The only other Republican candidate I would be interested in supporting for president has dropped out of the race, two days before the New Hampshire primary.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has ended his campaign for the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nomination.
On Jan. 21, in a 4 1/2 minute video posted on the social media platform X, the Florida governor announced he had suspended his bid for the presidency. The announcement came two days ahead of the New Hampshire primary.
“Following our second-place finish in Iowa, we’ve prayed and deliberated on the way forward. If there was anything I could do to produce a favorable outcome—more campaign stops, more interviews—I would do it. But I can’t ask our supporters to volunteer their time and donate their resources if we don’t have a clear path to victory,” Mr. DeSantis said in his video message.
While I hate to see DeSantis exit—I truly believe he would be a strong alternative to Trump and I’d like them to go head-to-head—it does create an opportunity for Trump to deliver a crushing blow to Nikki Haley in Tuesday’s primary. As Josh Hammer wrote a couple of days ago:
Nikki Haley should, of course, also drop out. She is going to lose in New Hampshire, and she will get crushed in the upcoming primary in her home state. But as much as Haley’s own brand of uninspiring, corporatist Republicanism may represent an unwelcome return to the GOP’s forgettable Bush-era yesteryear, she is at least polling high enough in New Hampshire where it is not delusional for her to remain in the race through Tuesday’s primary there. The same cannot be said for DeSantis, who polls very poorly in New Hampshire. (DeSantis seems to now be focusing on South Carolina, where he is not faring much better in the sparse recent polling.)
Haley is a paradigmatic spiritual “BoomerCon” (boomer conservative) and doctrinaire neoconservative who, like the Bourbons of old, has “learned nothing and forgotten nothing” from the GOP’s post-2016 course-correcting turn toward nationalism and realism. She is the wrong choice, at the wrong time, to steer the Republican Party—let alone the United States itself—through this era of ascendant populism and de-globalization.
Nikki Haley must be defeated in this primary. Most cross-tab polling this cycle shows that the leading second choice pick for those who would ideally like DeSantis, this columnist very much included, is not Haley—it is Trump. If that is the case, then DeSantis should strongly consider dropping out even before Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary, so as to maximize Trump’s chances of delivering a crushing, campaign-ending defeat to Haley.
Haley, as Hammer writes, is the wrong choice and, I would argue, any time is the wrong time for her to lead the Republican Party or to be the leader of the United States. Nikki Haley is a creature of the system, the swamp, the GOPe, the UniParty. She is not the right person to lead us out of the terrible circumstances we find ourselves in.
Sen. Rand Paul is no fan, so I’ll let him tell you about Haley over at his nevernikki.net.
Based on her record and campaign, I don’t see how any thoughtful or informed libertarian or conservative should vote for Nikki Haley. If you agree, let your voice be heard.
Nikki Haley supports Biden and McConnell and the forever-war crowd on funding for the war in Ukraine.
Her thirst for war is so strong she actually said: “I’m sick of talking about a Department of Defense. I want a Department of Offense.” #NeverNikki
She even personally received millions of dollars from the arms merchants who benefit from the war, a conflict of interest that undergirds her eagerness for foreign military intervention.
This position isn’t new either – as governor of South Carolina she gave tax dollars to those same arms merchants, and they showered her with campaign contributions and a seat on their board when she left office.
While most others were decrying the mistakes of the past 20 years, and fighting for an America First foreign policy, Nikki Haley was aligning herself with and declaring her foreign policy allies to be John McCain and Lindsey Graham.
Nikki Haley believes in nearly unlimited foreign aid — we have sent over $100 BILLION we don’t have to Ukraine already and she wants more. But this also isn’t new.
In her book With All Due Respect, she wrote “Humanitarian Assistance will always be a priority for the United States, we will always be generous.”
But Nikki Haley’s “generosity” with your tax dollars and her support for all foreign aid in the context of a $34 TRILLION dollar debt is in no way libertarian or conservative.
Beyond the issues of endless wars, Nikki Haley’s lack of respect for freedom of speech is shocking to anyone who believes in the constitution.
Nikki Haley believes that all internet posters should be registered and verified. This flies in the face of a free American Republic whose founders wrote anonymously the Federalist Papers and routinely posted newspaper articles and pamphlets under Pseudonyms.
Anyone who doesn’t fully believe in free speech or who wants endless wars has no business anywhere near the White House.
But wait, there’s more.
Nikki Haley routinely praised the mission of the United Nations, the results they achieved, and the people who ran it.
First up, her quote “I believe the U.N. does valuable work.” By that she means your tax dollars since the US is the primary funder of UN.
She repeatedly praised the U.N. Secretary General (former president of Socialist International) and declared that they “think alike.”
Did I mention that I am **Never** Nikki?
Nikki Haley disagreed with President Trump’s decision to pull U.S. troops out of Syria and Afghanistan and defended continued U.S. presence in both places.
If you want to move quickly to domestic policy, in South Carolina, Nikki Haley advocated for a gas tax hike, a state-run vaccine registry and never lifted a finger for school choice.
I am Never Nikki and I hope you will be too.
So if you’re a fan of the United Nations, want all content creators on the Internet to be registered with the government, and think spending billions of dollars on endless wars is fabulous, Nikki Haley is your candidate. But I implore you: don’t do it.
She’s also been exposed as having had two affairs before becoming governor of South Carolina. I wouldn’t necessarily mention it, but Never Trumpers point out that Trump has had many affairs. If a solid marriage was a tie-breaker for you, I’m taking that piece off the board.
Presidential candidate Nikki Haley falsely denied cheating on her husband when she was accused of engaging in two extramarital affairs during her gubernatorial campaign, multiple sources who worked with her claim.
New witnesses have come forward telling DailyMail.com that Haley’s denials of two alleged 2008 affairs are false, and that the supposed trysts were brazen and widely known among South Carolina politicos.
Will Folks, 49, and Larry Marchant, 61, both signed affidavits in 2010 alleging they had a sexual relationship with the then-South Carolina lawmaker, before she went on to become governor.
While the contents of the affidavits were described by major news outlets at the time, this is the first time they have been published outside of Folks’ own document which he published on his blog.
Haley, 51, denied both at the time, saying she was ‘100% faithful’ to the father of her two children and husband of 28 years, Michael Haley – who was deployed in Afghanistan with the National Guard in 2012.
Here’s another reason I don’t like Haley.
“You may be wondering how ‘Bill’ became South Carolina First Gentleman Michael Haley,” Haley wrote in her book. “After we started dating, I looked at him one day and said, ‘What’s your name?'”
“‘You know it’s Bill,’ he said, puzzled.”
“‘You just don’t look like a Bill. What’s your whole name?'”
“‘William Michael.'”
“From that point on, I started calling him Michael, and all my friends did the same. When he transferred to Clemson his sophomore year, my friends became his friends, and before we knew it, he was universally known as Michael. Everyone who knew him before I did knows him as Bill, and everyone who met him after I did knows him as Michael.”
“He looks like a Michael,” she wrote.
A woman who forces a man to change his name? Maybe Bill Michael was love struck and didn’t care. Maybe he’s a wimp. Whatever it was, I have little respect for either of them.
Close ranks and get behind Donald J. Trump. Yes, I have issues with the man; if there was someone else who could do what he does (I thought it was Ron DeSantis) I’d be all for that person. But the truth is, we can’t afford another four years—EVER—of the Democrats and the Deep State that supports them. We need someone in there who will right the ship of state before it’s dashed to pieces on the rocks. We’re in the shallows, we’re being battered, we’re taking on water, and we need a person in there who can punch back twice as hard.
And we need to pile up the votes so that they can’t cheat again. #BeatTheCheat