Nikki Haley’s most enthusiastic supporters all voted for Joe Biden. That’s why she never gained much traction and dropped out yesterday.
She did better than all of the Republicans not named Donald Trump, and she represents a constituency within the party, so the former president damages himself every time he succumbs to the impulse to bash her. He needs every vote he can get. One wonders if Tuesday’s speech emphasizing foreign affairs was his way of offering an olive branch.
Pundits wonder about Haley’s future within the party. It does not exist. This in the minor part stems from overstaying her welcome in the primaries. It primarily owes to her championing ideas that no longer animate Republicans.
She ran as the George W. Bush–John McCain–Mitt Romney candidate. That won votes two decades ago. Just as she won the presidency of Vermont, Haley won the presidency of Republicans with calendars stuck in 2004. It’s 2024, and the Green Mountain State represents the furthest thing ideologically from the Republican mainstream of any state.
Guess what? Bimetallism does not mount a comeback within the Democratic Party, and George W. Bush’s muscular Wilsonianism does not recapture the GOP. That reality keeps Haley from ever becoming the party’s presidential nominee.
Subscribe to The American Spectator to receive the entirety of Dan Flynn’s Spectator A.M. newsletter.
READ MORE from Daniel J. Flynn:
History Remembers Mitch McConnell Differently Than 2024 Does
Joe Biden, Friend of Segregationists, Says House GOP Is Worse Than Segregationists
