"Aren't you too tight with the banks and the billionaires?" moderator Megyn Kelly asked Nikki Haley at last night's Republican debate.
This was a debate staged by the Republican National Committee. Kelly became famous as a Fox News anchor. The question was a tone-setter, and the accusations came not only from the moderators but from the other candidates.
The governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, claimed, "Nikki will cave to these big donors when it counts." He faulted Haley for what he called "Wall Street liberal donors."
Vivek Ramaswamy made extreme statements, referring to "toxic neocons," the "pointless war in Ukraine" and claiming, "the only person more fascist than the Biden regime now is Nikki Haley." He said, "you can put lipstick on a neocon, it's still a fascist Dick Cheney." He repeatedly used the conspiratorial term "puppetmasters." He claimed, "the 2020 election was stolen by Big Tech" and "January 6 now does look like it was an inside job." Governor Christie called Ramaswamy ""the most obnoxious blowhard in America."
Haley spoke about the need to "grow our economy so people have more money in our pocket." Haley also spoke about antisemitism on college campuses, offering a four-point plan that included, "get foreign money out of our universities," "change the definition of antisemitism to include antizionism," "ban TikTok," and threaten to take away the tax-exempt status of universities.
The debate highlighted for me the way, as I have written about before, we now have elements of both political parties bashing Wall Street. They might want to be careful, because a U.S. economy that looks like Bernie Sanders' Vermont instead of New York City or like the emerging financial capital of Miami is not one that will provide the growth necessary to support American prosperity or freedom.
