Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said Tuesday that she will continue her campaign for the Republican presidential nod “until the last person votes” as former President Donald Trump hurtles toward the nomination.
Haley struck this defiant tone despite polls showing that she will lose her home state of South Carolina, where she was twice elected governor, by a bigger margin than she lost New Hampshire. The polling suggests that she will lose Michigan, and then most Super Tuesday states, by more than that.
The only light at the end of the tunnel looks like an oncoming Trump train.
“Some of you in the media came here today to see if I’m dropping out of the race,” Haley said. “Well, I’m not!”
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich famously won the 2012 South Carolina primary after hitting the media in a debate preceding the vote. It was the only time since the state’s GOP primary voters did not go for the eventual nominee.
ELECTION 2024: FOLLOW LATEST COVERAGE
Replicating that could prove a tall order for Haley. The latest USA Today-Suffolk poll of South Carolina showed her with 35% of the vote to Trump’s 63%. She trails him by 25.3 points in the RealClearPolitics polling average for the Palmetto State.
Nevertheless, Haley persisted. She maintained there was no “rush” to settle on a nominee when millions haven’t voted yet and said the Republican race shouldn’t be a “coronation.”
Major Democrats have hesitated to challenge President Joe Biden because they fear it will further damage their general election prospects. Attempts to unseat incumbent presidents through the primary process failed in 1976, 1980, and 1992, succeeding only when Lyndon Johnson dropped out of the race after the New Hampshire primary in 1968.
The incumbent president’s party lost all four elections. Primaries cost money and road-test attacks that can be used by the other party in the fall campaign. A protracted fight between Trump and Haley could enhance his liabilities with suburban women, for example, even if she does not end up beating him in any primaries or caucuses.
It could be the case that all the aforementioned incumbents drew primary opponents in the first place because they were already weak. But that is not the way Democrats with better prospects than Rep. Dean Phillips (D-MN) have bet in 2024.
Haley has pressed the opposite argument. “Republicans will get stronger through a vigorous competition,” she said. “We have plenty of time to hash this out.” And Trump is technically not an incumbent, though he is the most recent Republican president.
But if the national polling is any indication of where the contest is headed when multiple states begin voting simultaneously, Trump will soon register quasi-incumbent support. The latest Morning Consult survey has Trump ahead of Haley 81% to 18%, a 63-point gap.
Never Trumpers complained that Haley and Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) didn’t go far enough in their criticism of the former president. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie accused her of “trying to have it both ways” and predicted she would get “smoked.”
Haley has only escalated against Trump since it became a two-candidate race. She is now insisting that she is not worried about preserving her future viability.
“I have no fear of Trump’s retribution. I’m not looking for anything from him,” she said Tuesday. “My own political future is of zero concern. So I hear what the political classes say, but I hear from the American people too. “
Haley mentioned the speculation that she was really running for vice president — “I think I’ve pretty well settled that question” — or for the top job in some other election. “How does that even work?” she asked. “If I was running for some bogus reason, I would have dropped out a long time ago.”
But most of this speculation does assume that Haley wants to be president. The only question is how losing to Trump by progressively bigger margins and alienating the majority of the party furthers that objective.
It’s possible that Haley expects to be vindicated by a bigger-than-expected Trump loss to Biden. Or that after Trump’s not-too-thinly veiled innuendo about her marriage, her erstwhile boss is now in Vivek Ramaswamy territory and she truly does not care.
How long donors continue to back her campaign will also determine Haley’s staying power in the primary. The fact she needed to justify her campaign before Saturday’s primary, and to tease the possibility of its end to get press attention, evokes Herb Stein’s law: “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.”
Candidates are often most defiant in the final days of their campaigns. Consider Howard Dean’s memorable response to his loss in the 2004 Iowa Democratic caucuses.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
“Not only are we going to New Hampshire, Tom Harkin, we’re going to South Carolina and Oklahoma and Arizona and North Dakota and New Mexico, and we’re going to California and Texas and New York,” Dean said. “And we’re going to South Dakota and Oregon and Washington and Michigan, and then we’re going to Washington, D.C., to take back the White House!”
Dean’s subsequent scream was the epitaph for his campaign, though he did win his home state.