Nikki Haley isn’t going wherever. She has stated as a lot behind closed doorways at fund-raisers, reiterated it in latest information media appearances and made the promise on the stump, in entrance of audiences.
And on Tuesday, simply days earlier than a heated Republican major on her residence turf, Ms. Haley stated it once more.
“I really feel no have to kiss the ring,” she stated in Greenville, S.C., pledging to proceed her pursuit of the 2024 Republican presidential nomination past Saturday’s major in South Carolina, her residence state. “I’ve no concern of Trump’s retribution. I’m not in search of something from him. My very own political future is of zero concern.”
In what was maybe her most forceful speech since she started her presidential marketing campaign final 12 months, she pushed again in opposition to skeptics who’ve lengthy urged her to drop her long-shot bid for the nomination.
Describing herself as David taking over Goliath, she stated she was preventing not solely somebody greater than herself but in addition “for one thing greater” than herself. She argued that whereas different members of her social gathering had given right into a “herd mentality” and fallen in line behind former President Donald J. Trump, she wouldn’t.
Ms. Haley additionally contended that lots of the Republican politicians “who now publicly embrace Trump privately dread him” and have been “too afraid” to talk up, regardless of understanding he had been “a catastrophe” for the social gathering. She stated Individuals deserved a alternative and “not a Soviet-style election the place there’s just one candidate and he will get 99 p.c of the vote.”
“We don’t anoint kings on this nation,” she stated. “We’ve elections. And Donald Trump, of all folks, ought to know we don’t rig elections.”
The remarks — delivered in calm, dulcet tones earlier than an invite-only viewers of about 50 folks, not together with the press — have been her sharpest but in opposition to Mr. Trump and the best way he has remade the Republican Get together in his picture. After taking a calibrated strategy towards Mr. Trump for a lot of the race, Ms. Haley has assumed a extra decided and combative stance as she has turn out to be his final main rival from a discipline of greater than a dozen candidates.
However Ms. Haley, the previous governor of South Carolina and a United Nations ambassador beneath Mr. Trump, trails her former boss in her residence state by double digits. The nationwide outlook for her marketing campaign doesn’t look a lot brighter.
In a memo from two advisers despatched out on Tuesday, Mr. Trump, who for months fueled lies that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen from him, urged that Ms. Haley was “like several wailing loser hellbent on an alternate actuality” and that she had been “rejected by those that know her the perfect” in South Carolina. The memo additionally contended that she had no path to the nomination, pointing to her string of losses up to now.
Mr. Trump was anticipated to make his personal look afterward Tuesday in Greenville at a Fox Information town-hall-style occasion. Officers along with his marketing campaign imagine that he’ll amass sufficient delegates to safe the nomination by March 19, if not per week earlier.
As questions on when she is going to depart the race proceed to canine her marketing campaign, Ms. Haley has reiterated her promise to remain in via Tremendous Tuesday, on March 5, no matter Saturday’s end result. A few of her closest allies haven’t dominated out the chance that she is going to keep in even longer.
Her marketing campaign has continued to gather funds from top-dollar donors and to announce the elected officers, enterprise leaders and distinguished group members serving to lead her efforts throughout the nation. These embody groups in Alaska, California, Georgia, Idaho, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Texas, Utah, Vermont and Washington.
Ms. Haley is planning to embark on a grueling journey schedule after South Carolina, with stops in Michigan, which can award delegates via each a major on Feb. 27 and a conference on March 2, and Tremendous Tuesday states equivalent to Utah and Colorado.
On Tuesday, she rejected claims that she has been working to be vice chairman — “I feel I’ve fairly nicely settled that query,” she stated to laughs — or to set herself up for a future run. In echoes of the vigorous response to her detractors that she has integrated into her stump speech in latest days, she stated a majority of Individuals didn’t desire a rematch between Mr. Trump and President Biden, giving her no motive to finish her bid now.
“Trump and Biden are two outdated males who’re solely getting older,” she stated. “Practically 60 p.c of Individuals say Trump and Biden are each too outdated to be president — as a result of they’re.”
Ms. Haley additionally laid out her strongest argument so far in opposition to Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump. She stated each had “changed normalcy with chaos” and have been extra involved with their very own photographs than with the state of the nation. They’re “dividers at a time when America desperately, urgently, wants a uniter,” she stated.
She criticized Mr. Biden on his border and financial insurance policies, and over his psychological acuity. “Each time he opens his mouth, he feels like his thoughts is closed-up store,” she stated of Mr. Biden.
The Biden marketing campaign declined to remark.
However Ms. Haley reserved her heaviest criticism for Mr. Trump, at the same time as she rejected the “never-Trump” label, saying, as she usually does, that she voted for him in 2016 and 2020 and was proud to serve in his administration. She stated he was spending extra time in courtrooms than on the marketing campaign path and “getting meaner and extra offensive by the day.” She referred to as him distracted, “unstable and unhinged,” and “obsessed along with his personal demons.”
“That’s not the best way you win elections,” she stated. “Effectively, I’ve handled bullies my complete life. They don’t intimidate me. They solely inspire me additional.”
Ms. Haley closed by summarizing her biography and outlining a rosy, conservative imaginative and prescient for the long run, describing herself as “the daughter of authorized immigrants” and “a brown lady” who grew up in “a black-and-white world,” rising above hatred to turn out to be the primary girl and girl of colour to steer South Carolina.
In an uncommon second for Ms. Haley, she held again tears as she spoke about her husband, Maj. Michael Haley, whose deployment to Africa has been the topic of a few of Mr. Trump’s assaults. She stated that she wished he have been current however that he and different army members believed the nation was price dying for.
“Now, I’ll proceed to make my stand as a result of America is price residing for,” she stated.
