USAnalysis

Even in defeat, Nikki Haley refuses to bow to Donald Trump’s will

Even ardent Haley critics have acknowledged the gumption of the last six weeks, when she continued to campaign while isolated from the Republican party power base

Nikki Haley, Donald Trump's last major rival for the Republican nomination, has officially suspended her US presidential campaign. Video: C-Span

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Keith Duggan Washington Correspondent
Wed Mar 6 2024 - 17:19

After 16 months of exhausting criss-crossing through the cities and plains of the United States and millions of spoken words, Nikki Haley closed the door on her campaign for the Republican presidential nomination in just four minutes on Wednesday. Her parting words might yet serve as a reference to a crossing point when the historians parse this berserk year in American politics.

“The time has come to suspend my campaign,” Haley told her supporters in Charleston when she took to the podium just after 10 in the morning to warm, tired applause. Significantly, she did not say her campaign was ending and nor did she endorse Donald Trump even as she offered him guarded congratulations.

“In all likelihood Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee when our party convention meets in July. I congratulate him and wish him well. I wish anyone well who would be America’s president. Our country is too precious to let our differences divide us.

“But on this question, as she did on so many others, Margaret Thatcher provided some good advice when she said ‘never just follow the crowd. Always make up your own mind.’ It is now up to Donald Trump to earn the votes of our party and beyond it of those who did not support him, and I hope he does that. At its best, politics is about bringing people into your cause, not turning them away and our conservative time badly needs more people.”

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Trump has hardly disguised his vexation with Haley’s obstructive presence and her message is unlikely to enhance his mood at the breakfast bar in Mar-a-Lago.

In fact, while Haley was speaking, the Trump camp released a message from the former president that could be summed up as: fat chance.

“Nikki Haley got trounced last night in record-setting fashion despite the fact that Democrats for reasons unknown are allowed to vote in Vermont and other Republican primaries. Much of her money came from the radical left as did many of her votes. At this stage I hope she stays in the race and fights it out until the end. I would further like to invite all the Haley supporters to join the greatest movement in the history of our nation. Biden is the enemy. He is destroying our country.”

Previous “rivals” fell easily and compliantly at his feet in this primary race. Haley’s message was close to a dare while her emphasised assertion that she is “a conservative Republican” was hardly incidental. Her political life began when she was chosen as a Tea Party candidate; now Haley is the public face of more traditional Republican values.

The tone between Haley’s morning concession speech and the bleak, dystopian portrait of America that Trump had conjured up in his Tuesday night victory speech was marked. Even ardent Haley critics have acknowledged the impressive gumption of the last six weeks, when she continued to campaign while isolated from the Grand Old Party power base. Trump, her onetime champion, ridiculed, insulted and finally ignored her. She leaves as the first Republican female candidate to have won a state; she took Vermont on Tuesday night and the District of Columbia at the weekend.

A stark outsider when the Republican race took shape, she grew her support base from less than 1 per cent to become the last person standing against the tornado of loyalism Trump can generate by clicking his fingers. Her resilience places the meek withdrawals of candidates such as Ron DeSantis, Tim Scott and Vivek Ramaswamy in a comparison that falls between acquiescent and spineless. And in her closing words, Haley offered a tantalising glimpse of a world view radically different from the advertised intentions of Trump. Once again, the role of America in world affairs was, she argued, a moral obligation.

“Our world is on fire because of America’s retreat. Standing by our allies in Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan is a moral imperative. But it is also more than that. If we retreat further, there will be more war, not less. As we stand strong for the cause of freedom, we must bind together as Americans. We must turn away from the darkness of hatred and division. I will continue to promote all those values.”

Not that many could argue with her position that Congress, in its current form, “is dysfunctional and only getting worse. It is filled with followers, not leaders. Term limits for Washington politicians are needed now more than ever.”

She avoided the red-hot subject of immigration and border control except to allude, in her opening words, to the fact that just last week, her own mother, “a first-generation immigrant, got to vote for her daughter, for president. Only in America.” It chimed with the story that America has, with some justification, told itself for over a century: that it is a place where it is possible for the obscure and the ordinary to rise like comets. Haley’s campaign ends in a defeat that always seemed inevitable, but she takes with her an enhanced sense of independence because of her refusal to bow to Trump’s will.

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