The 2024 Republican Party presidential primaries and caucuses have become a contest between the former president Donald Trump (*1946) and his former U.N. ambassador and former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley (*1972).
In the 2024 Iowa Republican Party presidential caucuses with their largely white and evangelical voters, Donald Trump managed to win 98 out of the state’s 99 counties. The result was clear with Donald Trump ending up with 51% of the vote, ahead of the Florida governor Ron DeSantis — who later dropped out of the race to the White House — with 21.2% and Nikki Haley with 19.1%; no other candidate could win over 10% of the vote.
However, Iowa has 2,083,979 registered voters, including 631,689 registered voters of the Democratic Party and 718,901 registered voters of the Republican Party. At the GOP presidential caucuses, only the most energized voters showed up — large white evangelicals. On January 15, 2024 Donald Trump won 56,260 votes! That’s a tiny fraction of the overall Iowa electorate.
In the 2024 New Hampshire Republican Party primary on January 23, Donald Trump was again the winner with 54.3% of the vote, ahead of Nikki Haley with 43.3%. However, New Hampshire showed that Nikki Haley can count on moderate Republicans (most of them have left the party or are not very active anymore) and independents. If you want to win the presidential election, you have to be able to attract moderates and independents.
In a town hall meeting in New Hampshire, Nikki Haley “forgot” to mention slavery as a cause of the Civil War. Nevertheless, if it comes down to a duel between Joe Biden and Nikki Haley, the Republican female politician has currently the upper hand (47% to 42%) according to a Quinnipiac University national poll conducted between January 25 and 29 and realeased on January 31. However, that poll is nationwide poll. In the presidential election, you need to keep the upper hand in battleground states. Furthermore, in a five-person race including also the conspiracy theory champion Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the independent Cornel West and the Green Party candidate Jill Stein, Joe Biden gets 36%, Nikki Haley only 29%, Kennedy an astonishing 21%, West 3% and Stein 2%.
In Nevada, there is already the GOP primary under way (until February 2). However, the Republican Party is also organizing a caucus on February 8. Nikki Haley is only participating in the primary, Donald Trump only in the caucus.
Nevada has held a caucus for decades. But after the messy 2020 Democratic caucus, the state of Nevada passed a law replacing the caucus with a primary. Republicans objected, notably to the vote-by-mail option. The GOP was unsuccessful in suing the state to have the primary thrown out. As a consequence, the Nevada Republican Party decided that only the results of the caucus would determine the allocation of GOP delegates. It remains strange why Nikki Haley decided to participate in the primary and not in the causus, knowing that Donald Trump would win all the delegates in the caucus.
Nikki Haley was elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives from 2005 until 2011. She served as governor of South Carolina from 2011 until 2017. Therefore, the 2024 Republican Party primary in her home state is a vital contest for her.
Unfortunately for her, in South Carolina, white evangelicals constitute the majority of GOP voters (72%); they represent the core of Donald Trump’s base, although Trump’s message is far from evangelical. The same holds true of his acts, including hush money for a porn star.
The Democrats fear more Haley than Trump. Therefore, they try to paint Nikki Haley as the “mother of the MAGA movement”, which is far-fetched, although Nikki Haley is very conservative on some issues.
According to the New York Times, the lesbian vice chair of the South Carolina Democrats’, Colleen Condon, told fellow party members at the party’s First in the Nation dinner on January 27, 2024: “I had to sue her [then governor Nikki Haley] to get married.”
In South Carolina, Nikki Haley must win enough votes to keep her donors on board. She must try to stay in the race until Super Tuesday.
Super Tuesday on March 5 with the territory of American Samoa and 15 states voting on the same day could decide the Republican presidential candidate selection. The states include Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont and Virginia.
Donald Trump tried to overturn the result of a free and fair election — the 2020 presidential election. Therefore, as well as for other crimes, the former president is facing a series of indictments, e.g. on state charges in the state of New York and in the state of Georgia as well as indictments on federal charges. In short: Trump is a weak candidate with limited appeal to independents and moderates from all sides.
Recently, Donald Trump mixed up Nikki Haley and the Democrat Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, making false claims about what she should have done during the insurrection. Incidentally, back then, Nancy Pelosi was right to demand that Trump should either resign or be removed from office through the clauses of section four of the 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. She gave Vice President Mike Pence a 24-hour ultimatum to act accordingly, threatening to impeach Trump otherwise. Mike Pence was honest enough not to follow Donald Trump’s demand to refuse to certify the Biden-Harris presidential election victory. But Mike Pence was not strong enough to impeach Donald Trump. Therefore, Nancy Policy proceeded with the impeachment procedure and Donald Trump was impeached for a second time.
Add to this the fact that Trump and the hard-line Republicans pushed anti-abortion judges and legislation and the Democrats try to make this point a key issue in the 2024 presidential election. Hard-line anti-abortion laws do not appeal to a large part of Republican women. With evangelicals alone, you cannot win in November.
Regarding the $83 million verdict by a NYC jury against Donald Trump in a defamation case, Nikki Haley said that she “absolutely” trusted the jury’s judgment in favor of the writer E. Jean Carroll. In another case, the NYC attorney general Letitia James asked for a penalty of $370 million because of deficiencies in the Trump Organization’s financial reporting.
According to Bloomberg, Donald Trump has a fortune of roughly $3.1 billion, including roughly $600 million in cash. That would be enough to pay the two penalties, if ever he and his company should be finally convicted, but this would hit Donald Trump very hard.
The Fulton County (Georgia) case and Donald Trump shows that the former president and his conspirators are accused of false statements concerning fraud in the November 3, 2020 presidential election; of harassing and intimidating a Fulton County election worker, they tried to solicit her to falsely confess to election crimes that she did not commit; Trump and his team corruptly solicited the Vice President of the United States to violate the United States Constitution and federal law by unlawfully rejecting Electoral College votes cast in Fulton Count, and they solicited the Vice President to reject votes cast by the duly elected and qualified presidential electors from several other states; Trump and his team are accused of corruptly conspiring in Fulton County and elsewhere to unlawfillly access secure voting equipment and voter data, to have stolen data, including ballot images, voting equipment software and personal voter information; they are accused of filing false documents, making false statements to government investigators, and committing perjury in judicial proceedings in Fulton County and elsewhere in furtherance of and covering up the conspiracy; Donald Trump made a nationally televised speech falsely declaring victory in the 2020 presidential election; Donald Trump placed a telephone call to Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and solicited, requested, and importuned Kemp to call a special session of the Georgia General Assembly. This was an overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy; in January 2021, Donald Trump wrote on Twitter: “I spoke to Secretary of State Brad Rafiensperger yesterday about Fulton County and voter fraud in Georgia. He was unwilling, or unable, to answer questions such as the ‘ballots under table’ scam, ballot destruction, out of state ‘voters’, dead voters, and more. He has no clue!” This was an overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy.
This list is much longer and more detailed, including 161 acts and 41 counts! And these are just the accusations regarding Fulton County, Georgia.
In addition, there were the televised congressional investigations by the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 United States Capitol attack, which ran from 2021 to January 2023. And on August 1, 2023 Jack Smith, the special counsel investigating Donald Trump, issued for detailed charges against Donald Trump because of the former president’s attempt to overturn the result of the free and fair 2020 presidential election.
In January 2024, Craig Mauger revealed in The Detroit News that then-President Donald Trump’s campaign directly orchestrated the filing of a certificate, signed by 16 Michigan Republicans, that falsely claimed that Trump had won the state’s 2020 presidential election.
Donald Trump is whining a lot about RINOs. But the most blatant “Republican in name only” is Donald Trump himself. He hijacked the GOP and turned it into a freakshow. In the process, he has totally reversed former Republican positions. Donald Trump favors isolationism. Instead of a strengthening the Transatlantic Partnership, Trump threatened to leave NATO. Trump has a soft spot for dictators and “strong men” ranging from Kim Jong-un to Vladimir Putin, from Xi Jingping to Victor Orban, from Narendra Modi to Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Trump has tried to undermine democracy in the United States and aroud the globe. Trump has repeatedly spread conspiracy theories. Trump is a racist; the GOP was the party of Abraham Lincoln! Trump has massively increased the deficit and public debt of the United States (instead of favoring fiscal discipline). Trump views trade as a zero-sum game. He favors protectionism (instead of free trade). Trump was right to take on China. But instead of allying himself with the European Union regarding Chinese subsidies, the absence of respect for intellectual property, the lack of a level playing field regarding foreign direct investments, he attacked the European Union. In a few cases, Trump was right to point out shady practices by the European Union, e.g. regarding tariffs on car imports from the United States or the lack of respect for the NATO goal to spend 2% of GDP for defense. Nevertheless, overall, Trump’s policies had little to no success or were even counterproductive. His administration showed no fiscal discipline. Public debt increased massively. The trade deficit with China was higher than ever. The USA and Europe ended up divided on many issues.
In online, videos, ads and voter emails, Nikki Haley depicts Joe Biden and Donald Trump as “two grumpy old men” running for office. She rightly states that some 70% of Americans don’t want to see the sequel to that movie. She calls it “the rematch nobody wants”. Right now, Nikki Haley’s chances of becoming the Republican presidential nominee are slim. But should this change, the Biden camp will get even more nervous.
Nikki Haley is attacking President Biden on UNRWA, the United Nations organization accused of collusion with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Nikki Haley wrote on Twitter that she had fought to cut funding to UNRWA. It was the right move then, and it’s the right move now. She underlined that Joe Biden never should have restarted the UNRWA funding by the United States.
Finally, Nikki Haley is hitting Donald Trump hard. On NBC’s “Meet the Press”, she rightly said: “When he feels insecure, he starts to rail, he starts to rant, he starts to flail his arms and he starts to get upset.” She added: “When he feels threatened, he starts to throw all kinds of things out there.” She stressed: “I would always tell him he was his own worst enemy. He’s proving that right now.”
The Trump team tried to declare the GOP race over. Donald Trump threatened anyone donating campaign money to Nikki Haley would be “barred from the MAGA camp”. At the same time, the former president is afraid of debating her.
Nikki Haley and her team responded with T-shirts. One comes with the message “Barred Permanently”, another one reads “Make America Sane Again”.
Nikki Haley is by no means an innocent politician, but she is clearly the better option than Donald Trump. During the 2016 GOP caucuses and primaries, Nikki Haley said: “I will not stop until we fight a man [Trump] that chooses not to disavow the KKK. That is not a part of our party.” Later, she endorsed Trump as the Republican presidential candidate. She must ask herself why she decided to take on the job as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under President Trump.
The Indian American Nikki (Punjabi for «the little one») Haley (née Randhawa) was born in the United States on January 20, 1972; Donald Trump infamously tried to start another «birther» debate (as with Barack Obama years ago) by hinting that Nikki Haley may not have been born in the U.S. and, therefore, may not be electable to the White House. Nikki Haley is the daughter of an immigrant Sikh couple from Amritsar, located in India’s Punjab region. The couple first worked in Canada, before moving to South Carolina.
Nikki Haley was elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives from 2005 until 2011. She served as governor of South Carolina from 2011 until 2017. In 2012, Mitt Romney considered her for the position of vice-presidential running mate, but Nikki Haley declined.From January 2017 until the end of December 2018, under president Trump, Nikki Haley served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
As ambasssador, in 2017, she attacked Iran and Hezbollah with the words: “For decades they have conducted terrorist acts across the region.” She asked for inspections of Iran’s nuclear facilities. She stated: «Without inspections, the Iran deal is an empty promise.» In addition, Nikki Haley accused Iran of backing the Houthi rebels in Yemen. She said: “It’s hard to find a conflict or terrorist group in the Middle East that doesn’t have Iran’s fingerprints all over it.”
In 2016, as governor of South Carolina, Nikki Haley had opposed Donald Trump’s idea of a Muslim ban. In 2017, as President Trump’s ambassador, she defended Trump’s executive order: “It’s not a Muslim ban. I will never support a Muslim ban. I don’t think we should ever ban anyone based on their religion.” She stressed: “That is un-American. It is not good. What the president is doing, everybody needs to realize that what he’s doing is saying, ‘Let’s take a step back. Let’s temporarily pause.’”
In the same 2017 interview, Nikki Haley said: “We cannot trust Russia. We should never trust Russia.” Unlike Donald Trump, she has consistently criticized Russian policy in Syria and Ukraine as well as the (Russian) chemical attack in the UK against a former Russian spy in March 2018.
In April 2018, Nikki Haley said regarding the Russian chemical attacks in Syria: “We cannot stand by and let Russia trash every international norm that we stand for and allow the use of chemical weapons to go unanswered.”
In April 2018, Nikki Haley announced fresh, imminent sanctions against Russia, which the White House immediately contradicted. The White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow told reporter’s: “There might have been some momentary confusion about that.” Just a few hours later, Nikki Haley fired bacl on Fox News: “With all due respect, I don’t get confused.” President Trump reportedly had approved plans to impose new sanctions on Russia, only to reverse course shortlyy afterwards.
In 2018, the U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley announced that the United States was withdrawing from the United Nations Human Rights Council, which she described as a “cesspool of political bias”.
Nikki Haley may have resigned as U.S. ambassador to the U.N. because, after the switch from Rex Tillerson to Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State, her new superior was much more in line with President Trump and her impact on policy became thin. The erratic Trump dominated.
In short: Nikki Haley is the last person who can stop Donald Trump from becoming the presidential candidate of the Republican Party.
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Donald Trump vs. Lady Liberty at a political carneval in Germany in 2017. Photo copyright © Grossplastiken.de Jacques Tilly.
Article added on February 2, 2024 at 20:39 German time.
