The Haley Project: An Update on the Plannings for a Democratic Electoral Candidate in South Carolina (with an Update later in the Post)

A person familiar with the plans says that Haley is expected to announce her candidacy for president on February 15 in Charleston.

She is expected to send out invites to her supporters in the coming days, according to sources familiar with the matter. The precise details of her launch have yet to be revealed. A source told me they thought she could announce it with video in the coming days but that isn’t set in stone.

The Washington Post was the first to report on Haley’s preparations, while The Post and Courption reported on the expected announcement.

Dave Wilson, the president of the Palmetto Family Council, said that since she left the governor’s office there has always been a sense in South Carolina that she would launch a big project. We are in a window of time for the presidency. Everyone had better keep their feet on the ground.

You first look at a situation to see if it pushes for new leadership. The second question is, am I that person that could be that new leader?” she told Fox News.

Haley, who served as the US ambassador to the United Nations in the Trump administration, also called Trump recently to tell him that she was considering launching her campaign, the former president told reporters over the weekend.

The first voting events of the GOP selection process, which will be just a year away, will feature a number of women from the ranks of current and former officials.

Noem said she is not sure that she needs to run for president, but she still took a lot of tough stands on issues such as abortion and immigration. Haley’s announcement may increase the pressure on Noem to decide, or announce.

Like Haley, Noem has said in the past she would support Trump if he sought the party’s nomination a third time. But, also like Haley, she declined to endorse him when he declared formally in November. Instead, Noem told The New York Times that Trump “does not offer the best chance” for the GOP in 2024.

Former Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, once a name in the conversation for speaker of the House or the national ticket, fell from grace when she defied her Republican colleagues and co-chaired the House Select Committee on the January 6th Attack on the Capitol. The panel that condemned Trump had Cheney as a member and she said she would “do whatever it takes” to prevent him from returning to office.

That was taken as a challenge to the former president in twenty four years. Cheney lost her own primary in August and the future prospects of the party she had been a part of seemed to be gone.

Ranging beyond the realm of Republican officeholders, there are other women with conservative credentials or points of view who have shown interest in the nation’s highest office as well. This past week when a congressional panel had a hearing on how the Biden administration was “weaponizing” federal agencies against citizens, one witness getting a lot of attention was Tulsi Gabbard.

A member of the National Guard who served in Iraq, Gabbard was elected to four terms in Congress as a Democrat and became the party’s candidate for president in 2020.

The scramble to define women as presidential is understandable. It is embodied in the arrival of Vice President Harris, the first woman to occupy the job famously described as a “heartbeat away from the presidency.”

The trend was on full display in the 2020 cycle, when Harris was a part of the first round of presidential debates in the summer of 2019. All this raises the ante for Republicans, especially considering that women now cast more than half the total vote for president.

For a century after the first woman declared herself a protest candidate for the White House in 1872 (before women’s right to vote was added to the Constitution in 1920), when women ran for the White House it was more to make a point than to win an office. The first woman to receive votes during primaries and the national convention was Margaret Chase Smith.

Women have been running lately to get on the ticket to make a show. It is obvious that Elizabeth Dole thought that was possible when she ran in the 1999-2000 cycle. Ted Cruz’s prospective running mate was a man who was later announced as a candidate for the presidency, but who also ran for president.

Neither could change the underlying dynamics or provide what was lacking in their party’s presidential nominees. Women voters from the opposite party lines were disappointed by supporters who thought these gender breakthrough might galvanise them.

The ideal space for a woman candidate, or any prospective candidate in 2024, might be just outside of Trump’s immediate orbit — somehow uninvolved in his controversies and beyond his wrath. It would allow a running mate to seek free agency for a period of time, with the chance to join the ticket at some point.

DeSantis is regarded as the likeliest challenger to match Trump in polls and fundraising. New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu has been testing the water, as has Maryland’s popular former Gov. Larry Hogan.

Pence, too, for his part, has been showing up in the early primary states, but not showing well in the polls. Some people in the party believe that he is disloyal but Trump’s true believers see him as an ally.

Would opposing him in the primaries cause him to lose out on being his running mate? Taking on Biden in the early Democratic debates did not kill Harris’ chances. Harris dropped out of the race before the primaries began, endorsing Biden early in March.

Sarah Huckabee and the New Generation of Resurgent Candidates: How Hillary Clinton and Sarah Cameliani Can Visit to Iraq with the First Soldiers

The awkwardness of this posturing may have been at work when Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee sanders gave the official Republican response to the State of the Union by Biden. That speaking slot has often been seen as an audition for statewide politicians with national ambitions. Sanders used it to deliver a strong message of condemnation against the Biden administration and against Democrats in general, especially on social issues.

She also included considerable personal information and referred to her role as the White House press secretary going to Iraq to visit troops with the president and first lady — all without ever without mentioning the name of the president she served. She was criticized by both conservative and Trump supporters.

It has not been established that the two have broken from each other. Her father, Mike Huckabee, who was also a governor of Arkansas, sought a safe distance. Huckabee did not get a job in the Trump administration, as he pursued his talk show and speaking engagements, despite his support for the president.

Other recognizable political personalities among Republican women might also find themselves divided between gratitude for Trump’s past help and a desire to be part of what Sanders called “a new generation of Republican leaders.”

Some, such as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, may be too closely associated with Trump already to have other options. Someone such as, for example, the New York-based congresswoman who replaced Cheney as the House GOP’s third-ranking leader, could have room for maneuver in either direction.

There also exists the possibility that a resurgent Trump might look beyond current officeholders for an outsider with no second thoughts as his running mate, someone with mediagenic appeal who is willing to embrace his “stolen election” obsession about 2020 with fervor to match his own.

Lake lost the governor’s race but still showed that she was the one who had to do it. Lake has been mentioned as a candidate for the Senate next year, but this weekend she will visit Iowa, where the first Republican caucuses are a year from now.

If Alaskans had not voted for a weird voting system the year before her loss in Congress, Sarah Cameliani would be their congressman right now.