Three Reasons Nikki Haley Lingers

Topic: Elections

Nikki Haley should receive an award from Ron DeSantis – or at least a Christmas card.  Her continued presence in the 2024 Republican presidential nominating contest, which was over before it began, has directed all negative energy away from Florida’s happily hidden governor and onto the same group of Uniparty kingmakers (or is it queenmakers in this case?) and manipulators who emulated Wile E. Coyote in leaving no stone unturned trying to derail the Trump Train in 2016’s Republican primary.

The mental gymnastics are particularly challenging with the Haley campaign.  Her home state, South Carolina, was called before even a single vote was tabulated, with President Trump smoking her by more than 20 points – a blowout margin even with an untold number of Democrats and left-leaning, urbanite “independents” voting to dilute the margin and score moral victories, such as winning three of the state’s 46 counties.  Still, not even the mainstream media think Haley will win even a single state, especially now that New Hampshire and its litany of weird ideologies has come and gone, and so has South Carolina, where she was unable to clear 40%.  This raises the question:

Why is Nikki Haley still running?

Seasoned cynics likely know the answer already but should continue reading to the bottom of this piece to see where my head is at on the big picture.  Haley’s continued presence in a race with an outcome as certain as the morning sunrise presents a perfect learning point for the timeless principle of supply and demand.  A primary race between one of the most successful presidents in modern American history and a run-of-the-mill governor and Uniparty tool who won’t drop out makes me think of a dinner party enjoying a five-star steakhouse, with a McDonald’s representative standing outside the reserved dining room asking people through every course to reconsider their choice in dining.

After all, Haley’s qualifications for the job appear to consist of three immutable points:

1)    She’s a woman

2)    She’s not Donald Trump

3)    She’s not Joe Biden

Her campaign promises, should they hypothetically lead her to the White House, would likely yield the following outcomes:

1)    U.S. military involvement in Ukraine

2)    U.S. military involvement in one other country, at minimum

3)    A perpetually porous southern border

4)    Continued gradual decline of the U.S. manufacturing base and economy

5)    Reprisal of the George W. Bush era of Republican leadership

At minimum.

Haley is the equivalent, in the world of political offerings, of a mom serving up a cup of scalding hot tea on Memorial Day at the waterpark when what is really needed is an ice cream cone the size of a football.

So why is she still here?  Here are my top three reasons to explain, as we near Super Tuesday, her lingering national fart of a presidential campaign:

I.               The Uniparty Can’t Ruin Everyone at Once

As I’ve immersed myself in this volatile geopolitical world, I’ve learned to become much less of a black and white thinker than I had been in years past, when staying in my lane was required of me so as not to disrupt an adjacent mission.  I’ve come to believe that elections are made up of both real and fictitious ballots, which my analytical method has been able to identify all the way down to the precinct level by reading swings and trends.  Likewise, I believe political campaigns are not only influenced by big money and shadowy figures, but by the candidates’ own personal ambitions and drive for power.