According to two South Carolina Republicans, Nikki Haley is the former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations under President Donald Trump. She was also a former South Carolina governor.
After Trump’s announcement on November 15, 2022, Haley will be the first Republican to declare a White House bid.
My family and I have a big announcement to share with you on February 15th!
And yes, it’s definitely going to be a Great Day in South Carolina! 👊 🇺🇸
Be sure to RSVP here: https://t.co/fxxxpBbW2b pic.twitter.com/2QJIo0H7Jo
— Nikki Haley (@NikkiHaley) February 1, 2023
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is still waiting in the wings. No matter how you slice it, the 2016 GOP primaries will look like a Sunday stroll in the park.
Trump’s insistence on burning down challengers is not something to be taken lightly. Despite that, Haley’s performance in the United Nations Security Council has shown she is capable of handling the task. She’s also smart enough to see what her former boss is doing. DeSantis would be the problem for Haley, but we’ll get the Florida governor in a little.
First, Donald Trump is still the Republican King on the Hill, regardless of whether you love him or loathe him. A 2024 challenger must be able to do the job. This is true for any election against Trump. Voting for a challenger on the same issues as the frontrunner is not a reason to vote. They have to be fed up with the king.
With this reality in mind, Haley chose a different route than Trump’s and one that is riskier.
According to The Hill, Katon Dawson (an ex-chair of the South Carolina Republican Party and now backing Haley) stated it this way:
Nikki has been through some difficult races and is used to competing against the gold standard. There is a way to be anti-Trump. To be successful, there’s a lane. Nikki Haley is a good example of someone who has found a way to be successful. She has always been able to communicate a message and raise money to make it heard.
Dawson’s observations were mostly correct. However, Haley has never run against Ron DeSantis and she will never challenge Donald Trump. The former president taunted his UN ambassador earlier this month in a Truth Social posting of a clip where she said that she would not challenge him after preliminary information about her announcement came out.
Nikki must follow her heart and not her honor. She should run!
Honor is the operative word.
The Truth Social post was my first impression. I thought for a second that Trump might have been kind. I didn’t realize it was honor jab nonsense until then. Needless to mention, I was reminded by his scathing attack against Ron DeSanctimonious for his “disloyalty,” after the former president claimed that he brought back the Florida governor from the “dead”.
Haley will be up against another formidable opponent in the 2024 GOP election: Sen. Tim Scott, a fellow South Carolinian.
Danielle Vinson is a professor at Furman University in Greenville (S.C.) and has expressed concern about a potential face-off between them.
In many ways, I believe Tim Scott and Nikki Haley will be competing for the same voters. Both are more stable than Trump-DeSantis-type candidates. Both of them are more polite and diplomatic than the Trump-DeSantis type. They’d be competing for people who aren’t happy with Trump’s drama and want to do more than just fight culture wars.
DeSantis, on the other hand, has built a national reputation for fearlessly going after everyone, from federal health officials to liberal lapdog media to “woke” and, of course, Haley herself.
She is a person who wants to understand and study a topic. She isn’t flashy like the others. That’s what I love about her. However, I think it’s still a question of how to get past people like Trump or DeSantis who are sucking all the oxygen out of the room.
We now get to the most important topic, in my humble opinion.
Although I agree with many of the above quotes I don’t think Haley will win the nomination in 2024. If Trump is defeated, Haley would be a smart choice for the VP slot. This would make the contrast between them more effective. In 21st-century America, deliberately choosing a woman of color or a person of color would remove that issue from the hypocritical Democrats.
If Trump wins, Haley, like all the other 2024 candidates who are “disloyal to Trump”, will be burned to the ground. Skewer away, if you so desire, but I will not mince my words.
