Nikki Haley is not giving up: despite her humiliating defeat in the primary in her state of South Carolina on Saturday and polls showing that her rival Donald Trump remains the top favorite for the Republican nomination, she insists on remaining in the race. career. Does the candidate hope to represent an alternative in case the billionaire is convicted in the middle of the campaign? Or is she already aiming for 2028, in a post-Trump Republican Party? France 24 takes stock of her possible motivations.
Nikki Haley has no chance of winning. However, she is still in the race. She, the last candidate to face Donald Trump in the Republican primaries, suffered another electoral setback on Saturday, February 24 in South Carolina. Perhaps the most personally painful setback, since she was governor of this state from 2011 to 2017.
However, this new defeat does not discourage her. Nikki Haley reiterated Saturday night that she will continue fighting. “I'm not going to give up this fight,” she told her supporters at a rally in Charleston. Even when? Only she knows.
I'm a woman of my word. I'm not giving up this fight when a majority of Americans disapprove of both Trump and Biden.
In the next 10 days, 21 states and territories will speak. They have the right to a real election, not a Soviet-style election with only one candidate. And I have…
— Nikki Haley (@NikkiHaley) February 25, 2024
After Michigan next Tuesday, then Idaho, Missouri and North Dakota, the next big election event will be Super Tuesday, March 5. Twenty states will then vote that, according to polls, should reinforce Donald Trump's dominance ahead of the party's nomination this summer.
All analysts agree: reversing this trend would be a miracle for Nikki Haley. So the question is more why it continues. And the first reason is obvious: because she has the means. The crux of any electoral campaign in the United States is money and Nikki Haley has no shortage of it.
He raised $11 million in January and his super PAC (Political Action Committee, an independent campaign organization) raised another $12 million during the same period. Figures higher than those of Donald Trump's campaign (8.8 million dollars raised in January by his campaign, and 7.3 million raised during his largest super PAC).
Plan B
But given its results, another question arises: how can a candidacy doomed to failure continue to receive so much money? What do these donors see in Nikki Haley? For some, it would be a plan B in the event of the death or conviction of Donald Trump – 77 years old and 91 criminal charges under his belt – before the inauguration. For others, in the long term, we need to think about the post-Trump era, and supporting Nikki Haley today helps set the stage for that.
The candidate, accustomed to the role of outsider, since throughout her career she has obtained several surprise electoral victories, answers journalists' questions without completely solving the mystery of her motivation.
First, she makes it clear: unlike the primary candidates who threw in the towel, she is not seeking a position in the future Trump administration. Nikki Haley, who served as UN ambassador under Donald Trump, was until recently a serious option on the billionaire's list of potential vice presidents.
However, since the beginning of the year, he has redoubled his attacks against the former head of state. The latter hardly appreciates the lack of loyalty and has made Nikki Haley his new target. He even has a new nickname for her: “Bird Brain.”
In a speech delivered on February 20 to reaffirm her permanence in the race, the latter certified that she did not fear “Trump's punishment.” “I don't feel the need to kiss the ring. My own political future is of no concern.”
“We are not in Russia”
If Nikki Haley remains in the race – at least until Super Tuesday, according to the AP agency, to which she gave an interview – it is simply out of principle, she says. “Ten days after South Carolina, 20 other states are voting. What I'm saying is this is not Russia. We don't want someone to come along and pocket 99% of the votes.”
To the AP reporter, who pointed out that she had no chance of winning those states, she replied: “Instead of asking me which states I'm going to win, why don't we ask how Donald Trump will win a presidential election after spending an entire year in the tribunals?
According to the candidate, a conviction before election day, November 5, is a real possibility. However, this is assuming that he could not be elected if convicted, which is incorrect on a legal level (nothing prohibits it in the Constitution) and remains to be proven on a political level.
Anyway, Nikki Haley wants to be honest. In her February 20 speech, she said she was “fighting” for what she “knows to be right.” “I don't think Donald Trump can beat Joe Biden,” she repeated Saturday afternoon, as she does from meeting to meeting. According to her, the United States deserves a better candidacy.
Does it make any sense?
Despite her stubbornness in challenging Trump in the primary, she indicated last July that she would ultimately support him if he won the nomination. This week, she dodged that question. Perhaps because she is aware that this is the most important contradiction inherent in her candidacy. If she believes so strongly in the reasons she stays in the race, why end up supporting a candidate she believes has no chance of winning?
The Nikki Haley case raises a broader question: that of the nature of the Republican Party. The rebel candidate is ready to line up once the primaries are over and that is why she believes that she still has her place within the “Grand Old Party”. She perhaps even secretly hopes, as her donors do, to position herself to lead her party to victory in 2028, in a post-Trump political life.
Interviewed by the New York Times, Kevin Madden, a former Republican consultant, believes that this campaign helped Nikki Haley become known in the country and build a useful network and infrastructure the day she runs for the White House. An analysis that seems to start from the postulate that the Republican Party would experience a kind of return to normality in 2028.
However, even if Donald Trump were no longer there, there is no guarantee that his voters, seduced by his anti-establishment profile, will once again bet on a more moderate and closer to the establishment candidate, like Nikki Haley. Everything happens as if the candidate were leading a crusade for the future of a party that is no longer hers. Others have broken her teeth before her.
Note in the original language
#Republican #primaries #Nikki #Haley #candidate #persists #Trump #playing