Nikki Haley: The Future of Conservatism
Now is the time for the Right to find common ground and come together again. Haley would represent a conservative movement dedicated to the inherently American idea of ordered liberty, offering hope and optimism and confidence to the people. The alternative is to retreat into a vocal and resentful minority that dislikes the nation it is claiming to save.
Governor Nikki Haley at 4th Annual Founders Day Celebration (SCDC). (Image: Wikimedia Commons)
Editor’s note: TVC does not endorse any party or candidate. We welcome submissions for those who wish to argue the case for center-left candidates in the Democratic Party.
Conservatism has been in turmoil for decades, with successive shocks exposing and widening fractures within the movement that brought Ronald Reagan to power and helped win the Cold War. As we approach the middle of the century, conservatives are now seeking a renewed sense of purpose. Americans are crying out for new leadership. A Trump-Biden rematch would represent a profound failure to move on in national politics. Looking to a new generation is the nation’s best hope for renewal, and the candidate who best embodies that hope is Nikki Haley.
Haley’s character, philosophy, and record reflect the essential virtues of conservatism. She expresses strength without descending into divisiveness, defends a consistent set of principles while being practical, and has brought about major conservative achievements as South Carolina Governor and UN Ambassador. Such substance is clearly lacking in candidates like Ramaswamy. Haley has also been an active campaigner in Iowa and New Hampshire, meeting with thousands of people and making a real impact. Unlike DeSantis, the more primary voters see of her, the more they like her. Too much political discourse focuses on the people who are too online rather than the concerns of the normal Americans who decide elections.
It is the quest for normalcy that has helped define Haley and her campaign. Rather than wanting to tear down the whole system, Haley has called for an America that is “strong and proud, not weak and woke.” Narratives of American decline have become endemic on both the Left and Right. It is true that there are structural long-term problems that face the nation, but decline is a choice. America needs a confident leader who is prepared to take the tough decisions to reinvigorate the nation. The new Cold War with the anti-Western coalition of China, Russia, and Iran presents an opportunity for the conservative movement to rally together again in defense of American ideals and institutions.
Does Freedom Matter?
There is a major debate within the conservative movement between the Freedom Conservatives and National Conservatives, or the Old Right and the New Right. Both sides have put forward their statements of principles. There is considerable overlap as well as major points of difference that raise the question of whether the conservative movement can move forward and avoid disintegration. Populism has always been present on the Right. It was William F. Buckley, after all, who jested “I would rather be governed by the first 2,000 people in the Boston telephone directory than by the 2,000 people on the faculty of Harvard University.” But populism cannot grow at the expense of the Right’s other political traditions.
Flowing from deep disillusionment with elite institutions, some thinkers on the New Right conclude that the American system of government is beyond repair and needs replacing. They look toward a politics that places much greater emphasis on national loyalty or religious identity. Others have put their faith in a strong man to help achieve their cultural objectives and supported Trump or DeSantis as their chosen savior. But a turning away from the principles of America’s Founding marks a worrying development for the conservative movement today. The Constitution, as Abraham Lincoln put it so eloquently, “must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties.”
Haley is defending an authentically American conservative tradition. Free enterprise, civil society, and limited government are keystones in her philosophy. Following in the tradition of Reagan and Thatcher, Haley believes in freedom as the key organizing principle of the American nation. The cry of liberty has continually defined the course of American history: independence from the British Empire; the abolition of slavery and expansion of civil rights; victory over Nazism, Fascism, and Communism. These historic achievements were made to defend and expand the freedom of Americans. A conservatism that renounces freedom entirely must also abandon the American political inheritance and the fundamental truths espoused by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence.
Where the commitment to freedom is most contested on the Right is the economy. Economic freedom has undeniably delivered huge gains in generating wealth and innovation and lifting people out of poverty. But economic stagnation has made a comeback across the Western world over the past fifteen years. The result is inflation, low growth, and higher taxes under a bloated state that interferes too much while simultaneously failing to deliver its core responsibilities effectively.
This does not mean Haley and advocates for economic freedom are uncritical of capitalism or in thrall to big business. Corporate America has proven that it is all too willing to spread progressive dogma and intervene in politics against conservative governors and legislators. Meanwhile, they continue to lobby Washington for special favors. They are even willing to follow the party line from Beijing and ignore human rights abuses. Businesses should get back to focusing on creating wealth and jobs. Conservative thinkers across the board, from the Niskanen Center to American Compass, have also been more vocal in identifying problems around economic insecurity, the family wage, and deindustrialization. Despite these challenges, capitalism is not a fundamentally broken system. It just needs to be reformed so it can work better for the American people and encourage genuine economic freedom under the rule of law.
Conserving freedom does not mean defending individual autonomy to the exclusion of every other value. Conservatism should also seek to create and maintain the conditions in which individual virtue can generate and sustain families, neighborhoods, and the nation. This requires a federal government that delegates more power and responsibility to individuals, local communities, and state governments, as Haley believes. Virtue must flourish organically from below and be protected from progressive ideology, such as efforts to deny Christianity’s proper place in the public square. Religious liberty is essential and must be defended. To create these conditions, the priority must be the expansion of people’s freedom of association. As far back as 1835, Alexis de Tocqueville remarked on the powerful influence of associational freedom. In Democracy in America, he wrote, “When you allow [citizens] to associate freely in everything, they end up seeing in association the universal and, so to speak, unique means that men can use to attain the various ends that they propose.”
“Fighting progressive attempts to enforce their ideology on the people with a conservative vision of state coercion is doomed to failure. … More likely, fracture of the Union would be the result with all the terrible consequences that would bring on America and the world.”
In a free society, pluralism is vital. That is why the Constitution was not founded on majoritarian rule. It is about allowing negotiation between the different elements that make the nation. It is the Madisonian system, combining freedom with order, that conservatives must uphold. Fighting progressive attempts to enforce their ideology on the people with a conservative vision of state coercion is doomed to failure. No one can ever impose cultural or political uniformity on a nation as large as America. More likely, fracture of the Union would be the result with all the terrible consequences that would bring on America and the world. A revived spirit of national self-confidence cannot come from the demonization of vast swathes of the country or from pretending that a single identity can be imposed from above. Instead, we need to make sure the Constitution works the way it was intended by James Madison and the other Framers.
Conservatives would be wise to follow the insights of conservative thinker Yuval Levin on how to make pluralism function again. Madisonian wisdom might well be the key to resolving the current polarization and dysfunction we witness in Congress every year. Haley’s conservatism represents this healthier way forward, shunning the politics of grievance and identity politics. The Woke Left and Populist Right are fueling division and intolerance when the nation needs empowerment—this matters. There are too many Americans, from millennial graduates in coastal cities to left-behind workers in the heartland, who are told that they are victims, they have no agency, and someone else is to blame. This is not to say that external forces do not matter or that people’s circumstances do not make a difference. Of course they do. But rather than entrenching people’s sense of victimhood, more should be done to help people take back control over their lives.
Candidate for Reform
Over the past several months, Haley has outlined some of her ideas to help reverse America’s economic malaise. This has involved bringing back fiscal conservatism. While conservatives have rightly debated the value of industrial policy, family policy, and state capacity, they have neglected the threat of ever rising deficits and the national debt. Fiscal conservatism has not been on show from Republicans since the Tea Party wave that helped bring Haley to office in South Carolina. Reform conservatives like Reihan Salam and Ramesh Ponnuru spent a considerable amount of time after 2012 trying to find fair and sustainable solutions to entitlement spending, the main driver of the nation’s debt mountain.
There is now a bipartisan consensus in Congress, despite the ongoing drama in the House, that the nation cannot just keep borrowing. Loose spending is allowing inflation to wipe away people’s savings, allowing interest rates to rise and mortgages to become more expensive, and risking a recession. The pandemic allowed a massive expansion of state power in the economy and society that has not been reversed or properly scrutinized. That is why Haley has promised to veto any spending bill that does not put America back to pre-pandemic spending levels and has committed to “clawing back” $500 billion in unspent federal pandemic money and the $100 billion lost to fraud. As a former governor, Haley knows how to hold both parties accountable for wasteful spending.
Zero-based budgeting, ending bailouts for special interests, limiting federal spending as a percentage of the economy, and withholding pay for Congress until they pass a budget are among Haley’s other commitments. But this includes entitlement reform as well. Over $33 trillion in debt is neither healthy for the nation nor fair to future generations. Congress is being reckless and irresponsible by putting off the problem. The cost of servicing the debt and the harm to growth rates will continue to increase, reducing revenue, dwarfing defense spending, and fueling even more debt. Fitch’s credit rating has already downgraded America from AAA to AA+. Haley is the only candidate addressing this challenge. Social Security and Medicare need change if they are going to serve future generations.
The American economy also needs to be much more competitive and dynamic for working families and small businesses. That is why Haley has promised middle-class tax relief to get rid of the federal gas and diesel tax, cut income tax rates, and simplify the brackets. Small business tax relief would be made permanent and distortions like the SALT deduction scrapped. The regulatory state also needs to be made less intrusive. This means having term limits for congresspersons and bureaucrats. The REINS Act should be passed, forcing Congress to vote on every piece of regulation that has an impact greater than $100 million. Federal programs can also be transformed into block grants to the states, giving them greater freedom to experiment and discover what works best for them.
Again, this is what Haley achieved in South Carolina as Governor. The state’s textile industry was undermined by automation and offshoring for years. But by reforming tax and regulation, supporting right-to-work laws, funding more workforce training, and diversifying the economy, South Carolina boomed. The media called the state the “Beast of the Southeast.” Haley’s family, like so many others down the centuries, left a socialist country to find happiness in a capitalist country and build a new life. The promise of economic freedom continues to appeal to people from across the world even while the nation grapples with its present difficulties.
Haley advocates for economic freedom and national security through a focus on energy dominance, involving measures like increasing domestic oil and gas production, reducing government interference, accelerating permitting for pipelines, undoing subsidies and regulations benefitting green energy from China, and sanctioning rival energy powers like Russia and Iran. Affordable and secure energy is the key to reviving manufacturing and easing the pressure on people’s living standards. Addressing climate change requires China and India to start pulling their weight in reducing emissions. It would be futile for America to unilaterally decarbonize and weaken its energy security.
But the federal government still has an active role to play in decoupling the American economy from China. To counter Beijing’s influence, Haley’s ambitious China policy includes commitments to block the sale of American companies to China that specialize in advanced technology, prevent investment in companies that support the Chinese state, and stop government purchases of Chinese technology. This includes the threat to end normal trade relations if China does not stop killing Americans with fentanyl. Taking on China requires a historic effort from American leaders in government, business, and society. It is a mission that Haley is ready to lead as part of restoring America’s national strength.
Forge Conservative Unity
The popular appeal of conservatism has been narrowing throughout the post-Cold War period. It has been almost twenty years since a Republican last won the popular vote in a presidential election. Half of the 2024 electorate will include Millennials and Zoomers, many of whom feel alienated from conservatism. Haley offers the Republican Party and the conservative movement an opportunity to take a different road. Trump failed to win the popular vote twice despite his unique cult of personality; DeSantis wants to follow a narrow path to victory based on mobilizing core voters around anti-woke politics. The only candidate who is trying to reach across the political divide while defending conservative principles is Haley.
The Republican nominee for 2024 will do much more than decide who could make Biden a one-term president. He or she will determine the destiny of the conservative movement and its vision for America. Intellectual debate is essential and healthy, and the conservative movement has always thought deeply about its ideas and objectives, but now is the time for the Right to find common ground and come together again. Haley would represent a conservative movement dedicated to the inherently American idea of ordered liberty, offering hope and optimism and confidence to the people. The alternative is to retreat into a vocal and resentful minority that dislikes the nation it is claiming to save.
