Hounding Haley Is All Fun and Games Until the Bigger RINO Crashes Conservatism

Nikki's nonsense deserves to be mocked. But those most enthusiastic about it are ignoring vastly bigger problems on the Right.

This week, Nikki Haley made a fool of herself by declaring that as president she would work to require that “every person on social media should be verified by their name.” After getting near-unanimous condemnation and mockery for a policy that at a minimum would empower an industry hostile to conservatives to hound them even more, she “clarified” that “I don’t mind anonymous American people having free speech, what I don’t like is anonymous Russians and Chinese and Iranians having free speech.” It’s not clear what precise form such a policy would take, but considering Haley isn’t a serious candidate, the question is largely academic.

As expected, lots of Conservative Infotainment Complex personalities made a point of slamming Haley, both for her latest bright idea and for general awfulness.

Matt Walsh:

I truly cannot think of a brand more wildly out of step with the modern conservative movement than “George Bush in a pantsuit” but that’s what Nikki Haley and her team are going with

Mark Levin:

Nikki Haley, a RINO in RINO's clothing. On the wrong side of the culture war [...]

You would think with all the evidence, court decisions, congressional hearings demonstrating the federal government's abuses of free speech, censorship, monitoring, and all the rest, a Republican running for president would have some concern about further empowering the federal government with lists of the names of individuals posting on social media. That should be a national security concern; even more, a constitutional and liberty concern. And every user should be verified? Haley is showing more and more of her true beliefs.

Charlie Kirk:

Nimarata Haley wants the government to require you to use your real name online for “national security” [...]

Nikki Nimarata Haley is officially getting destroyed in the meme war. Finally, a war she wants to see come to an end.

Sean Davis:

Counterproposal: every dead-end neocon like Haley should have to kit up and deploy to every warzone they want to ship other people’s kids to [...]

Nikki Haley is Hillary Clinton minus all the murders.

Davis’s crude isolationist-pandering aside, this is all fair enough as far as it goes—Haley is terrible, and she deserves it. But you know what else Haley is? Irrelevant. She has no major constituency in the modern Republican base. She has no chance of being the party’s presidential nominee unless Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis both drop dead before the convention. She will never be a national officeholder again unless someone else appoints her to something.

So why devote more than a fleeting swipe at her idiocy? Why the dogpile from pundits who won’t lay a finger on the as-bad-or-worse-in-every-conceivable-way candidate who is on track to win the nomination and, one way or another, impact the country’s future for years to come?

Simple: because she’s irrelevant.

Almost since the beginning, talk radio conservative culture has relished safe targets, Republicans so out of touch with the base that holding them up for ridicule risks offending virtually nobody in the audience—John McCain, Arlen Specter, Jeff Flake, John Kasich, Susan Collins, Lindsey Graham, Nikki Haley. Politicians so pathetically unconservative that their names become shorthand for what’s wrong with the GOP. Tearing into them doesn’t tell listeners anything they don’t already know, but is always sure to get their blood flowing and foster bonding through shared enmity.

In times of relative unity and sanity, that sort of thing is harmless enough. A little entertainment in messaging is no bad thing, and it’s good to reinforce who the bad guys are within our own tent. But it’s more than a little grating to watch people with real influence fall back on the comfort and relative safety of the easy punching bags when the movement has real internal problems to deal with, and it’s downright grotesque coming from people who either look the other way for or actively promote a much larger “RINO” whose much large influence does real-world, long-term damage.

But that’s what we get when an industry that bills itself as political activists and culture warriors is little more than an entertainment venture, primarily concerned with patriotically-themed LARPing while going along with whatever happens to be the most personally rewarding.

It’s hard to see what could force a change at this point beyond their business model contributing to a political catastrophe in November 2024, but in the meantime we can do our parts by using our radio dials, cancellation buttons, and email accounts to let these people know we don’t find leading the Right to collapse the least bit entertaining.