Nikki Haley could be aiming to be the GOP vice presidential nominee.
She lacks a base of support unlike former President Donald Trump or Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for the top job.
She would have been a typical GOP presidential candidate in the pre-Trump era, but times have changed. She was a successful governor of South Carolina and proved a strong spokeswoman for human rights and against terrorist activities at the U.N.
Haley claimed she was running to reverse the consecutive Republican losses of the popular vote since 1992 in presidential elections. Her own electoral record is undefeated. She has won every election she has stood for since winning a seat in the South Carolina legislature in 2004.
National Security Adviser John Bolton theorized that Haley hopes to become vice president because she had not justified her candidacy.
“I think Nikki’s really running for vice president, that’s my sense,” Bolton said in an interview on MSNBC a few months back. “I think she has a problem because she first said she wouldn’t run if President Trump ran.”
Nikki Haley condemned the former president’s handling of the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot but criticized the second impeachment that took place after he left office. Additionally, she said in April of that year she would not run against former President Donald Trump.
“I appreciated the way he let me do my job,” Haley said in 2021 about her tenure as U.N. ambassador when asked if she would throw her hat in the ring. “I thought we did some fantastically great foreign policy things together, and look, I just want to keep building on what we accomplished and not watch it get torn down.”
Bolton told MSNBC back a few months ago that Trump will exploit Haley’s 2021 statement saying that she would not run it Trump did.
“Her rationale for running now is that things have changed. Well, things always change, but I think this inconsistency is something that is exploitable by Trump on one hand and by her opponents on the other hand,” Bolton said. “I don’t think there is a convincing case [for her candidacy].”
Nikki Haley Always Had Big Plans
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s memoir “Never Give an Inch: Fighting for the America I Love” claimed that Haley plotted with Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump to become Trump’s vice president, indicating her potential interest in the role.
Nikki Haley might also potentially be running to get the issue of irresponsible spending back on the agenda. Past candidates like Ron Paul ran on a platform of getting the U.S. out of unnecessary wars, a message that paved the way for Trump.
“Lots of Republican politicians love spending and wasting taxpayer money almost as much as Democrats. The last two Republican presidents added more than $10 trillion to the national debt. Think about that. A third of our debt happened under just two Republicans,” she said. “If we nominate another big spender in 2024, we’re going to lose.”
In any case, Nikki Haley would be an odds-on favorite running mate for Trump or DeSantis due to her pugilistic style of campaigning and her experience as governor of South Carolina and U.N. ambassador.
