When Nikki Haley dropped out of the Republican presidential race this week, you might have assumed she would use her status as the last person standing between Donald Trump and the complete takeover of the GOP to do … something. After all, the whole point of the Haley Project was to offer Republicans an alternative to Trump. And in this, her exit, she might have taken the opportunity to do something — anything — other than render the entire point of her candidacy moot.
She did not.
Haley congratulated Trump and offered up her supporters on a silver platter. “It is now up to Donald Trump to earn the votes of those in our party and beyond it who did not support him,” she said, “and I hope he does that.”
Trump responded by observing that “Nikki Haley got TROUNCED last night, in record setting fashion.” Which was not exactly an overture to Haley voters, though he did invite them to join him in “the greatest movement in the history of our country.”
In her exit speech, Haley added that, “At its best, politics is about bringing people into your cause, not turning them away. And our conservative cause badly needs more people. This is now [Trump’s] time for choosing.”
In all, it was a spectacularly anemic entreaty to Trump to woo her people, to make them his, in the name of the conservative cause. But if you look at what Nikki Haley’s presidential campaign was actually about, it was never about taking on Donald Trump — not really.
At its best, politics is about bringing people into your cause, not turning them away. And our conservative cause badly needs more people.”
On its face, it was about courting voters who were dissatisfied with Trump. But it was also about courting Trump voters, too. Over and over again on the campaign trail, Haley told us her thoughts on the Trump presidency: “I personally believe Donald Trump was the right president at the right time,” she’d say. “I agree with a lot of his policies.”
By way of…
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