Nikki Haley: The First Presidential Candidate to Run for the 2024 Republican Presidential Prefecturum and the Challenge to Running for a President

Haley is the first Republican to officially announce her intention to challenge President Donald Trump for the Republican nomination in the summer of 2024.

Sources familiar with the matter say that she is sending invites to her supporters to announce a special event in the next few days. The precise details of her launch have yet to be revealed. One source believed that she could signal the announcement will be made with video soon, but that isn’t set in stone.

The Post and Courier was first to report the date and location of the expected announcement, and The Washington Post was first to report details of Haley’s preparations.

I first met Nikki Haley during her initial run for governor of South Carolina in 2010 at a luncheon at Magnolia’s, a Myrtle Beach buffet-style restaurant popular with the locals. Though she had served in the state’s House of Representatives for several years, I didn’t know her well – and neither did most people in the state.

When you are thinking about a run for president, you should look at the current situation and see if there is need for new leadership. The second question is, am I that person that could be that new leader?” she told Fox News.

Haley lost the moral high ground she once had over him, after announcing that she would run against Trump for president in 2024.

One of the defining early questions of the 2024 presidential election seems about to be answered with some of the ex-president’s potential rivals for the Republican nomination making clear moves toward the race.

Donald Trump had a flurry of activity last weekend after he slammed another potential rival: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who he claims is showing disloyalty by considering his own run. This prompted a veiled counter-punch from the rising star of Republican politics, who noted pointedly that he – unlike you know who – had won reelection.

The only true test of political viability comes a year before ballots are cast and Donald Trump remains the only declared GOP candidate. It is crucial that the first few months of the Republican race are important because they will shape what is already sure to be a chaotic campaign that could be a sign of things to come.

It wouldn’t be appropriate to say that his rivals feel weakness due to the former president’s deep bonds with Republicans who decide primaries. But Trump’s so-so fundraising to date, his low-energy launch last year and his infrequent campaign appearances underscore his electoral liabilities, especially after his often disastrous midterm interventions.

The winner take-all nature of republican primaries allows candidates with a small number of votes to build up large delegate leads in a crowded field.

In other words, if Trump can split the opposition, he can win the primary, but that’s no guarantee for the general election given that the twice-impeached former president left Washington in disgrace after trying to steal an election and fomenting a mob attack on the US Capitol.

Ultimately, a dust-up between the former president and any Republican challenger is inevitable. What matters is that Haley is a formidable candidate who brings the executive experience from her days as governor as well as the foreign policy experience from her time as ambassador. She is the right candidate at the right moment for Republicans to rally behind because of her ability to bring people together, her background as a mom and a military spouse and her track record of fighting the uphill battle of running against old white men.

The most fundamental question that Haley will face is if the Republican base is interested in what she plans to sell.

She is seeking a nomination for the values of that party and her credentials are formidable but less so because of that. Is there any market for a more multicultural, less strident delivery vehicle in the GOP for Trump? After all, the ex-president’s bombast, occasional profanity and laceration of liberal government and media elites create more of an emotional rather than a directly ideological connection with his biggest fans.

Look at the inconvenient record. Here is Rebranded Republican Nikki Haley, who told Politico she was “triggered” by the 2015 slaughter of nine parishioners inside Charleston’s Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, that she was disgusted by Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential candidacy, that she was “disgusted” by Trump’s treatment of Mike Pence. Redblooded Republican Haley is one of the few people she trusts, who in earlier interviews for the same 2021, Politico magazine says that she is looking at the possibility of Trump being impeached, and emphasizes that he is a good man.

For instance, after leaving the administration on good terms, she rebuked her party for following Trump down a “path he shouldn’t have” taken with his election denialism that led to the January 6, 2021, insurrection. But with Trump still a powerful figure in the GOP, she repositioned herself in October 2021.

Some are questioning how she’ll build up a wide support base for the nomination when she’s been casting around for the GOP sweet spot.

“I’ve spent time in Iowa and New Hampshire. He said at a forum in Washington, DC, that this is not random. We are trying to figure our way through this. It is an unbelievably momentous decision to say you believe you should be the leader of the United States of America,” he added.

A Tale of Two Relativistic Candidates: The Case For a Woman Who Was Born Innocent before He Hecked Innocence

Pompeo appears to have an even more acute positioning issue than Haley, since he was the ex-president’s effective enforcer at the State Department and while director of the CIA, and shared many of the populist, nationalist foreign policy instincts of his former boss. Almost everything that a GOP primary voter could get from Pompeo, they might be able to get from Trump, although the West Point graduate and former Kansas congressman would no doubt argue that he boasts a calmer temperament.

To be clear, Haley never really had the moral high ground; she just created the illusion of having it. She is as politically ambitious as any man or woman who has considered themselves qualified enough to lead the world’s most powerful nation. The principles have often seemed unimportant or dependent on circumstance.

Editor’s Note: Gavin J. Smith is a public relations professional and political strategist. He is CEO of Gavin James Public Affairs, a public relations and marketing consulting firm in Lexington, South Carolina. During the Trump administration, he was press secretary for the Department of Labor and deputy communications director for the Department of Health and Human Services. Gavin also previously served as an intern and interim executive assistant in the Executive Office of South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley. The views are of his own. View more opinion on CNN. The piece is updated to reflect the newest news.

Stephens If the subtext of a DeSantis candidacy is that he is Trump shorn of the former president’s personal flaws, the subtext of Haley’s is that she is the Republican Party shorn of the former president. A woman, a minority, an immigrant background, a self-made person: Without having to say a word, she embodies everything Trump’s vision of America isn’t. She also would be less vulnerable to Democratic attack lines about Republican bigotry.

When she took on the longest serving Republican in the South Carolina House of Representatives in 2004, Haley was an unknown because she had run a grassroots campaign that positioned her as a fresh-faced underdog.

Haley went from being on life support to contender after the appearance in a campaign ad byPalin that called Haley a strong pro-life, pro-second amendment, pro-development, conservative reformer.

In the aftermath of the 2015 mass-shooting at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, Haley worked tirelessly to unify our state and successfully led the efforts to remove the Confederate Flag from the South Carolina State House grounds.

Later that year, she was calm and composed leading the state when Hurricane Matthew made landfall and historic floods wreaked havoc on residents of our state.

When she resigned in 2018, she was one of the few Trump administration officials to stay in the good graces of the former president, with the New York Times editorial page praising Haley as “that rarest of Trump appointees: one who can exit the administration with her dignity largely intact.”

South Carolina Gov. Issac Bailey: The Man in Trumpland is Black and If He Breaks The Rules, He Will Retire

Editor’s Note: Issac Bailey is a longtime journalist based in South Carolina and the Batten Professor for Communication Studies at Davidson College. His book was “Why Didn’t We Riot?” The man in Trumpland is black. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. More opinions on CNN.

The luncheon was being hosted because of the scandal in South Carolina, in which the governor traveled to see his mistress and lied to his staff about it. After listening to Haley give a fairly routine stump speech, I asked Haley, if she won, would she resign as governor if she made as big a misstep as Sanford had.

As governor of South Carolina, she never messed up like Sanford, who also had strong presidential prospects before his escapades. But she messed up when she decided to embrace Donald Trump – rather than keeping him at arm’s length – providing further proof that even the most talented Republicans were willing to bend the knee to the former president.

Donald Trump is still the top contender for the nomination despite Haley’s ambitions. Even after a loss in 2020 and a bad midterm cycle for Trump-backed candidates, his most loyal supporters will not abandon him.

Health officials in her administration told me at the time that there were simply better options, but it was clear to close observers in the state it was primarily about political expedience – especially when Haley declared that she would not expand Medicaid on President Barack Obama’s watch.

40% of the state’s uninsured adults would have received health care under an expansion, and low-income workers who are based in Horry County, home to a resort destination known for its seafood, would have been added to the coverage.

According to a White House study, expansion could have saved hundreds of lives in the state each year. A University of South Carolina study estimated that the state could add 44,000 jobs by 2020 if the federal government expanded its Medicaid program.

A Memorino on an American Lifesaver: The South Carolina No-Go Theoret Campaign During the 2016 GOP Session

Haley, a self-avowed pro-life advocate, stood in the way of life saving healthcare reform, exposing her hypocrisy on an issue that has defined the current Republican Party.

Her stance on taxes wasn’t much better. Haley used to talk about the tax cuts as if they were a conservative talking point. She did not mind that fellow Republicans said the tax cuts would be too steep.

Many of her supporters point to her handling of the Confederate flag as a sign of her commitment to the people of South Carolina and the Black community.

Her approach seemed to work. When she left her position at the UN, she was not alienating those who consider themselves moderates or Never Trumpers. As a South Carolina voter who had left the Republican party, I was interested in what she had done.

Haley defended South Carolina against accusations that the flying of the flag of traitors who tried to establish a new country built on the basis of permanent black enslavement was hurting the state’s image. You lose the identity politics that I win-tails.

When you elected the first woman of Indian descent to be governor, we fixed a lot, said Haley during the debate. That was a huge message when we appointed the first African-American senator,Tim Scott.

Brooks Her immigrant story is a good one, her decision to get rid of the Confederate flag showed common decency. On the other hand, there was an awful lot of complicity and silence when she served under Trump.

Mike Pence: a Republican Senator’s View of the 2016 Mid-term Election and the 2020 Superbowl: The Kansas City Star’s Mike Pompeo

Mike Pence. The former vice president has stumped for candidates in both the mid-term election and the early-voting states. But his popularity with Republican voters has fallen since he refused to try to block the 2020 election, and he is reluctant to criticize Mr. Trump. Mr. Pence doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to make a decision.

Mike Pompeo. Mr. Pompeo has an imposing résumé: congressman, C.I.A. director, secretary of state. A new memoir allowed him to tour and test out a presidential message. The Kansas City Star said the book was similar to a man at a bar trying to show his strength. Mr. Pompeo has said that he would decide on a bid “in the next handful of months.”

Other Republicans. Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, former Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland and Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire are seen as weighing 2024 bids. The possible field is rounded out by Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, Gov. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia and Liz Cheney, who lost her House seat after helping lead the Capitol riot inquiry.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/15/upshot/nikki-haley-republicans-president.html

How to Survive the Attack of Donald J. Haley: The Case Against Unstable White-Right Parties in the era of the Cold War

There will be plenty of other opportunities to dust off the old Reagan playbook if she so chooses. She could argue that lower government spending, free trade and more legal immigration is the textbook solution to high inflation and a soaring national debt. She could even argue that Mr. Trump’s big government spending and trade wars helped contribute to inflation in the first place. Neoliberalism took off in the 1980s for a reason, after all.

There are clear opportunities for foreign policy. With Chinese balloons in the air and Russian troops advancing on the ground, a hawkish candidate should find it straightforward to argue for higher military spending and closer cooperation with allies — and to argue against cozying up to the likes of Vladimir Putin. Here again, it’s easy to imagine the opportunity to attack Mr. Trump.

The assessment of Mr. Bidens health coincides with the debate about nominating someone for a second term who will be 86 years old when he leaves office.

“The president always says this, which is, ‘Watch me,’” Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, said Thursday before the memo from the doctor was released to the public. He keeps up with his schedule, and you can see that if you watch him.

Dr. O’Connor said the stiffness is the result of “significant spinal arthritis, mild post-fracture foot arthritis and a mild sensory peripheral neuropathy of the feet,” for which the president undergoes physical therapy to regain more flexibility.

Haley, who was running for South Carolina governor at the time, made the comments during an interview with the now defunct “The Palmetto Patriots,” a group which included a one-time board member of a White nationalist organization.

The interview was posted on the group’s YouTube at the time and resurfaced over the years, most recently by Patriots Takes, an anonymous Twitter account that monitors right wing extremism. CNN reviewed the interviews as they looked at Haley’s political career.

Robert Slimp is a pastor and a board member of the Council of Conservative Citizens, a White nationalist group. The CCC is a self-described White-rights group that opposes non-White immigration and advocates a White nationalist ideology. The group reportedly inspired Charleston shooter Dylann Roof, the White nationalist who killed nine people at a historically Black church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015.

On Secession in the Confederacy and the First State to Secede: South Carolina, Black History Month and Black Hole Remnants

When asked about secession, Haley said that while she believed under the Constitution that states have the right to secede from the rest of the country. When asked if she would support the seccession of South Carolina, which was the first state to secede during the Civil War, she said she did not think “it’s gonna get to that point.”

Haley, who is one of those that does not believe it will get to that point, said she might encourage governors to go to the federal government to settle conflicts over federal intrusion.

“Yes, it’s part of a traditional – you know, it’s part of tradition,” she said. “And so, when you look at that, if you have the same as you have Black History Month and you have Confederate History Month and all of those. As long as it’s done where it is in a positive way and not in a negative way, and it doesn’t go to harm anyone, and it goes back to where it focuses on the traditions of the people that are wanting to celebrate it, then I think it’s fine.

“I mean, again, I think that as we look in government, as we watch government, you have different sides, and I think that you see passions on different sides, and I don’t think anyone does anything out of hate,” Haley said. “I think what they do is, they do things out of tradition and out of beliefs of what they believe is right.”

She said that one side of the Civil War was fighting for tradition, and the other side was fighting for change. “You know, at the end of the day, what I think we need to remember is that you know, everyone is supposed to have their rights, everyone is supposed to be free, everyone is supposed to have the same freedoms as anyone else. I think it was tradition versus change, you know what I mean.

She said that she believed that the creator endowed everyone with the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. ‘And so, when I look at it that way, I look at that’s still what needs to be what guides everybody, so that we make sure that we keep those three things in check.”