Nikki Haley made it clear when she exited the Republican presidential nomination race earlier this week that she intends to keep speaking out.<\/p>\n
\u2018While I will no longer be a candidate, I will not stop using my voice for the things I believe in,\u2019 Haley emphasized as she announced on Wednesday that she was suspending her White House campaign after former President Donald Trump swept 14 of 15 GOP nominating contests on Super Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Haley also made clear this week that a third-party run on a potential No Labels presidential ticket was not in the cards.<\/p>\n
\u2018What I will tell you is I\u2019m a conservative Republican. I have said many, many times, I would not run as an independent. I would not run as No Labels because I am a Republican, and that\u2019s who I\u2019ve always been,\u2019 she reiterated in a \u2018Fox and Friends\u2019 interview.<\/p>\n
But how much of a voice she has among Republicans and what kind of future she has in the GOP depends very much on Trump, who has dominated the party since he first won the White House eight years ago.<\/p>\n
The former two-term South Carolina governor who later served as U.N. ambassador in the Trump administration 13 months ago became the first major candidate to challenge Trump for the 2024 nomination. And before she dropped out, she was the last rival standing.<\/p>\n
Haley, who had turned up the volume on the former president over the past six weeks, refused to endorse Trump as she bowed out of the race.<\/p>\n
And Haley, who captured a quarter to over a third of the vote in a handful of the Republican contests after scoring 43% in New Hampshire\u2019s late January primary, highlighted that \u2018it is now up to Donald Trump to earn the votes of those in our party and beyond it, who did not support him, and I hope he does that.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018At 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 his time for choosing,\u2019 Haley said.<\/p>\n
Haley\u2019s support in the primaries spotlighted Trump\u2019s weakness among moderates and suburban voters. But even before she finished her speech on Wednesday, Trump made it clear he wasn\u2019t extending an olive branch to his former rival.<\/p>\n
\u2018Nikki Haley got TROUNCED last night, in record setting fashion,\u2019 Trump wrote in a social media posting as he trashed her.<\/p>\n
Haley has a big decision to make in the days or weeks ahead \u2013 does she hold out against Trump \u2013 or endorse the former president.<\/p>\n
New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu \u2013 a vocal GOP Trump critic who endorsed Haley and was one of her top surrogates \u2013 on Friday in a handful of interviews endorsed the former president but said he stood by his past criticism.<\/p>\n
Much of Haley\u2019s fate going forward rests with Trump, who on Friday installed top allies to run the Republican National Committee.<\/p>\n
\u2018She needs to step back and take stock of where things stand and pay attention to what President Trump says and does,\u2019 longtime GOP strategist David Kochel told Fox News.<\/p>\n
Kochel, a veteran of numerous Republican presidential campaigns, said that a lot will depend on November\u2019s presidential election results.<\/p>\n
Haley repeatedly argued on the campaign trail that a Republican Party with Trump at the top of the ticket was headed for trouble in November and that she would be a more effective standard-bearer to take on President Biden.<\/p>\n
Koch said that \u2018if Trump loses in November, Haley\u2019s going to be proven right,\u2019 but that conversely, a victory by the former president would likely spell trouble for Haley\u2019s GOP future.<\/p>\n
Haley in many ways ran as a Reagan Republican \u2013 from promoting a muscular foreign policy to advocating fiscal restraint \u2013 in a party Trump and his populist America First movement has transformed.<\/p>\n
That transformation of the GOP \u2013 as well as her vocal criticism of Trump \u2013 could make any future Haley White House run extremely complicated.<\/p>\n
\u2018Haley is a conservative from the old mold,\u2019 longtime Republican strategist and communicator Ryan Williams said. \u2018The party continues to drift further to the right and even if Trump isn\u2019t a candidate in the future, you\u2019ll see more candidates in the mold of Trump running for national office.\u2019<\/p>\n
Williams predicted \u2018that leaves Nikki Haley in a position that\u2019s on the outskirts of where the party\u2019s headed\u2026.It indicates she may not have a future as a national candidate in the Republican Party.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
Kochel agreed that \u2018the party isn\u2019t going back.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018It\u2019s definitely a different party. It\u2019s more populist .. It\u2019s more anti-establishment and anti-elite,\u2019 he said. \u2018But i don\u2019t think we know yet what the party\u2019s going to look like.\u2019<\/p>\n
And Kochel emphasized that \u2018Trump is unique. I don\u2019t think there can be another Trump.\u2019<\/p>\n
He said the party may once again take a sharp turn.<\/p>\n
\u2018If you can go from Mitt Romney [the senator from Utah and 2012 GOP presidential nominee] to Donald Trump in four years, you can go from Donald Trump to something very different,\u2019 Kochel argued.<\/p>\n\n
Nikki Haley made it clear when she exited the Republican presidential nomination race earlier this week that she intends to keep speaking out. \u2018While I will no longer be a candidate, I will not stop using my voice for the things I believe in,\u2019 Haley emphasized as she announced on Wednesday that she was suspending <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":16741,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-16740","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16740"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16740\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}