Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley announced on Tuesday that she is releasing the delegates she earned in the Republican primaries and asking them to vote for Donald Trump. This will not alter the outcome; Trump secured enough delegates to ensure his nomination months ago. But now he may be spared the distasteful distraction of hearing someone else’s name entered into nomination during his coronation next week in Milwaukee.
For Haley, this is the final step down a descending staircase of self-abasement and humiliation.
The move comes just over a month after Haley endorsed the man she had called “unstable and unhinged.” Which came after she suspended her campaign while refusing to endorse Trump. Which came after she lost her home state but vowed she was staying in the race. Which came after Trump threatened to blacklist Haley donors and supporters.
Now Haley’s voters, who continued to cling to her name as a symbol of their dislike for Trump even after Haley officially suspended her campaign, are finding that Haley’s tough talk about Trump has vanished. They’re getting confirmation that being a Republican in 2024 means supporting Trump. And nothing else.
For months during the campaign, Haley repeatedly signaled to her voters that she was never going to get behind Trump’s run to return to the White House. In February, she declared that Trump was a “bully” who was “getting meaner and more offensive by the day.”
Haley may have offered a series of proposals on foreign policy and her own plan for the economy, but most of those who voted for her simply did not care about any of that. As The Atlantic wrote in May, they voted for Haley, and continued to vote for her long after her candidacy was no longer viable, for a simple reason: “as a way to stop Donald Trump.”
Haley didn’t get nearly 29% of the vote in Minnesota a week after suspending her campaign because they were enamored with her thoughts on Israel or her plans for economic investment. They voted for Haley as a symbol, as a life raft. As the one remaining spot of earth lingering about a rising MAGA tide.
When Haley endorsed Trump in May, that little nubbin of desolate rock sank almost to the top of the waves. Now it has gone under.
And now all those donors and supporters who looked to Haley as their anti-Trump option, including big Republican donors and organizations who bet big on Haley as a firebreak on Trump’s takeover of the party, realize that they’ve been had.
Haley may have talked a big game. She may have presented an almost ideal image of an anti-Trump candidate, offering traditional Republicans and Never-Trumpers the idea that the Republican Party could continue as the Republican Party, rather than as a vehicle for the worship of a single man and his maniacal campaign of vengeance and destruction.
But that image proved to be as substantial as the rainbow on an oily puddle.
On Tuesday, Haley stood up to that “bully,” to the “mean” and “offensive” and “unstable” and “unhinged” man who had threatened both her and her supporters, and gave her last abject surrender. She’s far from the first to make this descending journey. But in this round, she’s pretty much the last.
Millions of Republicans still seem to believe that there’s room in the Republican Party for someone who didn't bow to Trump. They’re wrong.
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