Steven Senne / AP
Republican presidential candidate former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley speaks at a New Hampshire primary night rally, in Concord, N.H., Tuesday Jan. 23, 2024.
Sunday, Jan. 28, 2024 | 2 a.m.
Donald Trump and his friends in the Republican Party establishment are afraid of the passionate conservatism of former U.N. Ambassador and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley.
They are afraid that she will continue gaining momentum and that Trump will be forced to debate Haley, who is clearly his intellectual and rhetorical superior.
After making Trump look like a covfefe-ing fool on a national stage and exposing his sharp mental decline, the ex-president and his handlers are terrified of occupying the same stage as Haley because they know he is a loser who will lose again.
So, Trump is hiding beneath the skirts of his GOP protectors. No amount of badly applied bronzer can obscure his pale terror at the idea of having to face Haley. He’s not man enough to debate her.
Haley outperformed polling expectations in New Hampshire by a significant margin, finishing just 11% behind the disgraced former president. That means Trump netted only 3 more delegates than Haley in a primary process that requires more than 1,200 delegates to win the Republican nomination for president. Only 61 total delegates have been awarded thus far.
Only two of the past five winners of the Iowa Republican caucuses have gone on to secure the party’s nomination. Meanwhile, Ronald Reagan lost the Iowa caucuses in 1980 and not only became the GOP nominee but steamrolled Jimmy Carter in the general election, winning 92% of the Electoral College votes.
The New Hampshire Republican primary is only slightly better, with just three of the past five contested GOP primaries being won by the eventual nominee.
No matter what click-baiting internet and cable news networks might be saying, a path still exists for Haley to win the nomination — a path that starts with a strong showing in the Nevada Republican presidential preference primary that sends a message to the rest of the country.
She’s already outperformed a field of a bunch of others, and now only one cowardly man stands in the way of her nomination.
With Haley rising fast, Trump and his servants on the Republican National Committee (RNC) know that time is against them. The longer the primary process lasts, the more likely it is that Haley will turn the tide. Simply put, the more Republican voters look at her, the more they like her.
That’s why, last week, RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel called for Republicans to unite behind Trump even though the primary process is just getting started. Barely 36 hours later, McDaniel’s call to unity inspired an RNC committeeman and close Trump ally, David Bossie, to submit a draft resolution that would declare Trump the presumptive Republican nominee, eliminating the opportunity for Republican voters beyond Iowa and New Hampshire to have a voice or a choice in their nominee.
You read that right. The RNC is so anti-democratic that it didn’t even want Republicans to have a chance to vote on the candidate of their choice for the nomination.
Facing public outcry, Trump and the RNC leadership distanced themselves from Bossie’s proposal after reportedly encouraging it. But their words are meaningless as they have yet to distance themselves from Nevada’s rigged GOP caucuses.
Trump knows this. After winning the New Hampshire primary, he took to the stage and said, “I’m pleased to announce we just won Nevada, 100%.” The statement celebrates the actions of Nevada GOP chairman Michael McDonald, who after being indicted for his role in the fake Trump elector scandal decided to host a private nominating party and pushed through a rule prohibiting candidates who participate in state-administered primary elections from also appearing on the Nevada caucuses ballots.
Even after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis dropped out of the race and it became clear that Trump would be effectively unopposed in the caucuses, McDonald still did not put Haley on the ballot. He could have. We know the ballot wasn’t print-locked yet because McDonald was able to remove DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy. But giving GOP voters a choice by adding Haley was out of the question.
If Trump and McDonald’s blatant manipulation of the ballot wasn’t enough, by hosting private nominating caucuses McDonald and Trump eliminated access to almost every legal or administrative process for preventing, investigating or curing disputed or duplicate ballots. If voter fraud, intimidation, manipulation or other irregularities are discovered after the caucuses have concluded, there are no remedies available to address them, and it’s likely that none of Nevada’s laws regarding public elections would apply.
As a result, the Nevada Republican caucuses are the least secure and least democratic electoral events in modern history, and the Silver State. McDonald’s clumsily constructed sham election will make Trump a laughingstock. He’s not only too cowardly to face Haley in a debate, he’s too cowardly to face her in the caucuses.
Nevertheless, while the outcome of Nevada Republican caucuses may be predetermined, our participation in the Republican presidential nominating process still has meaning.
Which brings us back to Haley.
Unlike Trump and his violent mob of MAGA misfits, Haley has demonstrated a respect for democratic norms, processes and institutions.
She is direct and forthright in her condemnation of political violence, honest about her own party’s role in creating many of the challenges of today and is a genuine expert in the field of foreign relations — a knowledge base that is more in need in the world right now than at any time since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Despite being appointed by Trump to serve as ambassador to the United Nations, she acted largely independently and stood up to Trump long after most of her GOP colleagues began kissing the ring of their emperor. Character matters, and Haley was always her own person and stood apart from Trump’s careening insanity. If we knew nothing else about Haley, that would be impressive.
That’s not to say that we agree with her on all or even most of her policy positions.
Her recent calls to pass a national abortion ban are abhorrent, as were her attempts to court racists and Confederate sympathizers last month by failing to identify slavery as the primary cause of the U.S. Civil War. And her disgusting rhetoric last year blaming the crisis of suicide among teen girls on transgender kids is a new low, even by GOP standards.
Those statements, along with her calling for a ban on school curriculum that discusses the history or legacy or race and racism in the United States, reveal Haley’s willingness to use the most vulnerable among us as steppingstones on the footpath to power.
Her record on several other issues is equally troubling, including her aggressive advocacy to eliminate the corporate income tax and refusal to expand Medicaid.
Despite these obvious moral failings, Haley still believes in democracy, is opposed to political violence and is the only remaining candidate who can beat the former president for the GOP nomination. For Republicans who want to see their party regain both the presidency and normality, she is also the only GOP candidate with better-than-even odds of defeating Biden in the general election.
Haley’s beliefs are consistent with Republican leaders throughout much of the last century, and Republicans who believe in a functioning democracy should offer their support to her at the state-administered primary election Feb. 6.
Moreover, Haley in office could be expected to actually encourage bipartisan efforts to move the country forward, while never wavering from a productive conservative viewpoint. GOP senators, now lining up and endorsing Trump out of fear, are no doubt secretly wishing for a Haley presidency.
Unlike the private rigged caucuses that deny Nevada Republicans a voice, primary elections are a direct and proven secure reflection of the will of voters that can’t be manipulated by made-up rules that stack the deck in favor of one candidate. Primaries also have established mechanisms to ensure that every vote is counted and that no vote is counted more than once. And they have clear laws protecting against voter fraud.
By participating in the state-administered GOP primary and providing Nikki Haley with overwhelming support, Nevada’s Republicans can send a clear message to the state party that they will not allow their voices to be silenced or their votes to go uncounted while telling Republicans across the country that the Silver State has not given up on democracy and neither should they.
A heavy primary vote for Haley would also signal to the nation’s Republican voters — half of whom don’t want another Trump candidacy — that there is an alternative and she’s a solid Republican choice and they should support her. After all, if Haley makes Trump quiver in fear, that sounds like a tough cookie the Republicans should like.
