The Nation has just published a piece by John Nichols wondering why, if Marianne Williamson is polling just as well against Biden as Nikki Haley is against Trump, the media is obsessed with Haley and ignoring Williamson. This isn’t obvious? Unfortunately, Nichols doesn’t provide the comprehensive explanation needed. So I will do that in today’s blog.
Despite being well behind Donald Trump in polling (as are all Republican hopefuls), Nikki Haley, former governor of South Carolina and US ambassador to the United Nations, signals that she will serve as a pliant functionary for the permanent political class, She is rapidly become the darling of the donor class, the billionaire hedge fund managers, etc., who own the leadership of the Senate on both sides of the aisle. Haley is the authoritarian and warmonger they love to love. Although Haley walked backed her demand that social media ban anonymous accounts after massive pushback, her emphatic advocacy of the position signaled the desired illiberal personality type, and her commitment to funding Ukraine to perpetuate Biden and NATO’s disastrous proxy war with Russia has garnered support across the military-industrial establishment. Nikki Haley would therefore be the worst possible president—if the metrics are democracy, freedom, and peace. But those aren’t the metrics, are they.
The other piece of this is the media’s pathological obsession with Donald Trump. Trump is a clear and present danger to corporate governance and the globalist agenda. The establishment drove Trump out of office and they’re determined to prevent his return. The resort to lawfare, with states attempting to take Trump off the ballot (failing in Colorado, but several more suits are ready to go) and jurisdictions hitting him with all manner of criminal charges, with one court even trying to take from him his business empire, tells us what the end goal is, to prevent Trump from running, with Haley the last Republican standing. We’ve all seen the polls. If they hold, and there’s no reason to think they won’t, Trump will be the next president. That’s why the establishment is in total meltdown. With DeSantis clearly not ready for primetime, Haley is their gal.
As for Williamson, she’s a crackpot. But that’s not why the elite don’t want her. Nicholes tells his readers that “Williamson proposes deep cuts in Pentagon spending, and a new approach to international relations that focuses on diplomacy and peacemaking.” That’s certainly part of the explanation. “Polls indicate that Williamson’s strongest support comes from young Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, who have been particularly critical of Biden’s approach to the conflict between Israel and Palestine, and who have been supportive of more ambitious responses to economic inequality, racial injustice and the climate crisis.” For some of the same reasons, the establishment doesn’t want Robert Kennedy, either; but they couldn’t ignore him, so they discredited him instead. Now that he is no longer a candidate for the Democratic Party, the establishment media is giving Kennedy the Williamson treatment. But if Williamson continues to rise in the polls, the establishment will give her the Kennedy treatment.
The establishment needs a functionary like Gavin Newsom or Hillary Clinton to be their president. These figures can promise the elite to not be our president. Newson and Clinton can be counted on to continue the globalist agenda, promoting off-shoring of production and defending mass immigration—i.e., the super-exploitation of foreign labor at home and abroad—starting more wars and deepen those in which the US is already involved, expand the national security apparatus, and continue the woke agenda in our schools. Put simply, what is needed from both parties are establishment operatives who will push the transnational project of managed decline of America and the West.
What terrifies elites is the populist-nationalist movement that promises to restore the American Republic—that right, the bipartisan movement to put America first and make her great again by going back to first principles. We see how terrified elites are in their reaction not only to Trump but also to Kennedy. Trump and Kennedy are populist-nationalists committed to democratic-republicanism and classical liberal ideals. We see this also in the attack on Supreme Court justices. Progressives are desperate to portray conservative justices (especially Clarence Thomas) as corrupt to delegitimize their liberal approach and originalist legal philosophy. Constitutionalism, nationalism, and populism are diametrically opposed to illiberal and collectivist praxis of progressivism and globalism, and so those who represent these things must be destroyed.
freedom and reason 