Nikki Haley’s dilemma: How to diminish Trump without alienating Republican voters
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Mrs Nikki Haley has sought to gently remind voters of former president Trump’s legal peril.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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WASHINGTON – Mrs Nikki Haley, searching for a message to dent Donald Trump’s appeal with Republican voters, took him to task on Jan 28 over the US$83 million (S$111.3 million) verdict
But she stopped short of saying the New York civil verdict and award disqualified him from returning to the presidency, leaving that judgment to voters.
Four weeks before what could be the decisive Republican primary in South Carolina, Mrs Haley is trying to navigate an extremely narrow and treacherous path, finding a way to diminish Trump’s hold on the party’s electorate without decisively turning conservative voters against her the way they have destroyed other Trump critics.
Her jabs at him have endeared her to donors in both parties, swelling her coffers and keeping her in the race. But a string of different messages has so far done little to actually attract voters.
“This fires her up,” said Representative Ralph Norman, the one South Carolina Republican member of the House backing Mrs Haley.
“She’s in this thing. The pundits say get out. Why? We’ve only had two primaries. Now, if she gets blitzed in South Carolina, do it, but she’s the candidate. She makes that call.”
Appearing on NBC’s Meet The Press, Mrs Haley, a former governor of South Carolina and Trump’s first ambassador to the United Nations, continued her recent, more aggressive criticism of the overwhelming front runner for the Republican presidential nomination.
She has taken the opportunity in the weeks since her disappointing losses in Iowa and New Hampshire
She also went directly after Trump’s “rants”, saying that a “distracted” president is exactly what foreign adversaries want to see.
Mrs Haley has furthermore sought to gently remind voters of the former president’s legal peril,
“I absolutely trust the jury and I think that they made their decision based on the evidence,” Mrs Haley said in her interview, as Trump continued to call for “complete immunity” from prosecutions and maintaining his innocence on his social media platform.
She added: “The American people will take him off the ballot. I think that’s the best way to go forward, is not let him play the victim. Let him play the loser.”
Trump’s attacks on Mrs Haley – mocking her clothing, calling her “bird brain” and saying she is “almost a radical left Democrat” – appear to have bolstered her fund raising, primed her willingness to stay in the race and won her some sympathy within the party.
The super political action committee backing her, SFA Fund, announced on Jan 25 that it had raised US$50.1 million in the second half of 2023, eclipsing the amount raised by the main super political action committee (PAC) backing Trump.
That sum would keep Mrs Haley in for “the long haul”, said Mr Mark Harris, SFA’s chief strategist.
Mrs Haley on Jan 28 resisted even contemplating departing the race. While she said she needed to improve on her second-place 43 per cent finish in New Hampshire after the South Carolina primary on Feb 24, she did not say she needed to win her home state.
“I need to show that I’m stronger in South Carolina than New Hampshire,” she said. “Does that have to be a win? I don’t think that necessarily has to be a win. It certainly has to be close.”
Ms Karoline Leavitt, a Trump campaign spokesperson, responded: “Once again, Nikki cannot name a state that she can win.”
Mrs Haley’s search for a message is proving to be extremely difficult with a Republican primary electorate inclined to give Trump the benefit of the doubt, said Mr Dave Carney, a conservative political consultant who watched her cycle through messages in New Hampshire.
Mrs Haley has been trying out a series of arguments for why she is a better candidate than Trump: She has raised his legal troubles, which are many; she has offered electability – she, not Trump, would beat Mr Biden handily, as polls suggest; she has said it is time for a new generation of leadership, an end-run around his age, telling Republicans primed by conservative commentators to believe Mr Biden has crossed into senility that Trump is no different; and she has paired both men as beltway players.
“Trump has become an insider,” she said on Jan 28. “That’s what it comes down to. He is more interested in satisfying the elected class than he is in satisfying the people.”
That “elected class” has shown no inclination to back away from Trump, who has now been held liable for sexually assaulting Ms Carroll, been ordered by a New York jury to pay her US$83 million in actual and punitive damages for defaming her, and next up, faces judgment on charges of business fraud that could cost him much of his New York real estate empire.
On Jan 28, Trump was on social media again railing against New York Attorney-General Letitia James, “who sat comfortably and confidently in Court with her shoes off, arms folded, a Starbucks Coffee, and a BIG smile on her face” anticipating the next big decision against him, which he pre-emptively dismissed as a “hoax” from a “rigged trial”. NYTIMES
