Before Haley’s South Carolina loss, she told an interviewer: “It’s not normal to mock members of the military. It’s not normal to spend $50 million worth of campaign contributions on personal court cases. It’s not normal to side with a tyrant and a dictator who kills his political opponents. … None of this is normal.” She might have added: It’s not normal to be held liable in three trials for collectively more than a half-billion dollars for exaggerating his wealth, in one case, and, in the others, for defaming a woman he sexually assaulted.
If Haley stays in the race for at least a couple of weeks, through Super Tuesday, she could accomplish four things. First, it would force Trump, already bleeding money to pay lawyers, to spend more resources. Second, she would force more of the electorate — independents, soft Republicans and Democrats persistently whining about President Biden’s age — to confront the reality of a possible Trump second term. Third, she could give more time for the Supreme Court to issue rulings on Trump’s disqualification and immunity, pushing voters to decide if they want to nominate someone who staged an insurrection and faces at least one criminal trial before the next election. Finally, winning and holding on to a significant number of delegates might give her a leg up in case delegates at the Republican National Convention in July get buyer’s remorse, especially if Trump has been convicted.
Though she is unlikely to spare the country from a third election with Trump on the ballot, it is worth pondering if Haley ever had a chance against Trump. Arguably, she wasted most of the election season refusing to attack him, agreeing to endorse him if he were the nominee and squabbling with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. That got her nowhere. Moreover, it prevented her from consolidating the anyone-but-Trump vote.
Certainly, there is no guarantee an alternative approach would have been more successful. However, she might have led off with her anti-Trump message beginning in 2023 and then supplemented it in three critical ways.
First, instead of spending time and energy attacking Republicans other than Trump, she could have made a determined and robust effort to persuade independents and even Democrats to vote in the primaries. She was never going to get Trump-friendly voters. What she needed was to expand the pool of anti-Trump voters in the GOP primaries.
She might have reached such voters with a plea that our democracy is at stake. She has a persuasive argument that leaving him on the ballot sets us up for another “big lie” and another insurrection if he loses. Savvy Never Trump advisers might have helped her find and persuade these voters to support her during the primaries. This strategy surely could have distinguished her from other contenders, drawn media coverage (Something totally new!) and pulled in more campaign donations. (She has already gotten help from some Democrats; she might have gotten more.)
Second, Haley could have turned up her Trump foreign policy attacks to full volume. She might have traveled to the war zone in Ukraine, pledged to help it remain independent and dared Trump to do the same. (If his indictments prevented him from traveling out of the country, well, just imagine how humiliating that might have been!) Other Republicans, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), have made the trip. It is odd Haley never did.
She also might have explicitly denounced Trump as more loyal to Russian President Vladimir Putin than to U.S. national security interests. Why has Russia repeatedly weighed into elections on Trump’s side? She could even have shared any of her experiences during his presidency, when she served as U.N. ambassador, that reflected his misplaced loyalties and confusion about which side (democracy or tyranny?) we are on.
Finally, in the wake of the first E. Jean Carroll verdict, Haley could have adopted Sen. Mitt Romney’s (R-Utah) posture. In February, Romney finally said what no other elected Republican had summoned the nerve to articulate: “I will not be voting for President Trump. I must admit that I find sexual assault to be a line I will not cross in the people I select to be my president.”
Yes, go there. The moment in May 2023 that the jury in the first Carroll trial found him liable for sexual abuse, Haley could have begun referring to him as an “adjudicated sexual abuser.” And her language might have gotten even more harsh in July, when Judge Lewis A. Kaplan held that it was appropriate to call his conduct “rape.”
Correctly identifying him as “an adjudicated rapist” at debates and in interviews might have at the very least gotten through the right-wing media bubble that protects MAGA voters from bad news about their cult hero.
We will never know if Haley might have been successful running a totally unorthodox campaign, relying equally (if not more) on independent voters or Democrats as she did on anti-Trump Republicans. At the very least, she might have provoked a Trumpian meltdown, forced Republican voters watching the debate to hear hard truths and compelled journalists to report that Trump furthers the agenda of an American enemy and has, according to a New York jury, raped a woman.
Well, perhaps it is not too late for her to make those points and work in a quick trip to Ukraine before Super Tuesday. What has she got to lose?
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