But the question remains: Does Haley really believe Trump is cognitively unfit or is this simply another wrinkle in an infamously opportunistic candidate’s campaign?
To answer that, we should take a step back to determine the rationale for keeping up her campaign. At this point, trailing by more than 25 points or so in South Carolina, her home state, her chances of winning are slim to none. (Perhaps she is intent on simply accumulating delegates so that if Trump gets convicted and the party panics — the former likely, the latter unlikely — before the convention, she would be in a position to launch a fight on the convention floor.) Having taken on Trump so vociferously over the last few weeks, she surely will not be his pick for vice president.
The reason for her continued run, then, centers on either her attempt to stake out post-2024 ground as the leader of the anti-Trump forces or perhaps even to stage an independent run later this year. (The notion that she is doing this for the good of the country assumes, unrealistically, that she has the patriotism and moral fiber of a Liz Cheney.)
Whatever the reason for her persistence, Haley has staked her message and identity on making Trump unacceptable, even to Republican voters. That leaves her with three tasks over the remainder of her campaign.
First, she must qualify her previous statements that she would endorse Trump if she dropped out. During a recent interview with CNN’s Dana Bash, Haley was asked how she could still endorse Trump given the E. Jean Carroll verdicts, the criminal cases and his demand for absolute immunity. She explained she would not want “to see a President Kamala Harris,” seemingly suggesting that Biden wouldn’t survive a second term.
It’s time to “clarify” that, though she wouldn’t support Biden and Harris after Trump’s recent conduct, the former president’s observed mental decline and courtroom behavior now mean Haley might withhold her endorsement of Trump, as former New Jersey governor Chris Christie has done. She might say something along the lines: “Well, his behavior has given me real concerns. I would have to evaluate his fitness if and when I drop out.”
Would this look like a flip-flop? Certainly, but the alternative is to make her own claim that Trump is unfit look empty (or alternatively, make her appear cavalier about the country’s well-being). If she wants to maintain the rationale for her run and keep her options open, she cannot let on that he is still mentally stable enough to earn her endorsement.
Second, she needs to come clean on what she observed while working in Trump’s administration. A smattering of former advisers — including John Bolton, John F. Kelly, William P. Barr — and the slew of former aides who testified in front of the Jan. 6 House select committee have cited chapter and verse of his inability to process information, to put country over himself and to control his emotions. (That some of these people would nevertheless endorse him speaks to their own moral deficiency and tribalism.)
Well, Haley certainly observed him up close. Describing what evidence of his unfitness she witnessed, and what sentiments he expressed about our enemies — especially Russian President Vladimir Putin — would seem essential not only to making her case against him but also in explaining how she, despite her boss, defended national security. It is remarkable no interviewer has pressed her on the issue.
Lastly, Haley would do well to make clear — as Christie has — that the risk of Trump’s conviction in one or all cases is real. (She might even “clarify” that he would have to be acquitted before earning her endorsement.) Republican voters, as I have pointed out, are living in a fantasyland where they ignore the substantial possibility the party’s prohibitive front-runner could be convicted before the general election. Voters need to think long and hard before setting themselves up for potential catastrophe.
Imploring the party to devise a way to un-nominate him, if convicted, would press voters and party insiders to consider the magnitude of the problem. “We cannot run a convict and hope to win. We need to make sure our nominee is not running from a jail cell” would certainly draw attention to the party’s flirtation with political suicide.
Haley most likely has only a few weeks left in her campaign, perhaps in her political career. Unless she makes the case emphatically that Trump cannot become president because of his personal defects, provides information to help voters to reach that conclusion and forces the party to confront the danger of nominating a potential felon, her effort will be for naught. She will simply go down — as other former candidates and a slew of GOP officials will — as a cowardly enabler of a dangerous, disloyal and unfit authoritarian.
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