Nikki Wins the Wall Street Primary

Today on TAP: Unlike Trump, Haley’s not crazy, merely far (far!) right.

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Looks like the Big Business primary is over. Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley wins in a walk.

In the past few days, moguls ranging from Koch brother libertarian to Jamie Dimon corporate Democrat have become avid Haleyites. On Tuesday, the Koch brothers political network, Americans for Prosperity, pledged to shower her in cash, while Dimon, speaking yesterday at a New York Times “DealBook Summit,” told listeners, “Even if you’re a very liberal Democrat, I urge you, help Nikki Haley, too. Get a choice on the Republican side that might be better than Trump.”

“Better than Trump,” of course, is the lowest presidential bar in American history.

Trump’s own business backers have tended to be the kind of guys who, much like Trump himself, embarrassed the relative sophisticates who really call the economic shots in America. Mike Lindell? Elon What’s-His-Face? What’s a Serious Financier to do?

More of them are now hastening to Haley’s side. Certifiable gazillionaires like Ken Griffin, Ken Langone, and Paul Singer (who played a crucial role in Argentina’s recent presidential election by soaking that nation for a cool $2 billion over several decades) now figure prominently in stories about Haley’s growing funder network.

More from Harold Meyerson

What’s important to keep in mind is that Haley’s right-wing enthusiasms are sane only when compared to Trump’s. By any other standard, they’re cruel and extreme. To begin, she’s pledged to raise the eligibility age for Social Security (now 67) at the very time when the life expectancy for working-class Americans is shrinking. (Should she actually win the Republican nomination, this strikes me as her most vulnerable position; look for ads that highlight “Croaking While Still Working” under a President Haley.)

But there’s something here for the GOP’s far-from-plutocratic wing, too, by which she clearly hopes to endear herself to MAGAnauts. Haley recently declared she’d put a five-year term limit on federal civil servants. The Heritage Foundation’s 920-page to-do list for an incoming Republican president recommends clipping the wings of scientists, or just plain empiricists, in the federal bureaucracy, but Haley is clearly going Heritage one better. Not since Stalin executed most of his generals for insufficient Stalinism in the months before he was surprised by Nazi Germany’s invasion have we seen, should Haley win, such a wholesale elimination of public officials whom the public actually needs on the job. But for those MAGA Republicans for whom politics is all about owning the libs, this would be deeply satisfying (at least until a bare-bones FEMA can’t find Florida after the next hurricane).

And, there’s more! Haley has backed the idea of sending U.S. troops into Mexico to stop the flow of drugs—if need be, even over the opposition of the Mexican government. Never mind that Mexico is our ally, not our enemy. Clearly, she walks away with the “Tough Chick” prize in the 2024 field, though we should note that not even Maggie Thatcher ever suggested invading, say, Scotland.

Not all of these positions jell with those of her newfound funders; the libertarian Koch brothers, for instance, have long opposed deploying troops abroad. One of Haley’s positions, however, is demonstrably near to the hearts of nearly all American business leaders, ranging from Elon Musk to Howard Schultz: Even by the standards of today’s union-hating Republicans, Haley really hates unions. When the Machinists tried to organize Boeing’s South Carolina plant during her tenure as governor, she moved heaven and earth to (successfully) crush them. Part of that animus, to be sure, comes with the territory: South Carolina is one of the six states that has never enacted a minimum-wage law, and boasts the lowest rate of unionization (1.7 percent) of any state, in keeping with its history as the staunchest defender of slavery in antebellum America.

Haley now seems primed to emerge as Trump’s one real challenger in next year’s Republican primaries, though he remains the prohibitive favorite. If she doesn’t make it, look for some of her mega-rich backers to flock to whatever low-tax, anti-union spoiler No Labels imposes on us. With Trump still crazy, and Biden still promoting workers’ rights and power, Wall Street will still yearn for—and may yet create—a nicely pro-plutocratic third way.

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