HUMAN EVENTS: What did Nikki Haley stand for, exactly?

This week, an insurgent presidential candidate managed the difficult task of defeating an otherwise overwhelmingly favored rival. Granted, the defeat took place in a primary which has no chance at all of impacting the election this fall, but nevertheless, the accomplishment was impressive.

But enough about Jason Palmer’s defeat of Joe Biden in American Samoa. Let’s talk about the really interesting thing that happened this week – namely, the death of neoconservatism, and the final defeat of the last vacuous, corrupt husk to stand for it: Nikki Haley.

Now, before we proceed, let’s be clear: had Nikki Haley endorsed President Trump in her concession speech and gracefully bowed out, as she promised to do in one of the primary debates, we would have allowed her to walk off the stage without comment. There is much to remark upon this week, and reunifying the party in advance of the battle against Joe Biden is of paramount importance. It would have been gratuitous and counterproductive to tap dance on the grave of a candidate who was graceful in defeat.

That, however, is not what we are dealing with. In her concession speech, Haley pointedly did not endorse President Trump, but only passive aggressively wished him luck convincing the rest of the party to vote for him. To which we say, no, ambassador, he does not need to convince the rest of the party to vote for him. The rest of the party already did. There is a reason that you only performed well in states with open primaries, ambassador: because the people supporting you, by and large, weren’t Republicans at all. They were Democrats. This is also, not coincidentally, why you won in Vermont and Washington, DC, as well as why the turnout in those states’ Republican primaries was so surprisingly high. Meaning no disrespect to any registered Republicans who live in Vermont and Washington, DC (we’re sure there are at least two of them), but we are sure they’d agree with us that the day Nikki Haley, or any Republican, wins a general election in either Vermont or DC is the day Hell opens an ice rink. In states where Republicans do win races, on the other hand, including even Massachusetts, Trump won by over 20 points. In some cases, he dominated by over 60 points. In other words, he does not need to convince any Republicans (except, perhaps, for Haley and the pedophiles at the Lincoln Project) to vote for him. They have.

Which brings us to the subject of Ambassador Nimarata “Nikki” Haley herself, and the ideology for which she took such a desperate and pathetic last stand.

Look, here at Human Events, we’ve made no secret of our disdain for neoconservatism. It is responsible for destroying the brand of the Republican party, laundering obvious liberals like Bill Kristol into the same party under cover of support for needless foreign wars, and selling out Americans’ privacy and liberty to the Deep State for the sake of “keeping us safe” from foreign threats which were created entirely by the neoconservatives’ idiotic, naïve delusions about the universal appeal of so-called “liberal democracy.” Real imperialists do not let their subjects elect anti-American religious fanatics (as the neoconservatives did in Egypt), and real liberals at least have the courtesy not to pretend that their deluded faux-humanitarianism belongs on the Right. In fact, ironically the original people to call themselves “neoconservatives,” who considered themselves “liberals who’d been mugged by reality,” would never have fallen for what the label describes today, now that it has been appropriated by the glorified nepo babies who used to run the Republican party.

However, we also know that neoconservatism is all but dead in the Republican party, at least publicly. In other words, if its exponents wanted any prayer of keeping the old grift going, they needed a candidate of surpassing persuasiveness, with a cast-iron approach to winning back the trust of the (rightly) suspicious GOP primary electorate.

Instead, they chose a woman who can best be described as…well, we’ll let our own Jack Posobiec take this one:



The comparison to George W. Bush is not an idle one. Had it not been for her status as a “woman of color,” we find it very difficult to believe that even Trump-deranged liberals would have been capable of liking this woman. Everything about her should have grated on the Left’s coastal elite base like fingernails on a blackboard: the Daisy Duke accent, the transparent strategy of using her looks to cover her lack of brains, the complete and almost casual ignorance, the dresses which looked like they’d been plucked off the bargain rack at Macy’s? It’s hard for the Left (or anyone) to like Dick Cheney in three-inch heels, but when she also happens to be an unqualified token hire, we imagine our liberal friends might find it easier to stomach.

Yes, we know that’s personal, and we should focus on the substance, but to be fair, what substance? What did Nikki Haley stand for, exactly? Begging Disney to make woke propaganda in her home state? Taking money from Leftist billionaires trying to sabotage Trump? Wild-eyed conspiracy theories painting Vladimir Putin as somehow responsible for the October 7th terrorist attacks? Caving to Leftists on the Confederate flag one minute, only to turn around and deny that the Civil War was about slavery?

We are not asking to be cute; we genuinely can’t think of a single thing she had the guts to stand for, perhaps because she didn’t actually know enough to stand for anything. Perhaps you recall the infamous moment in last December’s primary debate where Vivek Ramaswamy asked Haley to name three provinces in Eastern Ukraine that she wanted to invade, and Haley’s face went blank for agonizing minutes? Yeah, there’s a reason why President Trump called her “bird brain.” One could be justified in wondering, given this absence of knowledge in someone who had been Ambassador to the United Nations, why Haley would bother to opine on foreign policy at all. Which also has an answer, and funnily enough, from the same debate: again, to quote Ramaswamy, “Nikki = corrupt.” Just look at her Boeing board seat if you doubt that.

Needless to say, a person like this was never a credible threat to President Trump’s chances at winning the nomination. She wasn’t even a threat to Ron DeSantis in Iowa. But, as has been obvious for weeks now, for Haley, that was not the point. Again, remember, “Nikki = corrupt,” and for a corrupt up-jumped bird brain like her, we imagine the mythology of being the One Sane Republican Who Dares To Stand Up For Democracy ™ must’ve been intoxicating. The SNL appearance, the flattering profiles, the opportunity to jetset around with billionaires, the possibility of invitations to speak at the Aspen Institute or maybe even the WEF, it must’ve all been just too damn much to resist for a poor immigrants’ kid from Bamberg, South Carolina. And so, Nikki Haley let herself be used, just as she’d let herself be used by defense contractors her entire career: not to stand for anything herself, but simply as an empty vessel for the desires of those with money and power.

Looked at that way, her entire campaign makes sense. Why should she bother to know the names of the provinces in Eastern Ukraine she wants to invade? Boeing will make that decision. Why shouldn’t she prostitute her state for Disney? She checks enough of their DEI boxes that they might feather her bird brain’s nest. Why shouldn’t she be for removing the Confederate flag one second, and make excuses for the Civil War the next? Whatever keeps people voting for her, and therefore keeps the gravy train running, is fine. And why shouldn’t she sabotage her own party’s chances at the White House by dragging the overwhelmingly leading candidate through months of a pointless primary election? If the people holding her leash might toss her a bone for it, she’ll snap at Trump’s heels all they like.

Except, of course, that now, the whole charade is over. After Tuesday’s results, even her donors have realized this “girlboss” has no actual army, whether to invade Ukraine or anywhere else. She is more of an embarrassment in than out, and so despite the defiant initial press release from her Chardonnay-drinking staff last night, Haley has fled the scene, for what board seats and WEF-sponsored sinecures we do not care to imagine. Which brings us to the real point of this editorial: her voters.

Because believe it or not, if you are a sincere Nikki Haley voter, then rest assured, we have not written this catalogue of Nikki Haley’s sins to make you feel bad. Quite the opposite. We wrote it so that you can understand that you were being used by a cruel and stupid puppet, for the sake of an agenda that, in all likelihood, you had no say in, and which you may not even have signed up for. If you voted for Nikki Haley because you sincerely thought she had a better chance of defeating Joe Biden, then you have already come to the most relevant conclusion, which is precisely that Joe Biden must be defeated. If you voted for Nikki Haley because you were losing faith in Biden but could not yet stomach a vote for President Trump, then you have already begun the process of letting the scales fall from your eyes. We in the Trump movement plan to spend the next eight months persuading you to let that process continue, and to ultimately cast your vote for our candidate, precisely because he will stand for something, and for you.

But as for Nikki Haley herself? There is only one group who got what they wanted out of her: the malcontented Leftists and bitter neoconservative has-beens and never-weres who voted for her in full knowledge that she would not win, and that they would be voting for Joe Biden this November, but who nevertheless enjoyed the fantasy of pretending that the loser Republican party of the past could return. It will not. This is Donald J. Trump’s party now.

Bye bye, bird brain.
 

Image: Title: Nikki Haley
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