With That Declaration, Here's Why the Nikki Haley's Presidential Hopes Just Went Up in Flames

I liked Nikki Haley. I thought she was a good governor. She was a rising star in the Republican Party. She served as our ambassador to the United Nations. She was stacking a resume for a White House run. It was on—the sky was the limit, right? The Left hates her, as they do all GOP women, but Haley got a special ire from progressives. If Haley, a woman and a person of color, were to become president—the culture war is over. We’ve won. It’s a very appealing narrative. Oh, and the liberal meltdown from this, getting a woman elected before they could, would be delicious. The ‘she’s not a real woman’ thought pieces would be flowing in on a high tide of liberal tears. Alas, it appears this was a dream. Things change. Haley resigned from the Trump administration and went into the bunker, only to emerge now to trash Donald Trump. It’s all in the Politico article, where she said that we were petty much all fools to follow Donald Trump:

If Nikki! will turn on Trump, why would you ever think she would be loyal to you?

— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) February 12, 2021

Governor Noem > Nikki Haley

— George Papadopoulos (@GeorgePapa19) February 12, 2021

I told you Nikki Haley was a snake.

— Sebastian Gorka DrG (@SebGorka) February 13, 2021

“I think he’s going to find himself further and further isolated,” Haley said. “I think his business is suffering at this point. I think he’s lost any sort of political viability he was going to have. I think he’s lost his social media, which meant the world to him. I mean, I think he’s lost the things that really could have kept him moving.”

I reminded her that Trump has been left for dead before; that the base always rallied behind him. I also reminded her that the argument for impeachment—and conviction—is that he would be barred from holding federal office again.

“He’s not going to run for federal office again,” Haley said.

But what if he does? Or at least, what if he spends the next four years threatening to? Can the Republican Party heal with Trump in the picture?

“I don’t think he’s going to be in the picture,” she said, matter-of-factly. “I don’t think he can. He’s fallen so far.”

[…]

“We need to acknowledge he let us down,” she said. “He went down a path he shouldn’t have, and we shouldn’t have followed him, and we shouldn’t have listened to him. And we can’t let that ever happen again.”

Yet, she also walks this waffled path of denouncing Trump, but also not wanting to go back to the days before he took over the party. 

“I don’t think it should. I think what we need to do is take the good that he built, leave the bad that he did, and get back to a place where we can be a good, valuable, effective party. But at the same time, it’s bigger than the party. I hope our country can come together and figure out how we pull this back.” Haley added.

Yeah, well, there was a group of people who decided to form a group to ensure Trump’s 2020 defeat who channeled that line too. They were called the Lincoln Project and they’ve just imploded after a sex scandal involving their co-founder, among other things. Oh, and there’s that part about the PAC money. Shocker—its executive leadership got, uh, a ton of cash and no one knows where it went. Oh yes, the purported principled conservatives who put ‘country first’ and want to conserve conservatism are a crafty group of despicable and vile human beings aren’t they. This…is who will lead us out of the reported horror show Trump has bought before us in the GOP? Please. Are you on crack?

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) February 11, 2021

It simply never ceases to amaze me how these folks think that a) Trumpism will die off, b) they can excise Trumpism from the GOP or c) we can carry on a modified form of Trumpism, but without the man at the center of it. No. That’s not what GOP voters or the base want—they want Trump to be a major force in shaping the future of the Republican Party. 

Is this a swan song for the establishment? If Haley does run, she won’t go far, especially after these remarks. Die-hard Trump supporters make up roughly 40 percent of the base now. She just spit in the faces of those people. As of now, Trump is way ahead of any potential 2024 candidate. If Trump runs, the primaries are over. He’d win—handily. At the same time, if he doesn’t—he has to handpick someone to carry the torch of populism that’s taken hold in the GOP. The question is would the Trump coalition rally behind that person, can this power base be transferable. So far, no coalition has really moved on and backed a like-minded candidate with gusto. It’s not the same person, I get that. And thus far, when Trump isn’t on the ballot, the energy just isn’t there. 

Over 74 million people voted for Trump in 2020. The base has a bluer collar. Millions more have been brought into the GOP and into the voting process in general. That’s a good thing. Maybe that’s why establishment types are hoping for a return to the days of old. Are they unable to speak with regular folks, for lack of a better term, after being in the ivory tower for so long?

We shall see, but the S.S. Haley just ran aground, and no political tide will be able to free it. Time to abandon ship, Republicans