Friends,
Leading MAGA pundit and former Donald Trump administration official Steve Bannon calls them “the Keebler Elves.” I prefer the term “Munchkins,” or maybe “the Five Dwarfs”—
No, it’s now just fourdwarfs with Tim Scott bowing out: they are the Republican candidates participating in the charade, AKA “the GOP debates,” and desperately hoping—grasping—striving to displace Donald Trump as the frontrunner to oppose brain-dead Joe Biden in the 2024 election.
The Never Trumpers, the Establishment “conservative” think tanks and their journals and groupies, many among the Republican congressional leadership and office holders, have, for the past year, frantically beat the drums for someone—anyone—who could credibly challenge Trump, someone with the bona fides and a glossy resume, someone who could rein in rising MAGA populist traditionalism which threatens the once thought unassailable perch of the Managerial globalists.
At first, spearheaded by the powerful Murdoch media outlets, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, and Fox News, the buzz among them was centered on Ron DeSantis. DeSantis would be the “giant killer.”
DeSantis, it was argued, could enunciate the major popular Trumpian themes, even at times apparently go around to the Donald’s right, but without the verbal and personality “baggage” (according to them). And even more importantly, although he could sound a lot like a church deacon version of Trump, the Florida governor would not in reality threaten the essential control by the elites, at least not like Trump would.
But somewhere along the trail to Neverland, DeSantis fell flat, in no way denting President Trump’s unsurmountable lead in the polls. And the elite makers and shakers began to cast about looking for a new giant killer.
And their increasingly desperate gaze settled upon none other than the former governor of South Carolina, Nikki Haley, nee’ Nimarata Nikki Randhawa, perhaps the most ambitious and the most flagrant political chameleon the American nation has extruded in many a year.
Once considered a potential running mate for GOP standard bearer Mitt Romney and a determined opponent of Donald Trump, Haley then sidled up to him after his election to secure appointment as US Ambassador to the United Nation. Prior to the June 2015 Dylann Roof massacre she was a self-proclaimed defender of Southern heritage (and the flag representing it) in South Carolina, but then becoming a zealous detractor, stating:
“These grounds [the State Capital] are a place that everybody should feel a part of. What I realized now more than ever is people were driving by and felt hurt and pain. No one should feel pain.”
The list of changes in her positions and posture are dramatic even in the context of American politics. A catalogue of Haley’s calculated swervings and apparent course alterations could fill a plump briefcase. And all blatantly supporting her extremely, overweening ambition.
Her latest maneuver is to become the anointed champion of the DC Republican elites, the ensconced GOP establishment which fears the Great DisruptorDonald Trump even more than a senile and controlled Joe Biden. She is making all the acceptable cooing noises, the appropriate stands on issues so dear to conservative and Neocon elites, those forming “Conservatism Inc.”
And the elites of “Conservatism Inc.” have noticed approvingly.
It’s no secret that Haley has plied her wares with the big corporate donors, and she has raked in huge amounts of cash from financial moguls who distrust and dislike Donald Trump’s increasing anti-corporatist rhetoric.
One Trump operative suggested that Haley was a “perfect 2008 Republican,” but “180 degrees away from where the party is today” (Washington Examiner, May 9, 2023). The departure of Sen. Tim Scott from the race has opened even more fat cat pocketbooks, with one major donor adding: “[Haley] is our last best hope to defeat Donald Trump and then take back the White House.”
And now (November 20, 2023) Mitt Romney’s former Senior Advisor and Finance Chair Spencer Zwick has joined her 2024 campaign election fundraising. The headline in the story reads:
“Nikki Haley Gaining Support From Voters, Donors: Could Landing Mitt Romney’s Former Senior Advisor Help Momentum?”
Zwick declared: “Nikki Haley has the vision, the record, and the campaign apparatus to win both the primary and general election….I’m proud to support her efforts and help her build stronger relationships with donors and business leaders around the country.”
A recent report from the Financial Times also links Haley to such backers as BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, former Goldman Sachs President Gary Cohn, billionaire investor Stanley Durckenmiller and more who are supporting or nearing support for Haley.
Can the military-industrial complex be far behind?
In the Murdoch flagship, the Wall Street Journal(October 19, 2023), columnist Daniel Henninger, advertised this attraction to Haley. In attempting to link the war in Ukraine with the conflict in Israel, he scribbled:
“The next U.S. president should be able to explain in detail the country’s national-security needs, including the trade-offs…. Ms. Haley has shown she can do that.”
And the New York Post, fresh from a series of articles blasting Trump, signaled the shift on November 12 in a story, titled: “Nikki Haley knocks Trump’s chances of winning 2024 election: ‘Drama and chaos follow him’.”
Columnist Ryan King, quoting the ex-governor, suggested that Americans are “tired” of Donald Trump, looking for new and younger leadership. Trump would lose to Biden (despite most recent polls which show him beating Biden), and, most importantly, Haley would continue, even strengthen, American support for the corrupt Ukrainian regime:
“If we do this right in Ukraine and Israel, we won’t have to deal with China,” she reportedly said—which was music to the ears of our zealous globalist foreign policy elites.
But not only that, the Leftist punditry has also noticed and has chimed in glowingly as well.
You see, Haley would be for them a far better opponent, far less threatening to their control of the apparatus of governance, their growing control over the direction of this nation, not just in foreign policy, but also domestically. With her as the GOP standard bearer, either win or lose, the Managerial Deep State still wins.
That should have been apparent from just a quick survey of the Leftist media. Leftist pundit, Rex Huppke, writing in USA Today (November 5, 2023) opined that Haley is:
…the GOP’s only hope for finding a candidate not named Trump, and quite possibly the only Republican candidate with a solid chance of beating Biden. …I would honestly be glad to see you come out on top in the primary. The reason? I don’t think Trump can get elected again, but I also cannot say with certainty he won’t get elected again. Biden is absolutely going to be vulnerable, and if that’s the case, I’d rather have someone on the Republican ticket who at least seems marginally sane, given that person could wind up running the country. Again, I don’t like you politically. But I would not fear for our democracy [sic!] if you became president….
And The Washington Post came out a couple of weeks later, suggesting that Haley would be a stronger GOP candidate in the general election:
“Haley appears significantly more palatable to middle-of-the-road voters…her polling strength would at least offer some support for the idea of running a more standard-issue Republican — the kind who has routinely over-performed Trumpian candidates in recent elections.”
Repeating this major Haley campaign talking point, USA Today ran a fawning article (November 23, 2023), stating she would win over moderates, while Trump might scare them away. Haley is, they purred, “the common sense candidate.”
Finally, the “grey lady,” The New York Times, evaluating the November 8, 2023 debate among the Munchkins, declared “She Certainly Beat All the Boys”:
“Crisp and confident. She refused to let her opponents’ attacks go unanswered…. Neoconservatism made its comeback tonight, and Nikki Haley led the charge.”
The round-table at Politico came to the same conclusion.
Leave it to fearless Glenn Greenwald to sum up the ongoing process we see before us:
…[that] corporate media – not exactly in step with the sentiments and priorities of Republican Party primary voters – views Haley in such a positive light should tell you most of what you need to know about her candidacy: she exists to serve establishment interests and to rescue the Republican Party from the anti-corporate, anti-militarist and anti-establishment sentiments that have driven it since the emergence of Donald Trump.
The requirement for being seen as a serious national security expert in the eyes of the corporate press is clear and obvious: you must cheer U.S. wars every time one is proposed, and certainly every time one is being fought.
By that metric, there is no greater foreign policy sage in the United States than Nikki Haley, with the possible exception of Lindsey Graham.
That’s why the U.S. media adored John McCain so much: he cheered every U.S. war. Last night [the November 8 debate], Haley let her warmongering and neocon colors fly more proudly than ever and that’s why she got such universally high marks from the GOP establishment and the corporate media that ordinarily has nothing but scorn to keep on Republican candidates.
They want Nikki Haley to be the nominee for Americans to have no choice on foreign policy when they go to the polls next year to vote: two candidates, two parties that represent the warmongering neocon ideology.
One unforced error that Haley made, itself very revealing, says volumes about her imbibing the Big Brother Deep State kool aid. And certain pundits did catch it. In an appearance on friendly Fox News, in response to a question on what she labeled hate speech, she responded:
“…when I get into office, the first thing we have to do — social media accounts, social media companies, they have to show America their algorithms. Let us see why they’re pushing what they’re pushing. The second thing is every person on social media should be verified by their name. First of all, it’s a national security threat. When you do that, all of a sudden, people have to stand by what they say.”
That was too much for even some observant establishment conservative pundits, including Byron York in the Washington Examiner (November 15, 2023) who sharply criticized her, declaring:
“Haley’s approach would throw much of [First Amendment Constitutional] protection out the window, with the president of the United States pushing for the identification of every anonymous poster in America.”
Haley’s attempted clarification fell flat, and York speculated that maybe she actually meant what she had said, and that, indeed, her subinfeudation to the Managerial Big Brother colossus was showing. Maybe she had not spoken mistakenly, but rather what was really in her mind?
The question is, then, could Haley, running in most polling 40 points behind Donald Trump, actually catch and even surpass him, that is, without the kind of shenanigans that we know the Managerial State apparatchiks are capable of?
Not likely, you say; but…and it is a very significant “but”…the current state of American politics no longer offers the safeguards it once may have had to prevent such skullduggery.
The last few elections have abundantly proved that, and the operations of the Managerial class confirm the concerted and at time seemingly inevitable lurch into totalitarianism.
The major obstacle for Haley (as it is for the hysterically-fearful Democrats, weighed down with a demented Joe Biden) is the millions of Americans who have come to recognize, even if only obliquely, that something is dreadfully, perhaps fatally, wrong…and that although an imperfect vessel for recovery, Donald Trump, far more disciplined and better organized now than in 2016 or 2020, may be their last practical hope.
Columnist and writer Mark Steyn summed up the conundrum in stark and vivid language this way (September 8, 2023):
Half the country knows the real problem is that the system no longer provides for any meaningful course correction. You can vote for an end to open borders, but you won’t get it. You can vote to bring home the jobs that got shipped to China, but China owns all the politicians, all the “big guys” with the “ten per cent”. You can vote against two-decade wars that end with the world’s hyperpower losing to goatherds with fertiliser, but back at the Pentagon they just take a twenty-minute tea-break, throw a dart in the map, and start it all up somewhere else.
The Trump presidency was undone by Joe Biden’s signing pen about ten minutes after inauguration. But that wasn’t enough for the Uniparty. Like Oliver Cromwell, he has to be dug up and beheaded, over and over and over, and all his allies too….
Why pretend that’s “normal” and meekly fall in line and move on to Neoconized Nikki Haley?…. [Y]ou might as well take a stand with Trump against the “normalization” of a system determined to criminalize you.
You can’t have “normal” politics in a country where one side gets endlessly indicted and the other never is (notwithstanding the latest fake-o headlines about the not-so-Special Counsel promising to throw the book at Hunter on gun charges). America is dying before your eyes. Why pretend that’s normal?
Nimarata Nikki Randhawa as president and a return to “normalcy?” Never!
The land my ancestors settled on these shores over three centuries ago and the heritage they left me are far more precious to me than any demonic drivel spouted by the amoral dwarf from South Carolina.
Published by My Corner by Boyd Cathey
Republished by The 21st Century
The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of 21cir.com.