eliminated, she indicated she would vote for Trump but made clear that she was “not a fan”. In the end, Haley managed to say just enough to maintain her image as one of the respectable Republicans, but not nearly enough to anger or alienate the nominee. After Trump’s victory, Haley accepted the offer to serve as America’s envoy to the UN: it was an appointment that seemed to confirm the newfound unity between the president and the party establishment.

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By Michael Cuenco

At the United Nations, Ambassador Haley brought this political balancing act onto the international stage, gaining a reputation as the “good cop” of the Trump administration. This often meant adopting a of tone of rhetorical moderation to counteract Trump’s less statesmanlike instincts, while still pledging fidelity to the president. Nonetheless, Haley’s positions seemed to illustrate the distance between Trump and Bush-era foreign policy. For instance, while Trump was in favour of forging closer ties to Putin’s Russia and, at least initially, questioned the viability of Nato, Haley made a point of reaffirming the Atlantic alliance throughout her ambassadorship and took stands against Moscow and other authoritarian regimes.

When Haley stepped down in 2018, Trump praised her and she returned the favour in her memoir, in which she lauded her former boss as a strong president who was “great to work with”. A breach in relations due to January 6, after which Haley denounced Trump, was soon repaired when Haley later went back to supporting him. In 2021, she made clear she would duly make way for the former president if he opted for another run . “I would not run if President Trump ran, and I would talk to him about it… That’s something that we’ll have a conversation about.”

Even now, however, with Haley reneging on her pledge, Trump doesn’t seem all that bothered, writing on Truth Social, “Nikki has to follow her heart, not her honor. She should definitely run!” Unlike with DeSantis, Trump appears to be content with going soft on Haley, despite many lines of attack being open to the former president, such as tarring her as a disloyal “Republican In Name Only”, which can be enough to excommunicate someone from the party. Instead, the task of attacking her has fallen to Tucker Carlson and Trump’s other backers, who have referred to her as the “Carly Fiorina of 2024”, his one female rival from 2016.

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By Oliver Bateman

The lack of any real antagonism between Haley and Trump has led some to suggest that the former’s campaign is just a prelude to a possible vice-presidential selection (though he would likely be better off picking someone ideologically closer to him to avoid a repeat of the awkward relationship with Mike Pence), or part of some divide-and-conquer strategy to diffuse opposition to Trump and weaken the chances of Ron DeSantis. In this case, Nikki Haley’s run is not as pointless as it seems. Whether she is fully conscious of it or not, her campaign could very well be a welcome exercise in “regulated opposition” within the Republican Party.

That still begs the question: why is there so little tension between the two divergent wings of the party represented by Trump and Haley? After all, to hear Haley speak is to be transported to the halcyon days of post-Cold War Republican orthodoxy, when global market capitalism (neoliberalism) and military interventionism (neoconservatism) were unquestionable. This is a world away from the “America First” nationalism of Trump and the newer crop of populists, with its echoes of prewar isolationism and protectionism. Yet the Republican Party seems to have room enough for both of these tendencies without any big protracted battles over policy.

And while there now appears to be a brewing war of words between Trump and the Right’s traditional powerbrokers (like the pro-business Club for Growth and Americans for Prosperity, who are threatening to withhold their support in favour of more orthodox candidates such as Haley), the understanding seems to be that this is a mere pantomime act. The parties will go through the motions of dissent and protest before inevitably rallying to Trump (as they had done after 2016). Indeed, the Club for Growth has already made it clear that they would support Trump in the general election if he became the nominee.

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By Michael Cuenco

The explanation for the lack of genuine ideological conflict is simple: surface-level squabbles belie a practical convergence on policy. As president, with the partial exception of tariffs, Trump readily outsourced his agenda to Washington insiders with either neoliberal or neoconservative inclinations like John Bolton, producing a record that is in many ways a continuation of the old regime, on everything from tax cuts to immigration to foreign entanglements. In return for acquiescence to party regulars on policy, Trump was given free rein to ratchet up the culture war and to rebrand the GOP into the MAGA party, while effectively retaining much of the four-decades-old conservative programme.

Unlike Henry Breckinridge, who really did disagree with FDR (and who bolted from the party), the contrast between the likes of Nikki Haley and Donald Trump is mostly one of posture and aesthetics. In distancing herself from the former president rhetorically while nonetheless working to ensure that national policy follows party orthodoxy, Haley embodies the non-dilemma of the Republican establishment. Their struggle is not in deciding between principle and power, but in preserving the appearance of principle while reaping the spoils of power.

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A victory for Trumpism

Justin Webb — Wed, 04 Nov 2020 14:38:26 +0000

The real loser this week? To many Americans it’s obvious. Not “democracy itself” — at least, not yet. And not, really, the Democrats who have a good deal of support and may well win the presidency.

Nope. The loser is Jeb Bush.

It’s him and his country club set. All those genial folks at home in board rooms and hunting lodges, sniffy about the public finances, untroubled by trans rights, unflustered by abortion. They have copped it big time.

All those Republicans did one of two things in this election; either they voted for Trump, hoping the party might gently ease its way out of his clutches in years to come, or they did not vote at all and prayed for a repudiation that might allow them to recapture the bucking bronco.

Oops.

The bronco has bolted, with Donald Trump atop. Even if Joe Biden wins, the lesson many Republicans are going to take from this is that the way to keep the Democrats out of power in the future is to super-serve those at the bottom of the pile. The rougher, courser brigade. Those working the tables at the country club.

Because win or lose, Donald Trump wins. Not necessarily a second term in office, but the party – Lincoln’s party – is now his in an important and longer lasting sense. It has been shown a path that works. It’s a path to victory, or near victory, ploughed with the vigorous anti-intellectualism of the Trump brand. As some wag said as the ballots for Trump were piling up, “people voted with their middle finger”.

To be sure that is not an entire programme for government. The middle finger vote does not sort out America’s chaotic and vastly expensive healthcare system. It does not do much to combat climate change. All manner of complex problems which demand complex and nuanced approaches go rather by the wayside. I am old enough to remember when George W Bush was accused of waging a “war against science” – well the middle finger voter is no Einstein.

But he (yes, the middle finger often belongs to a he) knows what he likes. He wants big business reigned in. He wants immigration kept low and illegal immigration vigorously suppressed. He wants no more foreign wars and a supply chain that goes no further west than California, and preferably no further than Texas. He couldn’t give a monkey’s about the national debt and is comfortable with government spending on pensions and benefits for the working class.

As Erick Erickson, one of the leading lights of the evangelical Trump supporting right, told the New Yorker in the days before the election: “The Party today is more populist than conservative… and it’s the populism of a growing percentage of Americans who feel shut out. It’s younger, blue-collar voters—a coalition of grievance. They’re not conservative or liberal. They have grievances against the élite.”

Is QAnon on the brink of power in America?

By Travis View

There are dangers in all of this. When you say goodbye to Jeb Bush, you run the risk of saying hello to all manner of newbies who might make you wish you were back at the golf course.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, for instance.

She won a Georgia seat for the Republicans in the House of Representatives. She’s an open supporter of QAnon, the conspiracy theory campaign which believes that a secret cabal of Satanic cannibalistic paedophiles controls American government. Goodness knows what she will make of Washington DC. And while there are always some oddballs returned from both parties, this feels like something different from the Mr Smith goes to Washington distrust of the old ways of doing things. To many Americans, this politics has a nasty, unpleasant edge. And it is a place from which the Republicans, even in a divided age, cannot win regular majorities with regular folk.

But to concentrate on the extremes post-Trump would be a mistake. There is a more subtle side of Republicanism that recognises the Trump victory over the old guard and seeks to build something with firmer foundations and more coherence than the Donald can manage.

Among those doing this work is a former domestic policy director in Mitt Romney’s failed presidential bid named Oren Cass. He is no fan of Mr Trump personally, but the work he is doing at his think tank American Compass may well form the beginnings of the post-Trump party, a party that does not repudiate the President but builds on his achievement.

Cass recently described to Ezra Klein how the Trump impact on the party could be seen in a positive light:

“I think there’s a fascinating dynamic on the right-of-center right now where if you look within institutions — if you look at individuals working the various think tanks in media and in agencies and congressional offices — there’s just a ton of fascinating people doing fascinating work: rethinking first principles, challenging orthodoxies. It’s really exciting. Some of that is just a result of Trump sort of wiping the table clean and there being a sense that anything goes.”

The President's speech was scarily good

By Sam Leith

The post-Trump future, according to Cass, allows the party to escape from the low-tax low-spending gloom that, in his view, did so much to damage the nation, and to propose, instead, a new economic agenda. As Klein put it, this is “a vision that puts families first, eschews economic growth as the be-all-end-all of policymaking, and recognizes the inescapability of government intervention in the economy”.

The issue for the party is whether the 2024 Republican primary (oh yes, it’s never too early to plan for the next US election) is going to be a re-run of 2016, but as though Donald Trump had never been there. Just get the same characters – or younger family members – onto the stage and thank the Lord Mr Trump is absent.

This is definitely a scenario that some have hankered after; there are even some who believe that such a thing could still come to pass. But the events of this week, the ability of Donald Trump to get people to vote, the holding on to the Senate (if that comes to pass) surely make this view of the Republican future less tenable, less attractive to those who want to win.

Much more likely is the cementing of GOP in a new foundation – never mind the corporate class and the corner office. Hello, instead, to small business owners, to electricians and plumbers, to people who draw salaries. This party emphasises employment – but, more important, it focuses on the dignity of work.

In that place, steering clear of the conspiracy theorists of the far-right and gradually embracing a view of America that appeals to hard workers of all ethnic backgrounds, there is electoral success aplenty for the Republicans in the future. This is what plenty of post-Trump thinkers believe.

The future of the party is not going to be dominated by the man himself, but he has made his mark. Donald Trump captured a party. It struggled a bit to get away from him. The struggle now has finished. The argument now is about building on Trumpism, not repudiating it.

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