Could Nikki Haley Pull a Ted Kennedy?
Pondering three "What if...?" scenarios for Haley's endgame
Nikki Haley is not stupid, so she surely knows that her quest for the Republican presidential nomination is all but over. It may be unfair that the nomination battle is largely settled when most states haven’t voted, but when one looks at the polls, at the voters who’ve supported her thus far (mostly independents, moderates, and Republicans who believe Joe Biden won the 2020 election), at the voters who have not supported her (pretty much everyone else who is voting in GOP primaries), and at the demographics of the upcoming states on the primary calendar, well, reality comes at you fast.
That said, not only is Haley apparently sticking around in the race, but she’s taking her best shots of the campaign so far at Donald Trump, describing him as “too old, too confused, too chaotic, and too tantrum-prone to be president,” as CNN described her recent litany of attacks. She even mocked him during an appearance on Saturday Night Live (5 minute mark of the video below).
Every attack is one more strike against her among Trump’s MAGA base. And it’s hardly news that the former president and his most devoted voters hold grudges. Ask Mike Pence. So it does beg the question of what exactly Haley is thinking at the moment. Does she know this is her last campaign and she’s just decided to go down in a blaze of scorched earth glory? Or, as Politico put it, is she living out her YOLO stage? Or is something else going on?
I don’t live in Haley’s mind, and no one but she and her staff know the plan or the goal. But just for fun, let’s play a game of “What if …?” and game out three potential endgames for Haley.
Haley drops out and endorses Trump
This is still the most likely scenario. By far. It’s widely assumed Haley will withdraw from the race after South Carolina or Super Tuesday and endorse Trump for 2024. After all, she has already pledged to support the GOP nominee and has even said she’d pardon Trump if she were president.
This move would theoretically preserve Haley’s viability within the Republican party. She could even emerge as Trump’s running mate, or as Secretary of State in a Trump administration. True, it may be a longshot as there are many in MAGA world who don’t want her anywhere near a presidential ticket or cabinet, but people like Ted Cruz have tangled with Trump before and come back into his good graces, so who knows.
Morphs into Ted Kennedy circa 1980
This is a step further down the rabbit hole of opposing Trump. It’s where the “What if..?” game gets less likely but more interesting. Let’s ponder the possibility that Haley knows her political future is toast in a MAGA-dominated Republican Party, which means there’s really no benefit to withdrawing now and endorsing Trump. So, what if she decides to throw a Hail Mary and stay in the race till the convention?
Yes, the Kennedy scenario, but with a twist.
In 1980, Ted Kennedy challenged Jimmy Carter for the Democratic nomination for president. Carter was the incumbent but was flailing in the polls and many Democrats believed he was a weak candidate for re-election.
The party’s liberal wing was also dismayed because Carter was too conservative for their tastes … focused, for instance, on trying to reduce budget deficits rather than pushing for national health insurance. (And yes, that sounds ironic in light of how Carter has been portrayed ever since, as some sort of lesson in failed liberalism, doesn’t it?).
In any case, Kennedy had a rough start to his campaign and Carter defeated him in Iowa and New Hampshire. Kennedy’s candidacy seemed over. But he stayed in the race and eventually started winning some contests. He kept his candidacy alive through the convention.
After failing to convince delegates to nominate him on the presumption he’d be a stronger candidate than Carter in the general election, Kennedy withdrew and weakly endorsed the president. But the intraparty challenge weakened Carter for the fall campaign, which he then lost to Ronald Reagan.
Now, if Haley tried the same thing Trump would almost surely still win the nomination, just as Carter did in 1980. But the twist is that Haley may be having thoughts that never crossed Kennedy’s mind. Such as, what if there’s an exogenous event that scrambles everything?
What if Trump has a heart attack?
What if he’s convicted of a crime before the convention and sentenced to prison time?
What if Haley is somehow the last candidate standing, the only other person with delegates?
A MAGA-dominated convention could still vote for, say, Donald Trump, Jr. or Ron DeSantis or whomever, but Haley at that point would have a pretty good argument to be the nominee, wouldn’t she?
Is all of this unlikely? Sure. Every Hail Mary has extremely low odds of success. But every once in a while, the implausible does happen …
Or, Haley plots a future as the leader of post-Trump conservatives
Finally, what if Trump wins the nomination but loses the general election? In that case, on November 6, 2024 Republicans will begin talking about the future of a post-Trump party.
It’s not crazy to think Haley is trying to set herself up as the person who could say, “I told you so. I told you Trump was too old, confused, and chaotic to be president.” As the runner-up in the 2024 primary contest, would she then become the leading contender for 2028?
There are two possibilities here. One, as noted, Haley could withdraw soon and endorse Trump, hoping to stay in the good graces of the movement Trump has created so she could be seen as the heir apparent.
The problem with this is that she isn’t exactly seen as a MAGA candidate even now. She may already be dead to the movement, which is more likely to turn to JD Vance or Sarah Huckabee Sanders or Trump Jr. or any number of other potential candidates other than Haley. It’s hard to see her as any sort of heir apparent unless the traditionalist Republicans somehow re-take control of the party. But that day may already have passed.
Which leads us then to the question of what happens to non-MAGA conservatives in a party that remains dominated by Trumpian ideas? It’s as difficult to see them reconciling themselves with Trump’s populist agenda as it is seeing them join the Democrats. But Liz Cheney has talked openly about the possibility that, in that case -- if the Republican Party can’t escape the clutches of Trumpism -- it may instead lead to the rise of a new conservative party.
Obviously, Cheney would be a natural leader of such a party. Or Chris Christie, or Adam Kinzinger, or others. But if Haley stays in the primary race to the convention, if she doesn’t endorse Trump (which, granted, would mean backtracking on her pledge to support the GOP nominee), if she damages Trump in advance of the general election just as Kennedy wounded Carter, well, who’s to say that she wouldn’t also have some level of claim to leadership of a new, post-Trump conservative movement?
It’s not to say that any of this is particularly likely. But it’s at least within the realm of the possible. And all you need to do is travel back eight years to 2016 to see that out of the box possibilities do happen in American politics.