The fallacy is strong here. A report out Saturday shows that former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who has won about 3% in the Republican presidential primary polls, looks poised to launch a quixotic bid for the Oval Office next month anyway.
David Drucker, writer for The Dispatch, claims Haley’s top aides are poised to take on key campaign roles once Haley gives the go-ahead. It already has the necessary infrastructure through its prominent political action committee and political nonprofit to build the ground game and campaign operations.
If Haley runs for president as expected, such a move would mark a broken promise to former President Donald Trump. Haley has previously promised to comply with Trump if he wants to run for re-election.
Here is the story from The shipping:
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Nikki Haley plans to challenge Donald Trump for supremacy at the top of the Republican Party—and could officially announce her 2024 presidential bid next month.
Haley owns the architecture of a strong campaign for the White House through the political action committee Stand For America and Stand For America, a 501(c)(4) political nonprofit organization. Trusted senior associates are already onboard, ready to step into positions managing political strategy, fundraising, communications, public outreach and policy development.
“She’s definitely in a position to launch,” Dave Wilson, president of the Palmetto Family Council in Columbia, South Carolina, said of the 51-year-old former United States ambassador to the United Nations. “The rocket is fueled and ready. I think we’re just in the countdown now.”
Haley—whose extensive resume includes a term and a half as governor of South Carolina, a key swing state—also comes to the 2024 race with a turnkey campaign message.
In 2016, Haley braced for Trump’s predicted loss to Hillary Clinton with a statement that read in part, “After three straight presidential losses, my fellow Republicans must make changes.” As I reported in In Trump’s Shadow: The Battle for 2024 and the Future of the GOP, the idea was to establish the then-governor as a national figure who could revive a party beset by turmoil.
Everything is not different today, after three disappointing elections with Trump at the head of the Republican Party. “We lost the last seven out of eight votes for president. It’s time to bring in a new generation,” she told Fox News’ Bret Baier earlier this month. The past, meet the prologue.
South Carolina Republican insiders who have followed her career closely, as well as national party operatives watching 2024, say several factors motivated Haley’s early move. Chief among them: reconnecting with grassroots conservatives at home in South Carolina, the state that votes third on the GOP presidential nominating calendar and the first state to vote in the heavily Republican South.
The Dispatch article left unsaid that Haley’s capricious and calculating personality has already destroyed her credibility with the Republican base.
Back in 2016, she endorsed Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) for president just before the South Carolina primary and said this during a rally for the Florida senator:
“Donald Trump is everything I taught my kids not to do in kindergarten.”
But after he won the presidency, Haley managed to trick her way into the UN ambassadorship. She served two years before leaving after Democrats won the 2018 midterm elections.
After the 2020 election, Haley gave the now infamous interview to Politically heralding Trump’s political career weeks after the January 6, 2021 protests at the US Capitol. Here are her money quotes about Trump:
“I think he will find himself increasingly isolated. I think his business is suffering at this point. I think it has lost any political viability it should have had. I think he lost his social media, which meant the world to him. I mean, I think he lost the things that could have really moved him.”
“He will not run for federal office again.”
“We have to admit that he let us down. He took a path that he should not have followed, nor should we have listened to him. And we must not let that ever happen again.”
She later pathetically begged to meet with Trump to make amends after she recovered politically. Trump refused her request.
Despite her low poll results, Haley could secure the financial backing of a handful of Republican billionaire neoconservatives and perhaps Democrats to keep her presidential fantasy alive for a few months. Gateway Pundit previously reported that Republican billionaires Paul Singer, Miriam Adelson and Stanley Drukenmiller have made donations to Stand For America, Inc. in 2019. A wealthy Democratic couple, Vivek and Lakshmi Garipalli also made a whopping donation of $1 million.
We can only hope they aren’t stupid enough to burn their money like the Joker in The Dark Knight. The sooner Haley’s political career takes off, the better.