Maybe the pundits claiming former UN ambassador and South Carolina governor Nikki Haley is really running for vice president were right.
By mimicking former president Donald Trump's mockery of Ron DeSantis as "sanctimonious" and supporting the Disney Corporation in its feud with the Florida governor over its woke policies, Haley is kissing up to the current frontrunner. Helping Trump attack DeSantis may seem like smart politics. But since her campaign remains stuck in the low single digits, despite years of working towards her presidential goal, it's just as likely that Haley is only validating those who have said all along that her only realistic shot is to become Trump's running mate.
That might make her the Republican equivalent to Vice President Kamala Harris. President Joe Biden chose Harris as his running mate to demonstrate his fealty to the diversity catechism after her disastrously incompetent run for president proved she couldn't overshadow him once they were elected. And since Haley seemed to tout her own diversity credentials as much as anything else in her campaign announcement—prompting some conservatives to mock her as the GOP's "diversity candidate"—she may serve the same purpose for Trump.
But there's more at play here than Haley's efforts to keep her campaign visible and mend fences with her former boss. DeSantis' argument with Disney—which has now sued to get back its power to effectively govern itself via a sweetheart deal from the state that the governor recently canceled—is more significant than any political points Haley can score off it.
DeSantis challenged Disney over its opposition to Republican efforts to push back against the sexualization of children in schools and the way the company has used its unique platform to advance that toxic ideological agenda. In doing so, DeSantis demonstrated that he understood something that Trump and Haley, as well as much of the party's D.C. establishment, don't seem to comprehend. Woke corporations are just as much of a threat to the moral and civilizational values that uphold our society as the Democrats' policies are.
Those Republicans who are siding with Disney, as Haley did by inviting the company to move its Orlando theme parks to South Carolina, simply don't know what time it is. They fail to grasp that the neo-Marxist woke campaign to tear down our history and values is an even greater threat to the country's future than Biden.
The Left seeks to undermine the vision of a colorblind meritocratic society. Destroying American families by attacking our children is the way they are doing it and, judging by the surge in transgenderism and "gender affirming care" (which is to say, life-altering mutilations and chemical castration) and the moral panic about race that has fueled the push for critical race theory indoctrination, it is succeeding.
Haley has already signaled that she sees herself as the most electable "moderate" by positioning herself as more amenable to abortion than more hard-core pro-life Republicans like DeSantis. And unlike Trump and DeSantis, she seems to be aligned with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and the D.C. uniparty when it comes to supporting Biden's push for endless war in Ukraine.
But siding with Mickey Mouse against DeSantis ought to be a disqualifying factor for Republican voters. Anyone who claims to want to roll back the woke tide can't also be with Disney.
Haley, 51, seemed to be drawing a clear distinction between herself and the 76-year-old Trump when she emphasized the need for "generational change." But her stands on Trump have been all over the place. She was first an adamant foe, then a faithful supporter, then a tough critic of his post-2020 election actions which she said would be "judged harshly by history." Within months, she had changed her tune, saying she wouldn't run against him in 2024. But given that she has been effectively running since leaving her UN post after less than two years on the job, her decision to join the race was inevitable.
Though he still hasn't formally announced his candidacy and is currently under attack from both the Democrats, who rightly fear him, and Trump and other Republicans, DeSantis is still far ahead of the other challengers. That is no guarantee that he won't falter or that Haley can't have a miraculous surge. And so long as the Democrats engage in banana republic tactics against Trump, the former president's nomination may be inevitable.
But as crucial as the identity of the GOP nominee will be, it pales beside the question of whether Republicans will embrace, as DeSantis has done, so-called culture war issues like the battle with Disney. Those Republicans who embrace this challenge are derided as extremists. But issues like the sexualization of children and the disastrous consequences of gender madness and critical race theory are actually far more important than concerns about budgets and spending.
The Right was traditionally inclined to reflexively back big business, but the transformation of big Wall Street firms and large corporations like Disney into bastions of wokeness has reshuffled the political deck. Trump helped change the GOP into a working-class party. But since politics is a purely transactional business for him, he can't be counted on to fight the culture war. By contrast, Haley is smart enough to understand the stakes but is either too cynical or too wedded to establishment concerns to join DeSantis on the front lines defending traditional values against Disney.
We don't know whether the gang tackle of Democrats, the media, or GOP rivals will be enough to derail DeSantis or if Haley can make herself relevant. But the more important question is whether Republicans can be counted on to stand up for Western civilization against the woke Left. So far, both Trump and Haley appear to be AWOL in that fight.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS.org and a senior contributor to The Federalist. Follow him on Twitter at: @jonathans_tobin.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
