Former South Carola Governor Nikki Haley will bow out of the race for the 2024 Republican nomination after getting destroyed by her rival Donald Trump on Super Tuesday.
Early Wednesday morning, Haley’s campaign sent out an email announcing a 10 a.m. press conference. According to multiple outlets, Haley — who did not address the public on Tuesday evening — will be announcing her withdrawal from the race.
The former governor lost to Trump — who once named Haley his U.N. Ambassador — for a much needed win in virtually every major primary. She lost to him in Iowa. She lost to him in New Hampshire, despite pouring vast amounts of resources and advertising dollars into the state. She even lost to him in home state of South Carolina.
On Super Tuesday, she lost every state but Vermont.
Haley’s efforts could not surmount the immovable force that is Trump. Along with the exits of fellow candidates Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy from the race, Haley’s departure clears the way for the former president to skate to the Republican nomination virtually unchallenged.
Haley’s campaign stumbled at several points, and her posturing as a moderate Republican forced to battle criticism from her opponents and their supporters accusing her of being a Democrat in GOP costume. Despite once lauding Haley’s work in his administration, Trump employed a scorched earth policy towards his former ambassador in the final weeks of her campaign. As previously reported by Rolling Stone, sources close to the former president described his complaints that Haley was “two-faced,” both praising and attacking him at her own convenience.
“Team Trump smartly used Nikki Haley as a weapon of mass destruction to destroy DeSantis’ coalition, knowing that in the end Haley would never be able to put together a winning coalition in the primary, given all the weaknesses she has on the right,” one source said. Once Haley’s usefulness against DeSantis expired, the Trump campaign transitioned into “wreck-Nikki-Haley mode.”
The final days of Haley’s campaign were defined by direct spats with the former president, who took to leveling racist mockery of Haley in his final bid for the state. Trump’s campaign unveiled HaleyFacts.com, in December, using the website to describe Haley as a “threat from within.”
“Nikki Haley is using radical Democrat money to run the radical Democratic campaign operation she’s running,” Trump told supporters during a Sunday night rally in Manchester, New Hampshire. “What the hell kind of Republican candidate is that?”
With Haley out of the picture, the former president can now sail through the remainder of the primary season for his expected November rematch with President Joe Biden.
Source link: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/nikki-haley-drops-out-2024-presidential-race-1234981990/
