Nimrata “Nikki” Haley, taking on Trump
Nimrata “Nikki” Haley lags far behind Donald Trump for the 2024 Republican Party presidential nomination. In terms of state primaries and caucuses, while it’s still very early, Trump has won both the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary, the first time that a Republican candidate has swept both contests since these states began leading the election calendar in 1976. In Nevada, things got weird with both a primary (pursuant to state law) and a caucus, because state Republicans wanted one just for Trump. There, Haley ran only in the primary and lost to “None of these Candidates.” Trump ran only in the caucus and won all the Nevada delegates, bringing his total thus far to 63 delegates compared to Haley’s 17.
As for the polls, Haley now trails Trump by as much as 60 points in the aggregate. Even in Haley’s home state of South Carolina, where the primary is being held tomorrow (February 24), she is approximately 30 points behind Trump in the polls. It seems that today’s Republican Party is indeed a Trump cult.
It appears, therefore, that Haley has only one slim chance to defeat Trump: he would have to withdraw either for legal or medical reasons. However, Haley says that, even after a likely defeat in South Carolina tomorrow, she has no plans to quit the presidential race, and wants to fight on at least through Super Tuesday, March 5, when some 15 states (plus American Samoa) hold their Republican presidential nomination contests. For that, Democrats should be very grateful, because Haley has been hammering Trump on the campaign trail. Check out some of Haley’s attacks on Trump after the page jump:
–On Wednesday, Haley said that in “March, April, May, June,” Trump will be in court defending himself in the numerous civil and criminal cases against him, instead of focusing on what’s important for the country:
When you see this and he is completely distracted and the American people are worried about the $34 trillion in debt, they are worried that their kids can’t read. … They are worried about wars around the world and he is talking about how he is victim.
Haley went on to say that, if one or more of these court cases do not go Trump’s way,“[t]here is no way that the American people are going to vote for a convicted criminal. They’re not.”
–Amid revelations about Russia working with Republicans to smear President Joe Biden, as well as Russia’s track record of meddling in U.S. elections on behalf of Trump, the death of Alexei Navalny at the hands of Vladimir Putin, and Russia’s continued brutal invasion of Ukraine, Haley has found a new line of attack on Trump. According to Politico:
She’s cast her former boss as “ weak in the knees” when it comes to Russia. She’s slammed him for criticizing NATO at a time when many in the West see Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a threat to European stability.
Moreover, at a rally on Wednesday in South Carolina near the Georgia border, Haley had this to say:
Trump is siding with a dictator who kills his political opponents. Trump sided with an evil man over our allies who stood with us on 9/11. Think about what that told them.
These attacks by Haley on Trump, getting sharper as the campaign progresses, mesh almost perfectly with Democratic attacks on Trump, and now seem as harsh as what Democrats are saying. Accordingly, Democrats should be very happy to have Haley in the Republican nomination race for now, and indeed, in states where the rules allow it, some Democrats may even want to cross over to vote for Haley in the Republican primary, to pump her numbers up and keep her candidacy alive.
Photo by tvnewsbadge, used under Creative Commons license. https://tinyurl.com/3ybw7sj9
