Why Nikki Haley shouldn't be counted out just yet

Is Haley a comet or a shooting star? Comets have staying power because they orbit the sun, while shooting stars burn up as they crash through the Earth’s atmosphere.

The early take on Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and U.S. ambassador to the U.N. who made her GOP presidential primary debut yesterday with a speech in Charleston, S.C., is that she’s more likely to shine brightly for a moment and then fall to Earth.

“[H]ers will be a highly conventional campaign,” wrote Rich Lowry after watching her announcement video, and “there will be a number of other candidates with as strong or a stronger case to represent generational change.” In a pretty brutal editorial this morning, The Wall Street Journal says there is “no clear rationale for her candidacy.” Over at the New York Times, they assembled 10 pundits to assess Haley’s candidacy, and the majority opinion was that the two-term governor and former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations shouldn’t be taken very seriously. “Nikki Haley Will Not Be the Next President,” reads the headline.

We are old enough to remember when pundits in 2015 declared that Donald Trump would never be president, and we can recall nights in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada in late 2019 and early 2020 when the same was said about Joe Biden.

Haley acknowledged the low expectations set by the nattering nabobs. “I’ve been underestimated before,” she said. She entered politics in 2004 by defeating South Carolina’s longest-serving House member. In 2010, she leapt from the statehouse to the governor’s mansion after defeating a field of seasoned politicians in a GOP primary and overcoming her close association with disgraced Gov. Mark Sanford. She was 38 years old.

Now 51, you can see why she looks at the 2024 race and thinks she can repeat that kind of upset — and why her speech yesterday was heavy on the theme of “a new generation,” which has the advantage of working against both Trump, who will be 78 next year, and Biden, who will turn 82 after the election. Much of the coverage emphasized that Haley was a throwback to the pre-Trump GOP, but she is not above Trump-style trolling. One of the few specific policies in her speech was “mandatory mental competency tests for politicians over 75 years old.”

The GOP primary is being described as a matchup between Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, but the defining characteristic of recent GOP presidential primaries is volatility.

In 2008, there were three different frontrunners (former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Arizona Sen. John McCain). In 2012, there were five candidates who took the lead in national polls (former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, businessman Herman Cain, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum). In 2016, there were three leaders (former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, neurosurgeon Ben Carson and Trump).

The cases of Cain and Carson are instructive. They were Black candidates who decried what Republicans now call “wokeism,” and they received a rapturous response from the party’s primary voters, who are overwhelmingly white. But as inexperienced outsiders to politics, neither could cope with the sustained scrutiny and attacks that came with their surges in the polls.

In addition to her relative youth, Haley is emphasizing an anti-woke pitch that has more resonance than ever among her party’s voters. “Every day, we’re told America is flawed, rotten and full of hate. Joe and Kamala even say America’s racist,” she said. “Take it from me, the first minority female governor in history, America is not a racist country.”

In recent primaries, it only took one breakout moment during a debate to kick off a surge in the polls. Haley has been in politics since 2004, which complicates her “new generation” pitch, but it also suggests that she’s more prepared for the scrutiny if she catches fire.

Much has been made of Haley reneging on her promise not to run if Trump does. This is great fodder for reportorial intrigue because it’s such clear evidence of the main rap against her: that she constantly shifts positions. But voters have a long history of ignoring such pledges. (Then-Sen. Barack Obama also said he wasn’t going to run for president in 2008, and it worked out okay for him.)

The Republican field now seems like it will be smaller than previously thought. In addition to DeSantis, here’s a list of the most credible potential candidates, oldest to youngest: former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (72), former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (66), former Vice President Mike Pence (63), former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (60), former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (59), Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina (57), Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (56), former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney (56), South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (51) and New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (48). (DeSantis is 44.)

Do any of those names jump out as unambiguously superior candidates to take on the two MAGA frontrunners?

The last piece of Haley’s argument for her candidacy is electability. “If you're tired of losing, put your trust in a new generation,” she said to fellow Republicans.

She will not be the only candidate to make the “loser” case against Trump.

In an evenly divided country characterized by over two decades of close presidential elections, electability can be a tough sell to a party’s base. It generally becomes a more relevant pitch after a party has been out of power for a long time. (Think Bill Clinton in 1992, after Democrats were in the wilderness for 12 years.)

Being shut out of the White House for just one term might not be enough to convince GOP voters to abandon Trump as a clear loser, even if you throw in the results of 2018 and 2022. But it’s certainly the obvious argument to be making. And Haley may have as good a chance of making it stick as any of her potential opponents.