[Several preliminary notes:
A couple of the points made here occurred to me before I saw them offered by media pundits, so I feel free to use them;
From a political handicapping standpoint, I’ve been intrigued by former SC Gov. and U.S. UN Amb. Nikki Haley for some years, and that interest has resulted in this note becoming fairly long; feel free to pass on it; and
Despite my high regard for President Joe Biden’s conduct of the presidency, in the unlikely event that Ms. Haley secures the Republican presidential nomination and runs against him, I am very likely to vote for Ms. Haley – unless she begins to evince undemocratic inclinations, which I have not seen thus far–although I am much closer to the President’s positon on domestic issues. My rationale is buried below. 😉 ]
Although it currently seems overwhelmingly likely that in November, we will be engaging in another existential battle to preserve American democracy pitting a seemingly increasingly infirm President Joe Biden against the now indisputably fascist former President Donald Trump, I’m posting this because I consider former SC Gov. and U.S. UN Amb. Nikki Haley Haley the only other announced presidential candidate who has a chance to win the White House in 2024. Indeed, it is a cruel irony – perhaps for the nation and certainly for what respectable vestiges remain of the Republican Party – that if Ms. Haley were to secure the Republican presidential nomination, I think she would defeat Mr. Biden this November pretty easily.
I speculated in these pages back as 2018 that if then-President Donald Trump chose not to seek reelection (we all saw how that went 😉 ), Ms. Haley would make a formidable 2020 Republican presidential nominee. I noted then: “She’s bright, knowledgeable, articulate, and attractive; she projects both toughness and femininity; she’s had executive experience as a Governor; she’s Indian-American, the child of immigrants; she was born and raised in the South, but as Governor removed the Confederate flag from the South Carolina state grounds; she has established foreign policy bona fides by representing us at the U.N.; she has fiscal policy views that appeal to traditional conservatives; her husband serves in the armed forces, and she has what appears to be a beautiful family; she identifies as Christian, but has a Sikh background.”
I well recall after over 60 years that the only Democrat my father, a rock-ribbed Republican, ever voted for was John F. Kennedy – because he was an Irish Catholic. I submit that in a race against Mr. Biden, the demographics would all be on Ms. Haley’s side. To begin, it’s hard to see her losing any of the states Mr. Trump won in 2020. As a South Carolinian, her candidacy would probably both clinch neighboring North Carolina (the only state Mr. Trump won in 2020 by a narrow margin) and win South Carolina’s neighboring Georgia back from Mr. Biden; her immigrant and Indian background will be effective with a significant segment of minorities, which would both enable her to duplicate Mr. Trump’s 2020 victory in Texas and provide her an excellent opportunity to claim Arizona and Nevada from Mr. Biden; I would venture that she has finessed the abortion issue well enough for a significant segment of women voters to rationalize voting for her to finally place a woman in the White House; her charm and vitality would sway a sufficient number of young voters and moderate swing state Democrats and independents who won’t vote for Mr. Trump but are concerned about Mr. Biden’s age and Vice President Kamala Harris’ competence; and although she would lose some diehard MAGAs as a result of the inevitable attacks upon her by a vengeful Mr. Trump, she would retain the vast share of the Republican tribe. (I vividly recall two Republican gentlemen who told me separately in early 2016 that they could never support Donald Trump. Now they are both avid Trumpers – because at bottom, their overriding emotion is antipathy for Democrats. They may be for Mr. Trump today, but will just as enthusiastically vote for Ms. Haley in November if she is the Republican nominee.) During gatherings with family and friends this past Holiday season, a number of sure Biden voters against Mr. Trump indicated that they would seriously consider Ms. Haley if she was the President’s opponent, and one sure Biden voter against Mr. Trump declared that he would vote for Ms. Haley if she was the President’s opponent. Mr. Biden’s candidacy can’t withstand that much erosion. I would submit that Ms. Haley, if she was the Republican nominee, would have the makings of a landslide victory.
I suspect that Ms. Haley and her team (and perhaps Mr. Trump as well; an aside on that below 😉 ) realize that two major shoes have to drop in order for her to wrest the Republican nomination from the former president.
The first is by far the easier but as things apparently now stand, not easy. She has to beat FL Gov. Ron DeSantis in Iowa. The longer he hangs around, the slimmer Ms. Haley’s already extremely slim chances of securing the nomination become. Mr. DeSantis a hollow, boring candidate whose presidential effort has dead-ended. He had every early advantage to present himself as the only credible Republican presidential alternative to Mr. Trump, and he fluffed it. Now, he can’t get it done but he won’t give it up. If he didn’t have IA Gov. Kim Reynolds’ support in Iowa, I’m pretty confident that Ms. Haley would have already eclipsed him. I would suggest that the gaffe about the Civil War Ms. Haley recently made in Iowa – we’ll get to that below – arose not because she was trying to overtake Mr. Trump – although she would certainly like to significantly narrow the seeming yawning polling margin between the former President and herself (a feat which is difficult to envision, given Mr. Trump’s steadfast Evangelical support; after all, the former president has, according to a video we recently saw of an Iowa Evangelical, been treated worse than Jesus) — but to carve off enough of Mr. DeSantis’ support to give her second place and effectively end Mr. DeSantis’ campaign. A second place Iowa finish will arguably make her the only remaining credible opponent to Mr. Trump in New Hampshire and her home state of South Carolina. If Mr. DeSantis drops out, he will – political pussyfooter that he is – undoubtedly endorse Mr. Trump. Even so, I would suggest that if a New Hampshire Republican wanted to vote for Mr. Trump, s/he would already be with Mr. Trump. A recent CNN/University of New Hampshire poll found Ms. Haley, with the support of NH Gov. Chris Sununu (who probably rues his decision not to run himself), to be trailing Mr. Trump by only 7 points among New Hampshire Republicans; if she claimed the majority of the 5% shown in the poll shown to be supporting Mr. DeSantis and a few of the 12% shown in the poll to be supporting former NJ Gov. Chris Christie, there is a credible path for her to beat Mr. Trump in the New Hampshire primary.
(The “birther” controversy that Mr. Trump has just hatched against Ms. Haley is, in my view, some confirmation that the former president agrees with the above analysis. I would suggest that Mr. Trump is attacking Ms. Haley now, not because he’s worried about losing to her in Iowa, but because he fears that Mr. DeSantis will lose to her in Iowa, and the resulting boost the Haley campaign will receive if Mr. DeSantis withdraws.)
That’s the easy part. The hard part: hanging around long enough in the face of what may be a string of primary victories by Mr. Trump for the occurrence of what is known in English literature as Deus ex machina – literally, in Latin, “God from a machine”; defined in my trusty American Heritage Dictionary as an “improbable … event … suddenly introduced to resolve a situation”: in this case, an event that will disqualify Mr. Trump from the nomination. Although the Republican National Committee is stuffed with Trump supporters, the Committee’s Rule 9 expressly provides that the RNC is “authorized and empowered to fill any and all vacancies which may occur by reason of death, declination, or otherwise of the Republican candidate for President of the United States … or … may reconvene the national convention for the purpose of filling any such vacancies. [Emphasis Added]”
I would submit that if the RNC is suddenly looking for a reason to move on from Mr. Trump – for example, if Mr. Trump suffers a obvious health reversal, a significant number of states successfully keep Mr. Trump off the ballot under the 14 Amendment, or Mr. Trump is convicted of an insurrection-related offense this spring — the RNC might deem its nomination “vacant.” Although a very unlikely scenario, it is perhaps less so if it appears to the RNC that some such factor has made it highly unlikely that Mr. Trump can win. If the RNC took such a step, it’s hard for me to believe a court would intervene to interpret a political party’s rules contrary to the interpretation of the party’s own ruling body. Ms. Haley would be the obvious winner in such a scenario.
As to Ms. Haley’s failure to initially list slavery as the cause of the Civil War – “I think the cause of the Civil War was basically how government was going to run; the freedoms and what people could and couldn’t do”: such was obviously disingenuous, a foolish attempt to thread too fine a needle so as to not offend the Trump and DeSantis supporters she is wooing. That said – in a geeky aside that I at times can’t resist – arguably, she was not necessarily technically incorrect. While incoming President Abraham Lincoln was viscerally offended by slavery and an implacable adversary of slave states’ attempts to extend slavery into the nation’s territories and newly-formed states, he was foremost a Constitutionalist; he viewed his primary responsibility as president to prevent the slave states from breaking their Constitutional bond by seceding. In his first inaugural address in March, 1861, Mr. Lincoln declared, “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of Slavery in the States where it exists. … One section of our country believes slavery is right, and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong, and ought not to be extended. This is the only substantial dispute. [Emphasis Mr. Lincoln’s].” (Of course, the slave states sought to secede specifically because they considered the extension of slavery, unalterably opposed by Mr. Lincoln, necessary to prevent its ultimate extinction; if Mr. Lincoln privately agreed with their assessment, he was perhaps being a bit disingenuous himself by so apparently innocently proclaiming his intention to protect slave owners’ rights in the states in which they already existed.) I think Ms. Haley’s gaffe will ultimately fade away. I think her pledge to pardon Mr. Trump if he is convicted will, if she becomes president, likewise be easily waved away.
Two final points to this long-winded post:
Ms. Haley’s debate against Mr. DeSantis tonight is existential to her candidacy. She needs to polish him off – which given their respective on-camera skills, is certainly achievable. At the same time, if advising her, I’d recommend that she polish him off by mostly ignoring him – that she instead use tonight’s debate as the opportunity to take the gloves off against Mr. Trump. His attempting to create a “birther” controversy – which she will almost certainly be asked about – will give her an opening to point out that if he is going to make such allegations – which are a slap in the face of all children of lawful immigrants, which includes all Americans except Native Americans – he should be man enough to come on stage and do it to her face; to state that those in the military, like her husband, are not suckers and losers as Mr. Trump has said, but our greatest patriots; to declare that it was time for the country to have new, younger leadership; and conclude by noting Mr. Trump’s continual complaining and declare to the Republican crowd, “Americans have never been complainers. They’re doers. Do you want to whine, or do you want to win?”
Finally, why would I vote for Ms. Haley (again, provided that I see no hint that she will undertake undemocratic measures if she is elected) against Mr. Biden when I think Mr. Biden has done an extraordinary job and I am closer to him on domestic issues than I am to Ms. Haley? Two reasons, the less important first: I am worried about the President’s age and doubt Ms. Harris’ competence. The vital reason: if Mr. Biden wins, the alt-right propaganda machine will immediately begin spewing falsehoods against him, perpetuating the toxic conditions under which Mr. Trump may attempt yet another resurrection. While I am cognizant that voting for Ms. Haley on such ground is arguably placating the right, I would suggest that Ms. Haley’s presidency would give us as a people a chance to quiet down a bit, to take the breather we thought Mr. Biden’s presidency would give us (which it would have, but for Mr. Trump’s malignance). If Ms. Haley wins, the alt-right silo – since its overriding emotion is hatred of Democrats — will naturally rally to her support. Mr. Trump will, finally, be politically laid to rest – which is my overriding concern. The former president would clearly be out of position to effectively challenge a sitting Republican President Haley for the 2028 Republican presidential nomination; by 2032, he’ll be 86. He’ll be done – although we will need to watch for the next charismatic fascist coming to take his place.
If I correctly assess Ms. Haley as an American who respects our democratic processes, there will always be another election in 2028, no matter what she does after assuming the presidency. We can chart a more progressive course as a country with a different president in a future election if we so choose – provided that our way of life has been preserved.
If you got this far, you must be exhausted 😉 . You can’t say I didn’t warn you 🙂 .
McCoy's Noise 