Nobody expects Nikki Haley to win the GOP Colorado primary on Tuesday. Not even Nikki Haley.
Nobody, including Haley, expects her to win any of the Super Tuesday contests, which will account for one third of all the delegates to the GOP convention in August. In fact, Trump is expected to have won the number of delegates needed for nomination by the end of the month.
And so there is the likelihood that unless Haley scores an upset somewhere or, at minimum, comes closer in a number of states than people anticipate Tuesday, this will be her last roundup.
But there’s a chance, if only a slim chance, that it won’t be.
And how she does in Colorado — where unaffiliated voters can participate in the GOP primary, and where the state GOP has endorsed Trump — may give us a clue, even though Republicans have no chance to win here in November.
After Tuesday, the question for Haley won’t be about whether she can beat Trump in the GOP primary. She can’t, despite the growing evidence that Trump continues to underperform his polls.
And the question won’t be whether she should hang around on the off chance that the Supreme Court — which just decided it would take on Trump’s immunity case, thereby pushing back the January 6 trial schedule — would allow the trial to finish before the election. She might do that, but it’s unlikely to matter.
No, the question for Haley is whether she would help defeat Trump in November.
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I wouldn’t expect her to endorse Joe Biden, as much as some anti-Trumpers and Never Trumpers hope she might. Haley is not Liz Cheney. She’s not Adam Kinzinger. Haley is a career politician with high ambitions who clearly calculates, as most ambitious career politicians do, every move.
But she could refuse to endorse Trump. That would be, as we used to say, huge. She could tell the truth — stop insisting that Biden is somehow more dangerous for the country than Trump, and admit that Trump is more dangerous for the country than anyone.
Of course she won’t endorse Biden, given that such an endorsement would likely end her political career. And Biden is moderately liberal while Haley is a mainstream conservative, so, uh, mainstream that I can hardly think of an area where I agree with her.
Haley and Biden don’t match, except in one way — and that is at the intersection of Donald Trump and the 2024 general election that could return him to the White House.
Let’s say there’s a chance — if not a great chance — that Haley could say that after running for months against Trump, she has greater insight into his anti-democratic proclivities, his Putin bromance, his demonization of immigrants (like Haley’s parents), his contempt for those in the military (like Haley’s husband), his willingness to let Russia grab large chunks of Ukraine, his dangerous MAGA plans for his return to the White House.
And with that insight, she could potentially say she could not possibly vote for him.
OK, it’s a long shot. Yes, she did say in her South Carolina concession speech, “We need to beat President Biden in November.”
But of late, when she has been asked whether she would vote for Trump in November, she hedges. That could be strategic. She knows her greatest strength in the primary has been with those voters who have questions, and maybe even some unsettling answers, about Trump.
Or it could be that Haley not only understands the stakes — I’m sure she does — but that she might actually consider acting on them. It would be a bold move and probably too much to expect.
But let’s look at Haley’s progression.
Last August, in a GOP primary debate, Haley infamously raised her hand — along with most of the candidates on the stage — when asked if they would vote for Trump if he were to be convicted of a felony. It is among the lowest of the many low moments so far in the Republican campaign.
In March, when Trump was first indicted, Haley defended him, saying that the case looked to be “more about revenge than about justice.” She was using the revenge defense for the same Trump who has promised to be “your retribution.”
Even worse, Haley said she would pardon Trump if he is convicted.
But since Ron DeSantis dropped out of the race and Haley became Trump’s lone GOP opponent, she has grown more willing to criticize Trump. Her pace has been slow in this matter and maddeningly limited, but there is progress.
Instead of defending Trump amid his trials, as an example, she now says they should be “dealt with” before voters go to the polls in November. Which is interesting because the GOP candidate will be determined in August, after which Haley will just be an interested onlooker.
“We need to know what’s going to happen before it, before the presidency happens, because after that, should he become president, I don’t think any of it’s going to get heard,” she said on NBC News’ Meet the Press.
If she cares about November and whether Trump has been convicted — and, yes, that statement could also be just so much campaign strategy — that might be significant.
She called Trump’s most recent racist rant to a group of Black voters — that Blacks like him because of his mug shot and because of all his indictments — “disgusting.”
She has questioned Trump’s fitness to be president. Of course, she also questions Biden’s fitness.
It’s clear that she does best in states like Colorado — where unaffiliated voters and even Democrats, if they change their registration to unaffiliated, can vote in the Republican primary. That’s what drove her best showing, when she got more than 40% of the vote in New Hampshire. She beats Trump among the kinds of voters who tend to vote Democratic, those who are well educated, those who are not election deniers, those who aren’t anti-immigration hawks.
How many of those voters will she win in Colorado?
I think too much may be made of the anti-Trump GOP vote, just as I think there was probably too much made of the “uncommitted” vote in the Michigan Democratic primary. Voters tend to come home to their party.
If there is something to it, if Haley’s support is meaningfully anti-Trump, it would all mean nothing if she endorses Trump when she finally drops out. A Haley endorsement would simply give permission to any wavering GOP doubters to vote for Trump.
But if Haley says nothing — other than that she refuses to endorse Trump because his return to the White House would be a disaster — the silence of no endorsement could potentially speak volumes.
Mike Littwin has been a columnist for too many years to count. He has covered Dr. J, four presidential inaugurations, six national conventions and countless brain-numbing speeches in the New Hampshire and Iowa snow. Sign up for Mike’s newsletter.
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