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**NOVEMBER 30, 2023**
On the Prospect website
A Chance to Speak
Katie Anderson's story shows the difficulty of finding some measure of
accountability after being sexually assaulted. BY DAVID DAYEN
Abortion Confusion in Texas
State courts must now decide how to handle life-threatening pregnancy
issues that state attorneys, lawmakers, and medical officials refuse to
clear up. BY GABRIELLE GURLEY
The Cybertruck Is the Dumbest Thing I've Ever Seen
Elon Musk enters his Caligula era. BY RYAN COOPER
Meyerson on TAP
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**** Nikki Wins the Wall Street Primary
Unlike Trump, Haley's not crazy, merely far (far!) right.
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.
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.)
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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.
~ HAROLD MEYERSON
Follow Harold Meyerson on Twitter
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