Nikki Haley's Insignificant Campaign Platform: Budgeting

Middle Class Americans Won't Go for This: Nikki Haley's Big Gamble On Budgeting

Is Nikki Haley actually going to make cutting the deficit a cornerstone of her campaign? What year is this I forget? It’s a useless platform for a Republican party that’s moved on.

Paul Ryan tried this trick in 2012 and failed miserably. It’s the donor class’s favorite issue for their shills. After Romney/Ryan’s failed presidential effort, a lot of America started to figure out how the GOP game is played. Run on issues that are easily dispensed with once you get elected. Don’t embarrass the donors with icky lower class concerns like the border, abortion and crime. You can always give half measures to the pro-life rubes. Tell them you believe life is precious and all that, but don’t support any real measures that restrict abortion. Don’t attend the big national marches or be seen taking pictures with leading abolitionists.

All of this amounts to advice from their highly paid consultants.

The federal budget will never be meaningfully cut without a major crisis. Too many sectors, institutions, non-profits, contractors and ne'er-do-wells rely on it. It’s why it’s the perfect issue to run on for unserious politicians. It’s similar to the Free Tibet movement we saw in colleges in the late nineties and early 2000s. Actors like Richard Gere and Brad Pitt used to protest the CCP’s brutal crackdown of the Dali Lama. China hadn’t penetrated Hollywood then. Actors and directors (Martin Scorsese) could bloviate about the atrocities committed by Beijing with little consequence. Suddenly China became powerful and put an end to the weasel words, we don’t hear much about it anymore.

The point is to sound serious without having to prove it.

Free Tibet was a niche movement that could never make a difference. Reigning in the budget is hardly a niche idea, but like Free Tibet, designed to be a talking point and nothing else. We only get real change through a collapse in the dollar. Niki Haley’s just the latest example of a presidential candidate who doesn’t understand the mood of the country. She was a good governor, but a little too institutional. She is proudly American, supported immigration laws and represented us well at the U.N under Trump. I’ve always thought she explained how her immigrant parents became Americans, a beautiful story.

But we don’t live in the age of budget battles. We don’t live in that country anymore. Our thuggish government is forcing Christianity out of the public square and making everyone accept sexual deviance as a sacrament. Biden’s press secretary Katherine-Jean-Pierre talked of the difficulties ‘trans’ kids face. This, just a few weeks after the shooting of the kids and staff at a Christian school, by a confused trans woman. The administration is letting us know they think of Christians as the enemy.

It's not that we don’t have a budget issue, but we’ve had a spending problem for so many years that’ it’s almost part of doing business. Also, talking about accounting in an age of anarchy is just tone deaf. It’s like letting flash mobs steal product from the store but making sure the cash drawer balances at the end of the day. The cash drawer needs to balance, but the problem staring us in the face is lawlessness, and why thieves are suddenly emboldened to carry armfuls out the door. They don’t fear reciprocity. They don’t fear it from the police, the shopkeeper or the other patrons. They don’t fear the District Attorneys in the cities will charge them with a crime.

It's not even really Niki Haley’s fault. We’ve heard that politics is downstream of culture. That means when the representatives start considering legislation for anything, the culture (attitudes, practices) are already established among the citizens. There is little room to push back against an entrenched mood. Conservatives miss this. They ignore the local and state issues close to home until they’re overwhelmed by them. When it’s finally before a national audience they want ‘tough’ talking representatives to hold back the tide by voting NO. But it’s a much tougher ask at the federal level. Marijuana legalization will likely track the same way. Recreational marijuana is legal in 21 states today, that doesn’t include the medical variety which is legal in 18. How likely is going to be to stop it at the national level?

I do wonder how far we are from elections at the national level even mattering anymore. This is cynical I know. But something like 65-70% of Republican voters believe the election was stolen in 2020. I’ve said so too in this blog. But if that many citizens (voters) believe that their choices won’t matter in a tight race, how long can they keep going through the motions? Niki Haley isn’t up to the challenge because her campaign issues are a throw back to a time when we still trusted (sort of) our officials.

The existential crisis we face is rooted in immorality. The issues the country faces, sexual confusion, crime, drug abuse and abortion all point to a lack of the fear of the Lord. That won’t be a platform anytime soon. But it’s time to work on our local communities again. If elections still matter, push out the local communists at every level. 

Nikki Haley will remain a force in South Carolina, but it won’t extent to the national level.