There have been several pundits over the last month or so telling us to watch for the great “Trump? Who’s that?” migration to start. The feeling is that the longer that Trump is out of the White House, and the less media time he commands, some very prominent GOP politicians to start backpedaling on their previous support for Trump, and even trying to highlight their non existent opposition to him.
Say what you want about former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, she’s nobody’s fool. After all, you don’t get to be the Governor of South Carolina by being a chump, they play hardball down there. Remember that South Carolina is the place, in the GOP Presidential primaries, Bush operatives shoved flyers under windshield wipers touting the fact that the Vietnamese orphan adopted by John and Cindy McCain, was actually his love child from his war service days. You have to go all they way back to 1960 in Chicago to find that kind of systemic political racism.
But Haley also has a spine, and a personal ethos. After all, following the horrific shootings at the Mother Emanuel AME, it was Haley that personally shepherded the legislation that finally pulled the racist Start and Bars  from the Capitol flagpole. In one of the deepest red states in the country. And gained national recognition and accolades for it.
Haley saw the Trump train coming, and she got on board for the rode, but she kind of hung on from the caboose instead of getting a first class ticket. She complimented Trump, but she also kept her distance, and didn’t mind disagreeing with him when he went too far off the reservation.
Trump, desperate for support from “traditional” Republicans, rewarded her for her for her support, naming her the United States Ambassador to the United Nations. And she accepted the honor, but still kept her distance. While she worked to forward the Trump agenda at the United Nations, once again, she didn’t mind publicly breaking with Trump when she felt he was wrong. And paid no penalty for doing so. And Haley was smart enough to ride the train through the smooth patches, but was still smart enough to pull the ripcord and jump off of the crazy train before it went flying off of the rails.
And now, Haley has publicly broken with Trump. Hard. Following the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6th, when news came out that Trump had basically turned Pence into a sacrificial lamb for the ravening mob, for refusing to overturn the electoral college count, Haley had enough. She spoke to Politico, she excoriated Trump, talking earnestly about how Mike Pence had been nothing but a totally faithful Vice President for Trump for four years, and how he had backed his every play. She steamed that Trump would throw a loyal man under the bus, simply because he chose to follow his constitutional duties and oath, and refuse to betray the nation for Trump.
And she just did it again. On another interview, Haley sadly admitted that the GOP had gone tragically wrong in following Trump in the first place. She bemoaned the fact that Trump had maliciously led the party down the wrong path, and that they had followed him heart and soul. She expressed regret for that fact, and swore that the party must never make the same mistake again. It was a total smackdown and repudiation of Trump, and everything he stands for.
But never forget this. Nikki Haley is a died in the wool, GOP political creature. Nikki aligned herself with Trump in order to gain favor with his supporters. And she has the dream of being the first woman President in 2024, not that Trump is out of the way. Haley doesn’t do anything without pure political calculation.
Which tells me something. It tells me that in addition to being a polished GOP politician, Nikki Haley is also something of a riverboat gambler. Nikki Haley is a woman with a plan, and she is moving according to that plan. And Haley has the staff, the funds, and the ability to hedge her bets.
And I think I know what she sees. For the last 8 weeks, there has been almost complete radio silence from Trump. His loss of online access has been a crushing blow. Haley knows this. Trump is a media star, in order to exist, he requires almost constant media attention, and that has been shut off. And no matter what grand plans he may have for the future, it is the present that is critical. And Trump just flat out isn’t getting his message out! Especially since potentially media friendly outlets such as FOX News, and Newsmax are under multi million dollar lawsuits fort defamation and slander. They can’t play around.
Nikki Haley has her head together. She’s looking at 2024 as her springboard to the Presidency, and she has the skills and chops to make a serious run. Trump is, and always has been a creature of the mass media, if he is cut off from that, he becomes ineffective. And his followers have a short attention span. If Haley believes that the Trombies will all crawl back under their rocks, that makes her very well positioned in GOP politics. She worked well with Trump, but maintained her independence. Don’t touch that dial.
Follow ne ib Twutter at @RealMurfster35
Stars and bars lady
Haley is as cold and calculating as they come, but you are 100% correct that she was bitten by the Presidential bug years ago. At first glance (literally) one marvels at her getting into the Governor’s mansion in a state like SC. However, Bobby Jindal of Louisiana provided her a blueprint, both of the possibilities and how to take advantage of them AND also pitfalls to avoid. Their personal stories, like their ethnic heritage are similar. Haley saw what was possible with Jindal having cut through the bush and making a trail. Hillary Clinton also cut the trail for Haley, both in 2008 and 2016, by which time Haley already was thinking if not Hillary, that SHE might be the first woman to be President.
The business with taking down that racist SC state flag and commissioning a replacement was a master piece of political theater. With that awful, disgraceful ceremony where it was struck from the flagpole and carried away with “full honors” she quelled just enough of the outrage of the racists to maintain viability in the long term, and by dragging out the process for selecting a new state flag bought time for that image to fade in the minds of the broader electorate so that a big splash could be made when the new one was revealed and run up the Statehouse flagpole. That was some serious political savvy from someone who had set her sights on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
You’re also spot-on about how she handled the rise of Trump, and again boosting her national profile in the process. Her support was useful to him, and looking back needed. Haley knew talk of her being Trump’s VP was just talk. He’d NEVER have had a woman, much less a woman who wasn’t white (and probably blonde too) as his running mate. With his tee vee instincts Trump also knew that Haley would outshine him on the magic tee vee box, and even in joint appearances at his stupid rallies. She’s got a stage presence with the broader public he has always dreamed of having but never in fact has. She’s smarter than him (not that that’s saying much), articulate (which Trump sure as hell is NOT) and has “range” as she proved with the flag business. Trump has one gear/emotion and Haley had proven she could meet and master a variety of political moments. While I’m sure she was pushed (to Trump) as a running mate his instincts recoiled in disgust and even horror at the prospect for reasons I’ve just cited. I never, not for one minute took any of that speculation seriously and privately Haley didn’t either.
Haley took the measure of Trump and correctly (with an exception I’ll get to) calculated a way to as you put it ride the Trump train but do so all the way at the back. Boost her name recognition while keeping a distance? She pulled that off pretty well and I’m convinced she was every bit as transactional with Trump as he was with her. Her help came with a price, and for a southern Gov. with virtually no foreign policy chops except for her personal family history U.N. Ambassador was I believe her goal all along if Trump somehow managed to win. That’s where she wound up, well away from the cray in DC which allowed her to, like a good ole boy southern NASCAR fan would say “draft” along behind Trump. She punched her (foreign policy) ticket and got the hell out before the cray went nuclear down in DC.
Here’s the thing though. While NOW she is all of a sudden (again, after Romney and others including ole Moscow Mitch) plowed the ground ahead of her suddenly decided that it was wrong after all to have ever supported Trump. She is COUNTING on people remembering her time at the UN and now this, and if that was all there was she might have been one of the few people to circle the Trump sun without getting badly burned. But there’s a problem that I HOPE our side, if not journalists will keep in mind in the months and years ahead.
Haley might have gotten out of the Trump administration with her political future intact, and could have pretty much sat on the sidelines last year when it was apparent that Trump was in political trouble after Joe Biden became the Democratic front runner and then presumptive nominee. In fact, for her long term future she SHOULD have tried as much as possible to stay on the sidelines. She could have and should have issued a bland, pro-forma “He’s rough around the edges but his policies have been good for the country” (complete bullshit of course but it’s the kind of thing too many independent voters would swallow) statement and been content to wait for 2024. Or even 2028. Haley is still young.
But no, she decided to jump head first into the Trump re-election campaign pool. Maybe my perception is off but she made statements and campaign stops on Trump’s behalf that were full-on “I’m one hundred percent with Trump” stuff. For a few months there she wed her own political career to his. More importantly for this discussion, she didn’t need to. Unlike 2016, Trump’s campaign this time wasn’t a mere cluster-fuck, it was far, far worse than that. Trump was flailing away so much he barely knew who Nikki Haley was and he was in no way able to focus enough on her to strike some kind of transactional deal for her support. No, she sold her soul to Trumpism believing (as others did) that to take over when his time in the WH was up she had to visibly partner with him NOW to be able to obtain the support of HIS base.
I will always believe that was always a fools errand. Especially with the working class white guys who (and I say this as someone who grew up amongst such guys and lived among them again for ten years later in life) view her as a “babe” (even if her skin is darker) but not much more. Hell, other WHITE GUYS that have tried to “do Trump” have learned the hard way that talking & acting like Trump almost never works for anyone but Trump. Now, you might come back and hit me with Marjorie Taylor Greene and I see your point. She’s Sarah Palin 2.0, only SHE is a born and bred southern gal and she’s also blonde and blue, just like the MAGA guys like em on Faux Nooz. However, she will I believe turn out to be a supernova that exploded and faded too early. She will long have since burned out long before 2024.
But Haley? As you say she is and has long been a woman with a plan. She played her cards pretty damned well all things considered and her newly crafted “I’m shocked, SHOCKED I say!” routine is a pretty slick move. She’s the only GOP woman with national stature and also TV and campaign trail charisma to speak out this way in recent weeks. Liz Cheney is the real deal but she’s got as much charisma as her dad which is to say none, despite all her other capabilities which sadly she mostly uses for awful purposes instead of good ones.
Haley however would seem to have the right set of traits to make a serious run. I even think her attempt will in fact be a serious one. But I still think she got over eager and made a mistake during the heat of the 2020 campaign. If Trump falls from favor with the GOP (which if they get creamed in the midterms like they did in 2018 WILL happen) for whatever reason the bet Haley (and others like Cruz, Hawley and Cotton) placed will turn out to be a bad, very bad one come primary time. If not? Well, it will be up to OUR side to hammer her and force journalists to at least raise the point that during the 2020 campaign, especially after the conventions that Haley was ALL IN with Trump. That means painting her with overfull brushes of paint on matters from kids in cages to the botched Coronavirus response.
Presidential fever has a way of making people do stupid things. Haley succumbed to it and whatever game she is playing right now doesn’t change the fact that during a critical time instead of keeping her distance (actual criticism would have been too much both to hope for and to have a chance at gaining the support of the hard core MAGAts) she welded herself to Trump and Trumpism.
The one thing I can’t find out from Haley’s current Wikipedia page is whether her parents were citizens when she was born or if she’s one of those “anchor babies” that right-wingers always whine about (until the term’s applied to “one of their own”). Her current page says her parents moved to South Carolina in 1969 and she was born in 1972. BUT, the page doesn’t make clear when (if?) her parents were citizens by then. Even less clear, the page seems to indicate that her parents immigrated from India but they “moved to Canada after her father received a scholarship offer from the University of British Columbia.” It’s not clear if they had immigrated to the US and THEN went to Canada–which wouldn’t seem to make much sense in terms of citizenship–or if they went from India to Canada and then moved to South Carolina (her father got a job at Voorhees College after receiving his PhD and that prompted the move to SC).
Wouldn’t it be interesting if Haley’s presumed presidential aspirations were derailed by a “birther” issue? (The validity of Marco Rubio’s presidential candidacy was never fully vetted since he got pretty clobbered early on but his parents didn’t become citizens until 1975 when he was about 4 years old; they’d emigrated from Cuba in 1956.)
She has dead children & dead Americans’ blood all over her lying hypocritical ass. After all, the Devil has a number of the so called fairer sex in his camp. Just because she’s slightly smarter than her master, she’s still a poster child for a word that starts with a C.