Nikki Haley, former Trump administration ambassador to the United Nations and a likely 2024 Republican presidential candidate, criticized her own party on Wednesday for allowing America to be taken over by far-left socialists.
"Last year, I said 2020 was the year socialism went mainstream. 2021 is the year socialism took control," Haley said in a speech at the Heritage Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think-tank. "The left is tearing down the American people. Yet too many on the right are rolling over, when we should be fighting back."
Out-of-control spending by Democrats who seek to create a "cradle-to-grave" welfare state endangers American capitalism and will significantly increase taxes on the middle class, Haley said in a speech that could lay the groundwork for a Republican run at the White House in 2024.
"Democrats are on the verge of creating the first cradle-to-grave welfare state in American history. They’re creating a country where dependency is the default. It's a guaranteed recipe for national decline," Haley said. "Working middle class families will pay once in higher taxes, twice through lower wages, and three times when the bill comes due for the trillions of dollars that Democrats are adding to the national debt."
Haley blamed Republicans in Congress and the conservative movement at large for allowing socialism to rise as an alternative to American capitalism and economic freedom.
"It pains me to see some of our friends turning their backs on our principles," Haley said. "You know what I’m talking about. The conservatives who claim capitalism no longer works. They conclude that economic freedom fails families and hurts workers. So they’re trying to create a hybrid capitalism—a hyphenated capitalism. It’s all a sham."
Socialism, she added, "isn’t progressive. It’s backwards. And it has no place in America—not now, not ever."