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Has anyone seen Republican Nikki Haley supporters in the wild?
I read a paywalled article the other day in Australian media optimistically hoping for a sudden realignment of fortunes, that Trump might possibly lose the primary.
The article is realistic that Haley's chances are quite low but it favours her nonetheless. I also saw NYT charts that said Haley won the debates. I still doubt that the NYT knows what makes for a good Republican candidate. Their support may be toxic.
Of course, there are polls showing that Haley is coming close to Trump. The funny thing is that nearly all the unrehearsed commentary I've seen about Haley is extremely negative. Even the Boomers commenting below the Australian article seem to favour Trump. Online people have mocked her for the 'I wear heels. They’re not for a fashion statement. They’re for ammunition' comment, which is admittedly pretty bizarre. I never saw any support for her, only people urging Trump not to pick her as VP. Even DeSantis had some traction on twitter, even if it was just his supporters getting shouted down by the overwhelming Trump chorus.
But I'm slightly self-aware, it's no good saying 'well nobody I know voted Nixon' when I'm not even American. Is Haley the new astroturf candidate like Jeb Bush or am I living in an infobubble? Should we all just trust the polls that say she's the primary challenger? Do you see people in real life or online who favour her? If you do, are they actually Republican primary voters as opposed to Democrats? Do any of you support Nikki Haley? Does she have a chance, perhaps if Trump is sent to prison?
The best argument against the ‘NeverTrumper’ / Lincoln Project GOP anti-Trump types was the first Trump presidency, because Trump didn’t do anything ‘fascist’ (or even populist, really) but did achieve a bunch of generic GOP priorities like tax cuts, being tougher on Iran and stacking SCOTUS because of a couple of lucky breaks.
“Business Republicans”, neoconservatives, hardcore Evangelicals and some Catholics for whom abortion is the #1 priority are the only people Trump unambiguously served during his time in office. Meanwhile, much of “the base”, ie. people who wanted economic populism, mass deportation of illegals and other protectionist and nativist policies, was completely short-changed.
The only people who should feel happy voting for Trump are, in an immense irony, Bill Kristol types because they are more likely than anyone else to get their policy preferences under Trump (who will pursue, as he did in office, aggressive neocon foreign policy while any domestic social conservatism is stymied by congress and the “deep state” / bureaucracy).
In 10 years, people may finally realize that Trump’s greatest success was making neoconservatism palatable again by fronting it with a thin and never-implemented facade of rightist populism.
This is half true/false.
Trump basically didn't give them all of what they want and panders to everyone. This is unacceptable to them and frame it as extreme.
If Trump was not elected, a Clinton administration would be more neocon.
In foreign policy, Trump's behavior was definetly not as beligerent as the neocons would have liked both in the middle east and also on Russia. He also opposed the Iraq war. He still was extremely pro Israel though.
On the culture war sphere, he pushed for muslim ban, tried to get his wall and cut off immigration, had some edgy quotes. it is also what he didn't do. But also pushed the decriminalization bill, tried to pander to Hispanics, etc.
Trump derangement syndrome is not about Trump being uniquely bad or far right but about him being moderate and our elites radicalizing in a purity spiral direction. Part of this is also a tendency to be too judgemental about singular quotes and towards the right and to avoid making comparisons.
Part of being a moderate of course includes edgy far right type quotes about migrants like Trump did. A moderate should be expected to sometimes be edgy in a right wing direction too, and sometimes in a left wing as Trump did with the decriminalization bill towards blacks. Maybe he is too far to the left though in general.
It is a comparative issue. So Trump a) had executive orders against people promoting diversity ideology in the goverment, opposed removal of confederate monuments and claimed that it would be after the founding fathers next. Compare him to someone like Joe Biden, who has been aggressively anti-white and woke and authoritarian to a great degree, and Trump comes as the more inclusive president ironically. Someone who unlike Biden, and the neocons does try to pander to everyone, perhaps less to white voters directly.
We saw that in various countries without Trump like figures, the right implemented it self the cultural far left agenda.
So, Trump isn't the great based figure, but he is a lesser evil and the more moderate option who tries to push back against some of the radicalizing excesses and tries to some extend to satisfy some of the demands of his base too. I guess he might fall more in line with some of the rhetoric of some of the claims of neocons in the 90s but they have proven themselves to be more disingenuous and much more radical.
Clearly for Trump to make an actual lasting change he will have to act more aggressively if he is elected the second time, fire a lot of people and put actual right wingers in charge of the bureaucracy. But there are also limitations of how much one guy can change things, but he can do more. Focusing too much on Trump as a problem misunderstands things. People like the ex republican speaker of the house claim that the republicans should be like the Democrats and reflect American demographics. We saw how similar claims by Cameron ended up in British politics.
The real story is the radicalization of the liberals and people who erroneously affter accepting too much far left ideology claim to still be centrists. And of the people who present themselves as center right. Part of this had to do with normies being influenced by propaganda by more extremist types who promoted one sided distorted picture of the world after we had left wing and neocon march through the institutions. Is someone who started more moderate still such, if they are successfully manipulated in this manner? A world without Trump is a world where either other type of populist leaders oppose them or these kind of people try to remove all opposition and in an authoritarian manner impose a hardcore racist cultural far leftist woke agenda.
In foreign policy there is a similar problem with the influence of the MIC and certain lobbies that are pro war against Russia, China, or say Iran. There is also an issue of corruption and revolving doors with politics, think tanks, and weapon manufacturers. And also the influence of collection of donors and their lobbies. Nikki Haley exemplifies that corruption in a way that Trump doesn't, while it would be a mistake to pretend that Trump is independent of it. In general, in most ways Trump is bad he is similarly bad to most other politicians and not as bad.
So he seems as neither the problem and unlikely to be the solution, even if people put hopes on him due to sucking less than most.
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