Nikki Haley Presented an Off-Ramp from Trumpism. Republican Voters Didn't Care.
On some issues, Haley offered a fleeting glimpse of what a serious Republican party could look like.
Nikki Haley has ended her campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, clearing the final electoral hurdle for former President Donald Trump to retake the nomination for the third consecutive time.
"The time has now come to suspend my campaign," she said in an address Wednesday morning. "It is now up to Donald Trump to earn the votes of those in our party and beyond it who did not support him, and I hope he does that."
Haley, a former South Carolina governor who also served as ambassador to the United Nations under Trump, entered the race in February 2023. She was the first candidate to do so after Trump—an awkward position after saying explicitly in 2021 that "I would not run if President Trump ran" and that she would support his reelection bid.
Ultimately, awkward characterized much of Haley's campaign positioning, as she tried to simultaneously appeal to both MAGA diehards and Never-Trump conservatives. She was never as forcefully anti-Trump as New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, nor as vociferously pro-Trump as Vivek Ramaswamy.
Haley spoke of the need for "a new generation of leadership"—an implicit shot at both Trump and President Joe Biden, who would respectively be 78 and 82 years old on Inauguration Day 2025. She characterized the former president less as unfit for office than just unsuited for the current moment: "Eight years ago, it was good to have a leader who broke things," Haley said in October. "But right now, we need to have a leader who also knows how to put things back together."
But going easy on Trump didn't endear her to his supporters: Ahead of the Iowa caucus in January, Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) posted a video on X (formerly Twitter) in which he declared himself "Never Nikki," effectively offering his endorsement to any Republican or Independent candidate except Haley. Trump himself mocked Haley in clear racist overtones—first by suggesting that despite being born in South Carolina, she was not qualified for office because her parents were Indian immigrants, and then by simply making fun of her first name, Nimarata.
Haley did catch on among a subset of Republican primary voters, though never enough to overcome her former boss: Throughout the primary campaign, all candidates not named Trump were competing for a minority of voters as the former president captured more than 50 percent in poll after poll.
The primaries themselves went similarly: While Haley notched a narrow third-place showing in the Iowa caucus, both she and the runner-up, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, trailed Trump by nearly 30 points. Even after DeSantis dropped out, Haley would lose each subsequent primary, other than Washington, D.C. On Super Tuesday, Haley won only Vermont out of 16 total contests. Clearly, more Republican voters had no appetite for a non-Trump candidate.
Which is a shame, because, on some issues, Haley was a breath of fresh air in the Republican field: While her fellow primary candidates bemoaned Biden's spending record, Haley was willing to call out those same candidates, and Trump himself, for adding $8 trillion to the national debt when they held the nation's purse strings. "Our national debt will eventually crush our economy," she warned in her address on Wednesday morning. "A smaller federal government is not only necessary for our freedom, it is necessary for our survival."
She was pragmatic on the subject of abortion, rejecting a national ban at the first GOP primary debate and saying the party should prioritize common ground over onerous restrictions. "Be honest with the American people," she said. "No Republican president can ban abortions."
But unfortunately, that wasn't the candidate that the average Republican primary voter was looking for.
Sarah Longwell, GOP strategist and publisher of The Bulwark, wrote when Haley entered the race in February 2023 that "Haley would be the frontrunner in a Republican party that no longer exists." Ahead of the New Hampshire primary nearly a year later, Mark Leibovich wrote in The Atlantic that Haley could be "the latest contender to lead a post–Donald Trump Republican Party that never arrives."
In fairness, Haley was no perfect candidate, including for libertarians. In declaring himself "Never Nikki," Rand Paul cited Haley's "attitude toward our interventions overseas" (she favors continued aid to Ukraine) and her "involvement in the military-industrial complex." In her address suspending her campaign, Haley reiterated her calls for a more muscular foreign policy, saying that "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's also more than that: If we retreat further, there will be more war, not less."
But for a major political party that remains in thrall to a single deeply flawed candidate, Haley represented a fleeting glimpse at what a serious party could look like. Unfortunately, that party bears little resemblance to the one whose primary Haley just exited.
When DeSantis ended his own campaign in January, Reason's Eric Boehm wrote that "DeSantis might have offered an actual vision for the future: one that revived a small-government Republicanism as a necessary contrast to Trumpism." Haley, on the other hand, was more than willing to call out both Republicans and Democrats for their unrealistic pledges and their shared role in expanding the size of government—unfortunately, she was running for the nomination of a party that no longer exists.
