‘Done as a Republican’: Winless Haley plods on as future in GOP is questioned

After being flattened by Donald Trump in her home state primary, Nikki Haley is now 0-for-5 in 2024 Republican presidential nominating contests.

And yet over the next week, she’s scheduled to campaign in another six states, beginning in Michigan, where she is likely to endure another emphatic defeat on Tuesday by a margin even larger than her South Carolina loss.

Considerable financial resources are allowing Haley to soldier on, but the long-term cost may be a viable future for her inside a Trump-first Republican Party. Her pledge to “campaign until the last person votes” without a realistic path for victory suggests she’s come to terms with it.

“As it relates to her future in politics, I’m skeptical she has one, at least in today’s GOP,” said Jason Cabel Roe, a Detroit-based Republican consultant. “She more closely resembles the Bush-neocon-big business GOP than the modern populist GOP.”

Even if Trump is struck by lightning or sent to prison as a result of one of his criminal trials and a contested GOP convention unfolds at the Republican National Convention this summer, “there’s a better shot a Ron DeSantis could get it than a Nikki Haley,” Terry Sullivan, the GOP consultant who ran Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential bid, said on a Puck podcast this week. “Because right now she’s just hurting herself with the base.”

Haley’s willingness to shrug off bruising home-state repudiation also speaks to the nationalization of all modern politics. With voters more loyal to sweeping movements and galvanizing ideologies that cross state borders, Haley has morphed into the last woman willing to sound the alarm on the political risk Trump poses to her party, despite abundant early polling showing his strength against President Biden.

Haley’s crusade now, revealed candidly by her campaign manager Betsy Ankney on a Friday Zoom call with the press, is about showcasing how Trump can’t win a general election.

If not Never Trump, it’s close to Not Trump.

“He will not defeat Joe Biden in November and he will drag the entire Republican ticket down with him,” Ankney proclaimed. “If Trump is the nominee, the House is gone.”

There’s a long history of candidates revising their assessments of their rivals once the primary has concluded. Trump’s campaign believes Haley will “kiss ass when she quits” and sign on with the former president who named her ambassador to the United Nations.

Even under the most generous circumstances for Haley, Trump’s campaign has projected he’ll have the delegates necessary to clinch the GOP nomination by March 19.

So while Haley is girded for battle through March 5th’s Super Tuesday – when 15 states and American Samoa cast ballots – she’ll face another inflection point on the purpose of her candidacy once Trump hits the magic number of delegates in mid-March.

Thirty-two years ago, Republican firebrand Pat Buchanan continued his 1992 campaign even after acknowledging President George Bush had amassed the delegates needed to be the GOP nominee by mid March. But Buchanan toned down his anti-Bush rhetoric and eventually turned his fire on Democrats in a rip-roaring convention speech.

On the Democratic side, Jerry Brown stayed in the race as an alternative to Bill Clinton through the national convention. The national exposure didn’t ever land him the presidency, but propelled him back into the governorship of California.

These could serve as models for Haley, who has built a large national network of supporters, volunteers and donors she could tap for a future endeavor inside or outside of politics.

“It allows her and her campaign to build connections on the grassroots level in state after state. If you bail out early, you just don’t go through those exercises in recruiting volunteers and paying county leaders across the country, and sort of team bank and phone captains,” said Timothy Head, executive director of the Faith and Freedom Coalition. “This is the first time she has raised really large amounts of money from national donors. It also gives her prolonged exposure and bonding to a lot of those donors who probably … have experienced some pause with Donald Trump.”

Trump is the only person who may hold more sway over Haley’s future than the former South Carolina governor herself. Political survival in the modern Republican Party nearly requires making penance with Trump.

Just listen to Rep. Nancy Mace, a former Trump critic who now faces a Low Country primary herself.

“We should question any Republican not supporting Donald Trump, question their motives. There’s no reason for us to continue to take shots at Donald Trump when he’s going to be the nominee,” Mace told right-wing media outlet One America News on Saturday.

Trump has made peace with countless rivals before, once they pledge their allegiance and unflinching loyalty. Haley’s bigger problem might be his unrelenting ecosystem of adherents.

“She’s done as a Republican after this and she doesn’t care,” tweeted Newsmax anchor Rob Schmitt. “She’ll be a mainstream staple, sell out the country, be rich & popular.”

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