In Iowa, Nikki Haley faces two huge hurdles | Opinion

It’s put up or shut up time for Nikki Haley. Her well-regarded debate performances and increasing fundraising haul will mean little if she can’t muster a strong, even if distant second-place finish to Donald Trump during the Iowa caucuses.

If Haley falls flat Monday, the GOP presidential primary would all but be over. Trump would have essentially secured his third consecutive Republican nomination.

Haley can’t win the nomination in Iowa but can surely lose it. For those of us who aren’t Haley fans but understand she is less of a threat to democracy than Trump, we are hoping she can have a respectful showing in Iowa and build momentum for New Hampshire, where the latest polls show her within striking distance of Trump.

She isn’t Barack Obama. But in 2008, Obama had to manage the Iowa hurdle to be taken seriously by the broader Democratic electorate in a race where Hillary Clinton had been presumed the front-runner long before a vote had been cast. Like Obama, Haley has received positive headlines as a potential alternative to the front-runner. And like Obama, that front-runner has been focused more on her than any other candidate.

Recently, Trump even deployed his tried-and-true bigoted birtherism card against Haley. He shared a baseless conspiracy theory that Haley isn’t eligible to be president because her parents are from India. Haley is a native South Carolinian like me and is absolutely eligible. But Trump knows his audience well. He became a hero among the Republican base after leading the birtherism charge against Obama. Trump’s birtherism campaign was so effective, Obama had to hold a press conference to release his long-form birth certificate while secretly working on a plan in the killing of Osama bin Laden.

Haley also must show she has thoroughly lapped Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, the man who came into the primary as the presumed top threat to Trump.

As I’ve said before, I don’t want Haley in the White House. She isn’t a strong leader. There are few if any principles upon which she is willing to take a firm stand. A victory by any Republican in this climate would lead to a further whitewashing of the Jan. 6, 2021, violent insurrection on our Capitol. Public higher education would be attacked more fiercely, as would healthcare access for the neediest Americans, which is at an all-time-high though far from perfect. Still, she is less of a threat to our democracy than a man who has declared he will be a dictator, if only for one day.

Here’s a huge caveat: Trump and his supporters won’t accept any results that don’t declare him the winner. That was true after the 2020 election. That will be true during the Republican primary. Some have convinced themselves Trump has been ordained by God to save us.

That’s been the under-discussed portion of this saga. If Trump wins the nomination, most Republicans will dutifully fall in line. But if Haley pulls off the upset, there will be chaos within the GOP ranks. It should not be forgotten that Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Why would he simply walk away if the GOP primary doesn’t go his way? He didn’t simply walk away after Joe Biden outpaced him by more than 7 million votes.

Despite having been outvoted by 10 million during his two previous runs for the presidency, Trump remains a favorite to win the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, with polls suggesting a 30-point win is possible in Iowa on Martin Luther King Day. That’s Haley’s ultimate challenge — to not just win, but survive an onslaught from Trump voters if she does. Can she pull off either of those feats? Monday will go a long way towards answering that question.

Issac Bailey is a Carolinas opinion writer for McClatchy.