If Nikki Haley loses, will she fall in line with Trump? | Opinion

The only real suspense left in the Republican presidential primary is if Nikki Haley will become the next Ted Cruz or prove she can stand on principle, damn the potential political consequences.

Donald Trump, who has all but wrapped up the GOP nomination, campaigned at Coastal Carolina University in Conway. There, he did to Haley what he did to Cruz eight years earlier: spit on her spouse.

“Where’s her husband? He’s away. What happened to her husband? What happened to her husband? Where is he? He’s gone,” Trump said gloated.

Despite his veiled suggestion, there’s nothing sinister about Michael Haley’s absence. He’s deployed as part of the United States of Africa Command. There was a time we thought the GOP would be up at arms if a political candidate took an ugly shot at a military family. But that part of the GOP revealed itself vapid when Trump mocked John McCain’s service and Gold Star parents.

In 2016, Trump mocked the appearance of Cruz’s wife, the kind of misogyny he’s even directed at the woman whom he was held legally liable for having raped. For a short while, Cruz pretended to stand up for his wife but eventually bent the knee to Trump, a pose he has maintained since. It’s among the most cowardly moves by a man with as much power as Cruz, a U.S. senator who represents one of the nation’s largest states. Trump has provided a real service by forcing people who supposedly pride themselves on being tough and principled to reveal they are neither, and just crave political power more than they are willing to take an ethical stance.

After the Feb. 24 Republican S.C. primary, which Trump is expected to win handily, it will be time for Haley to reveal herself. Does she have actual principles? Will she bend the knee like Cruz and endorse Trump despite her recent willingness to be honest about his unfitness for office? Will Haley declare she won’t support such a cruel, cold man even if it dims her political prospects in an immediate future with Trump as GOP nominee and millions of loyal supporters who would follow him over a cliff if he asked?

Based on what I’ve seen from Haley over the past decade, I fully expect her to fall in line with Trump, maybe with the hopes of becoming his running mate. I have not yet seen her be willing to risk her political future for something bigger, something more important.

She didn’t demand an expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act because the GOP had staked out a hard-line position against it even though she knew the law that could improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of needy South Carolinians. She only asked for the Confederate flag to be taken off statehouse grounds after Dylann Roof massacred nine Black people in a Charleston church. Before that, she had gone with the political winds and followed the lead of a GOP whose base wanted that bigoted flag flying on public property.

“Donald Trump had a rally today, and in that rally, he mocked my husband’s military service,” Haley said in an ad released Feb. 12. “And I’ll say this: Donald, if you have something to say, don’t say it behind my back, get on a debate stage and say it to my face. I am proud of Michael’s service. Every military spouse knows it’s a family sacrifice.”

She went on to say: “I have long talked about the fact that we need to have mental competency tests for (politicians) over the age of 75. Donald Trump claims that he would pass that. Maybe he would, maybe he wouldn’t. But if you mock the service of a combat veteran, you don’t deserve a driver’s license, let alone being president of the United States.”

Tough, principled-sounding talk. But will it last? I doubt it. Political opportunism is the easier path, one Haley has repeatedly taken.

Issac Bailey is a Carolinas opinion writer for McClatchy.