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Presidential candidate Nikki Haley campaigning in Irmo, South Carolina, USA on February 17, 2024. © Sean Rayford/Imago
Nikki Haley can win against Biden.
But to do that she first has to beat Trump in the Republican primaries.
Her anti-Trump rhetoric could backfire on her.
Washington DC - On the last Tuesday of January, Nikki Haley's campaign manager joked to influential Republican donors at a private meeting in Palm Beach, Florida.
She had hoped to bring the party bigwigs T-shirts with the words “Permanently excluded,” but unfortunately they were no longer available.
A cheeky reference to Donald Trump's threat that anyone who donates to Haley will be "permanently kicked out."
At a Feb. 10 rally in Newberry, South Carolina, Haley jokingly promoted the T-shirts and bragged that her team had already sold 20,000, which had raised more than $500,000 for her operation.
Haley unwittingly becomes the most important voice of the anti-Trump resistance
The playful banter underscores a new reality for Haley in her hopeless bid for the Republican presidential nomination: While the former South Carolina governor has ratcheted up her anti-Trump rhetoric, she has emerged — partly intentionally, partly unintentionally — as a major anti-Trump voice -Resistance that strongly opposes four more years with the former president.
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Trump confuses Haley with Pelosi – Trump and Biden too old to be president
In Newberry, Haley staffers handed out mock mental ability exams and stickers with a drawing of a chicken with Trump's hair and a tie that read, "Trump is too cowardly for a debate."
Haley accused Trump of throwing an "onstage tantrum" after her second-place finish in New Hampshire and said he talked more about his victimhood than about the American people.
She questioned his mental fitness, alleging that Trump confused her and Representative Nancy Pelosi (D-California) and referred to both him and President Biden as "grumpy old men."
She blamed him for her party's losses in the last three elections and said his "fingerprints" can be seen all over recent opposition politics, such as failures in Congress and turmoil at the Republican National Committee.
The Republican Party is in chaos thanks to Trump: Haley is trying to bring order
“We have to become aware of the fact that – if you look at what happened a few days ago – Donald Trump has lost his immunity.” The 52-year-old goes on to say that “the Republicans lost the vote on the border that the Republicans lost a vote on Israel” and that “the Republicans fired their party leader.
And basically, look at this: Donald Trump had a hand in all of this,” Haley told reporters after the rally.
“Everything he's done, from the foul language to the revenge after New Hampshire and everything in between - it's total chaos.” Two years ago, Haley was Trump's ambassador to the United Nations.
Now the presidential candidate is taking on a new role.
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Trump victory in New Hampshire: Nikki Haley already beaten?
Since entering the Republican primary a year ago, Haley has generally been reluctant to criticize Trump too harshly, although she has sometimes described him as too chaotic.
But as the race after the Iowa caucuses came down to a duel between Trump and Haley, Haley began to step up her attacks on Trump.
She portrayed him simultaneously as an “insecure” toddler who had “tantrums” and as a septuagenarian who was not spared by age.
Haley tries to offer a stark contrast to Trump
The heightened anti-Trump tone has led to comparisons between Haley and Liz Cheney.
The daughter of former Republican Vice President Dick Cheney was vice chair of the House committee investigating the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. She lost her congressional seat in Wyoming after repeatedly and vocally criticizing Trump for his role in the had criticized the attack on the Capitol.
The Haley campaign and its allies say its now more combative approach is the natural result of a thinning of the field.
Now is the time to offer a stark contrast to Trump.
The ex-president is leading in every poll among Republican primary voters so far.
Haley, the better candidate: She has more chances of winning against Biden than Trump
And they also argue what many Democrats privately admit: that Haley could be a far better general election candidate than Biden, and that Democrats prefer to run against Trump.
In the average of recent
Washington Post
polls , Haley is doing slightly better against Biden than Trump.
"We're reminding South Carolinians of Nikki's conservative record and making it clear that Nikki is the last person standing between Trump and Biden, which no one wants," Haley's campaign manager Betsy Ankney said in a video call with reporters this month.
Haley as the de facto leader of the “Never Trump” movement
And at an event hosted by the Charleston, South Carolina-based
Post and Courier
newspaper , Haley was asked whether, as Trump's final challenger in the primaries, she accepted that she was the de facto leader of the "Never Trump" movement.
She quickly rejected this title.
"I do not do that.
And the reason is that I fight for those who supported Trump just like I fight for those who didn't support Trump,” Haley replied.
“We should reach out and talk to everyone because our goal is to serve everyone.”
Donald Trump, 45th President of the United States of America.
© TIMOTHY A. CLARY / AFP
But her harsher tone toward Trump has made Haley a voice for anti-Trump voters, prompting some Democrats and "Never Trump" supporters to cheer her.
Others complain that their accusations against the former president are not harsh enough.
She also risks alienating some of the Republican voters she needs to win over.
Their reluctance to deliver a full-blown anti-Trump message, even from a fellow Republican, underscores the near-impossibility of challenging Trump in the Republican primary, where he enjoys overwhelming loyalty from the party's base.
Haley turned against Trump too late
"I imagine Nikki Haley as someone whose apartment was flooded about 10 years ago, and she went and worked for the flood, and now she puts a towel down and thinks this will be effective," said Pat Dennis, President of American Bridge, a Democratic Super PAC, a lobbying group that supports Biden.
“It literally took maximum pressure for her to turn against Trump.
Until recently, she campaigned primarily on the message, 'Trump is a great guy.'
Others are more optimistic about Haley now that she has begun to challenge Trump more clearly.
William Kristol, founder of the conservative Weekly Standard and a fierce critic of Trump, said he was encouraging his fellow Never Trump activists to rally around Haley.
She is one of the few Republicans to say “something against Trump that they wouldn’t have heard from Joe Biden or even Liz Cheney.”
Haley as a “way out for Trump”: New direction for the Republican Party
“She is increasingly willing to draw some lines as to why Trump is unacceptable,” Kristol said.
“I think for some people it’s kind of a way out for Trump.”
Mitch Landrieu, a former senior adviser in the Biden White House who is now co-running Biden's 2024 campaign, said Haley's candidacy represented "a different view of what the Republican Party should be."
The Biden campaign has begun posting clips of Haley criticizing Trump on Truth Social, Trump's social media platform.
A person close to the campaign, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said they are eager to highlight when Republicans and independents criticize Trump and the threat he poses to American democracy.
Haley as democracy's last hope to defeat Trump
Some anti-Trump groups have also focused their efforts on supporting Haley, even as their primary motivation remains to distract from Trump.
PrimaryPivot, a group urging independent and Democratic voters to vote for Haley in the upcoming Republican election, sent more than 200,000 text messages the day before the Feb. 3 Democratic primary in South Carolina.
They urged recipients to "use their voice" and suggested they could have a greater impact in the Feb. 24 Republican primary.
Last week, the group sent out another text aimed at highly educated, left-wing voters who did not vote in the Democratic primary.
They reminded that they “can still vote for a candidate who respects democracy in the contested primaries.”
“We actually don’t like Nikki Haley very much.
We don't like their stance on abortion.
We don't like their stance on climate change.
“We don’t like her position that she’s going to pardon Donald Trump without seeing the evidence,” said Robert Schwartz, a co-founder of PrimaryPivot.
"But that is not the point.
The point is that she would not try to circumvent the peaceful transfer of power, as Donald Trump has already done – well, tried to do.”
In the first Republican primary debate, Haley was unconvincing
During the first Republican primary debate in August, Haley was among the candidates who raised their hand in affirmation when asked whether they would still support Trump even if he is the Republican nominee and also a convicted criminal.
(There are 91 indictments in four criminal cases against Trump).
“This is not an anti-Trump movement,” Haley told reporters this month in the back room of a Columbia barbecue restaurant.
“I agree with a lot of his policies.
The thing is, people think you have to be either for or against Trump.
I’m pro-America.”
She added: “This is not about whether we like Donald Trump.
I have no personal problems with Donald Trump.
I voted for him twice.
I was proud to serve America in its government.
It's about us being tired of losing."
Instead, Haley's advisers and allies say she is breaking away from Trump and offering a clear conservative alternative, on her own terms.
Unlike Trump: Haley as an alternative for Democrats
"She's not anti-Trump per se - they're opponents - but she represents a wing of the party and she speaks for us, and it's important for the rest of the party to be reminded that we exist," said Eric Levine, a New York-based Republican lawyer and fundraiser who supports Haley.
“We have to offer them an alternative.
We need to give my wife a reason to vote Republican.
“She won’t vote for Donald Trump, she’ll vote for Nikki Haley.”
In some ways, the dilemma facing Levine's wife — a registered Democrat who longs for a Biden alternative — underscores the challenges Haley faces in her party's primary.
Although she could emerge as a strong general election candidate against Biden, she must first shake off primary voters who generally like the former president's policies.
She has so far trailed Trump in the first two nominating contests - the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries - and suffered an embarrassing setback in the non-binding Republican primary in Nevada on February 6, when she was defeated despite being the only major candidate on the ballot paper, ended up behind the option “none of these candidates”.
In a column for the Dispatch, a conservative online magazine, Nick Catoggio - formerly known by the pseudonym "Allahpundit" - described Haley as a kind of "half" Liz Cheney.
Haley as “half” Liz Cheney?
“There is no malice toward Trump in half Liz, just a patient, always-smiling adult who encourages Republican voters to be as grown-up as she is,” he wrote.
"The repeated use of the term 'tantrum' is certainly not a coincidence." Alex Conant, a Republican strategist who was communications director in the 2016 presidential campaign of Senator Marco Rubio (Republican of Florida), also rejected the Liz Cheney comparison, saying , Haley “represents what a post-Trump future might look like.”
Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley speaks during a campaign event this month in Daniel Island, South Carolina.
© Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post
“Liz Cheney wanted to burn everything down – she wanted to destroy the party and had no interest in her own political future,” Conant said.
“Liz didn’t offer a choice, she offered a conviction.”
Can Haley authentically support Trump after a defeat in the primaries?
Whatever role Haley now plays in the national discourse about Trump, what will matter most is how she behaves if Trump defeats her for the party's nomination, strategists say.
“What is Nikki doing at this point?” asked Dmitri Mehlhorn, a Democratic strategist.
“Is she telling the people who trusted her that Donald Trump isn’t actually that bad, that he’s better than Joe Biden?”
Some voters who fear a Trump return see Haley as their last chance to defeat him and hope she will remain an anti-Trump force even if she doesn't win her party's nomination.
Like Thalia Floras, 61, who attended a Haley rally in Nashua, New Hampshire, last month.
She is a lifelong Democrat who registered as an independent to vote for Haley against Trump.
Democrats fear Haley: She can beat Biden
“We could see that if anyone could beat Trump, it would be her,” Floras said.
“And we knew that part of that was the fact that we know she can beat Biden.
I have friends in the Democrats who said, 'Don't vote for Nikki Haley because we're afraid she'll beat Joe Biden.'
And I say, 'What does that say about Nikki Haley?
And what does that say about Joe Biden?'”
In some ways, what Haley represents in the resistance to Trump has now transcended Haley's original intentions.
“Political figures can rise a little beyond their own intentions, beyond what they sometimes expect,” Kristol said.
“She represents more than what she expected and even more than she has said publicly.”
Leigh Ann Caldwell, Scott Clement and Maeve Reston contributed to this report.
To the authors
Ashley Parker
is senior national political correspondent for The Washington Post.
She was part of two Post teams that won Pulitzer Prizes - in 2018 for national reporting and in 2022 for public service on the Jan. 6 attacks.
She joined the Post in 2017 after working at The New York Times for 11 years.
She also serves as an anchor on NBC News/MSNBC.
Dylan Wells
is a campaign reporter at The Washington Post.
She previously covered Congress and campaigns at USA Today, National Journal Hotline and CNN.
We are currently testing machine translations. This article was automatically translated from English into German.
This article was first published in English on February 18, 2024 at the “Washingtonpost.com” - as part of a cooperation, it is now also available in translation to readers of the IPPEN.MEDIA portals.