Nikki Haley in a Nutshell

Written 01/11/2024

Nikki Haley, former governor of South Carolina and Ambassador to the United Nations, is now running an unsuccessful campaign for President of the United States of America, offering herself as a Republican alternative to the far-right Donald Trump. Her campaign has closed the Republican nominee gap against semi-incumbent (semi here meaning he lost the last time) Donald Trump closer than it ever has been on a national level. While she is still close to rival DeSantis, she is clearly demonstrating consistent growth while the DeSantis campaign continues to lose ground. She is within a 15 point gap with Trump in key caucus states, and is potentially able to clinch South Carolina and New Hampshire.

Haley has a pitiful website indicating that the only issues she's interested in talking about un-controversially are related to the economic spending power of the average American, espousing the sins of government overspending, a decrease in UN-related foreign aid, and increased direct aid to western allies, especially Ukraine, adopting a hardline stance against Russia uncommon amongst right-leaning politicians. She supports a ban on abortion after 15 weeks with exceptions made in the cases of rape, pregnancy complications, and incest. Her campaign 'Defund China' hammers home her core foreign policy position in the belief that America must adopt a more adversarial relationship with the CCP.

She is consistently unclear about her position regarding education, a hot-button issue amongst Republican voters in the upcoming election, according to majority polls. At times she supports the banning of materials in public schools, but she has never -- either by statement or by associated position -- indicated which materials should be banned in any grade level.

The Iowa caucus is now mere days away, occurring on January 15th. As a reminder, Iowa voters caucus, a process by which political parties (rather than the state government) hold elections determining the popular candidates, often by a sort of game of musical chairs where the number of voters sitting in their section indicates how likely Iowa party affiliates are to vote for them. A major boon for Haley in the New Hampshire and South Carolina arenas, beyond her own connection to South Carolina, is the recent withdrawal from the race of her former rival (and staunch anti-Trumper) Chris Christi. While Christi has not endorsed one candidate over another, the anti-Trump or at least Trump-skeptical crowd has thinned, leaving Haley its only real contender, as DeSantis refuses to comment and Ramaswamy continues to simp.

This is notable, as while Haley is exceedingly unlikely to actually win the nomination, if she were to drop out and become Trump's running mate it's a massive boost to his numbers. The likelihood of that remains contested, but, quite simply, a strong option.

Obviously this is a fair amount of speculation, but most polls show Haley defeating Biden/Harris on a national level easily, so if she wins the GOP nomination it's likely there is a Republican president. If she drops out and supports Trump then the road up for Biden, who is likely to win anyway, just got harder. Haley's tepid (at best) attacks on Trump are indicative of her willingness to collaborate after the caucuses, but leads me to believe she is the moderate version of Bernie [simplified]. What I mean is that she ultimately supports more right wing politicians, but believes that the country needs a shift away from the majority candidate, in her case Trump.

TL;DR Nikki Haley is interesting, but a serious problem for progressive voters. Vote Haley over Trump, Biden over Haley.

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