An Important Role for Nikki Haley Going Forward
Unsolicited advice from the other party
Last night in New Hampshire, Nikki Haley did better than the polling suggested but still lost the primary by twelve points. Her strength came from anti-Trump voters, independents, and a few thousand Democrats. Conservative Republicans backed Trump overwhelmingly. There is no path for her to the nomination. She will, nevertheless, soldier on to her home state of South Carolina where she will lose.
Political junkie that I am, I watched her “still-in-it” speech. I was watching election coverage until the Purdue-Michigan game started (Purdue won, 99-67). There was something in the middle of Haley’s speech that caught my attention.1 Here it the relevant section:
I decided to run because I’m worried about the future of our country and because it is time to put the negativity and chaos behind them. We have an economy that is crushing middle-class Americans. We have a border that is totally open and dangerous creating a disaster in our country. We have schools that are failing too many children and we have a world on fire with war in Europe and the Middle East and growing threat from China. Then you look at Washington, D.C.. We have a congress that fights about everything and accomplishes nothing and we have Joe Biden in the White House making one bad decision after another when he is making any decisions at all. Our country is in a real mess. The question is, who is going to fix it?
Let’s quickly set aside some of her claims. Consumer confidence in the economy is surging, as are the markets. There are challenges at the border but this is largely due to an antiquated system that conservatives refuse to work on because it’s too good of a campaign issue.2 Of course, schools aren’t a national responsibility. And the attack on Biden is just a morsel for Fox-News-watching Republican primary voters.
Whenever I write on politics (here’s an example), I distinguish between campaigning and governing. On the trail, you can say anything you want. If you’re in office, you have a responsibility to see government meet the needs of the people.
So who is standing in the way of addressing the issues Nikki is so concerned about? It not “congress” that is fighting all the time. It is the intramural division between the center-right Republicans and the Freedom Caucus flamethrowers. The Republicans now have a 219-213 majority in the House, one of the smallest on record.3
In today’s Triad, Jonathan V. Last has his own take on Haley’s path from here.
Haley’s result in New Hampshire was bad enough to end the nominating contest but good enough to give her a national platform for the next month. She can speak and her words could matter. She could continue the work done by Chris Christie and build out the permission structure not only for some Republican voters to abandon Trump, but for other Republican officials to speak out against him for the general election, too.
JVL is right. Haley needs to continue her critique of Donald Trump, as do Chris Christie, Liz Cheney, and a number of other brave souls. But perhaps more important than that, she could use her well-earned platform to advocate for the return of a sane Republican party.
She could call out the Freedom Caucus for their part in the immigration crisis, as she attempts to balance international amnesty laws with concern for safety. She could advocate for safer schools and real educational improvement while pointing out how Republican obsessions with wokeness and DEI and library books in peripheral to what schools do. She could meet with Biden to chart informal bipartisan paths forward (she doesn’t have to meet the VP, who she has disparaged since she launched her campaign).
In short, she could claim the mantle of anti-Trump conservative who cares about governing (which is why she cannot endorse him) . She was a governor, after all, and not just one of those firebrands who like to appear outrageous on social media.
The people funding her campaign desire a return to the former days of Republicanism.4 Perhaps they can keep the spigots open between now and the Republican convention in Milwaukee. It’s not a long time, but a concentrated effort to reclaim Republican values over the next six months might pay real dividends. And we’d all be better off as a result.
She did have a Joe Lieberman moment where she says that they got close to half of the vote (translation, we lost).
A Speaker Johnson admitted recently in saying that they wouldn’t touch immigration reform until a Republican is in the White House.
Likely to get smaller after the George Santos replacement election.
I’d have lots of policy disputes with the old party, but we’d at least do so somewhat rationally.