The Daily - Nikki Haley’s Moment

Episode Date: December 7, 2023

Over the last few months, Nikki Haley has gained enough in the polls to suggest she is on the verge of surpassing Ron DeSantis as the main threat to Donald J. Trump in the race to become the Republican candidate for 2024.Jazmine Ulloa, a national politics reporter for The Times; and Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst, discuss her building momentum and examine how far she might go.Guest: Jazmine Ulloa, a national politics reporter for The New York Times.Nate Cohn, The New York Times’s chief political analyst.Background reading: Nikki Haley’s path from Trump critic to defender and back.Why is Ms. Haley’s star rising among the rivals to Mr. Trump?Here are five takeaways from the Republican debate last night.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today. In the Republican presidential primary, Nikki Haley is having a moment. The question is, what does it mean, and where can it go? I spoke with my colleagues, Jasmine Ayoa and Nate Cohn. It's Thursday, December 7th. Thank you so much. It's great to be here in Johnson County and great to be here in Iowa City.

Jasmine, you have been covering the Nikki Haley campaign over the past many months, every speech, every event. And I wonder if you can help us understand what her candidacy was like when you first arrived on this beat. So I first started trailing her in the summer. So I see some new faces and we appreciate that. So we're going to start off by telling you a little bit about me. And her crowds were modest. You know, I wouldn't say there were empty chairs everywhere, but they were definitely small. I'd look around in the press pin and there weren't that many reporters there yet.

So what I will tell you is if you've liked what I had to say today, go tell 10 people. And the attitude from voters was excitement to see a conservative woman on this national stage. Plenty of people knew her as governor of South Carolina or even more as United Nations ambassador under Donald Trump. Hi, how are you? Good to see you. Hi, nice to meet you. Nice to see you. How are you? We're so glad you're here. Thanks for taking the time. But there didn't really seem to be a clear case for why she was running. The attitude in the crowd was still very much like, why is she doing this? You know, I remember being in the audience and a voter very early on asking,

is this going to be a repeat of 2016 where the field is just going to be fractured and it's going to give Trump a chance to rise? And don't you think people should drop out? And the implication in the question was, don't you think you should drop out? think people should drop out? And the implication in the question was, don't you think you should drop out? What you're describing and what this voter is really saying is that Nikki Haley at this point is kind of being written off. Right. She was single digits in the polls. She was low on fundraising. And that was especially putting her at a disadvantage in a place like Iowa, where it takes a lot of time and resources to really cover ground in the state.

And when did you start to notice all of that beginning to change? Tonight, the race for the White House takes flight. Welcome to the first... I think the first inflection point for her campaign really was the first debate. This is exactly why Margaret Thatcher said, if you want something said, ask a man. If you want something done, ask a woman. That's when she really stood out from the pack. You have Ron DeSantis, you've got Tim Scott, you've got Mike Pence. They all voted to raise the debt. And at the next debate, she did even better.

She projected strength and confidence and experience. Under your watch, you will make America less safe. You have no foreign policy experience, and it shows. And you know what? It shows. And slowly and steadily, I started seeing more people at her events. The makeup of the crowds was different. She was reaching more independents, moderates. Interesting.

Hi. My name is Jasmine. Are you a reporter? I was just in New Hampshire last week, and I talked to voters. Are you seriously considering Nikki Haley? Yes, I am. What about her? When did you start considering her?

When did she come into your radar? Well, we watched the debates and everything. And what I was hearing from people was that they really liked what she had to say at the debates. How many debates have there been? Two or three? Three of them, right? Yeah. We watched all three.

She shines. She has great presence. I've been impressed with how she handles herself. I've been impressed with how she handles herself. And I think for the most part she tells the truth. She talks about the deficit. She's so pragmatic as far as abortion goes. They were really attracted to the way she talks about issues, especially abortion. I just think she sees the big picture.

And a lot of people in politics want to be either far left or far right. And you can't, I don't think you can be that. You've got to be somewhere in the middle. And I think she's more in the middle. I obviously wouldn't vote for Trump. So it's down to a few people that sound a little bit more reasonable. Do you think that she can beat the former president in the primary? I don't know, but I'm wishing her the best of luck.

And how does this growing energy end up being reflected in those polls, which you said had been in just the single digits back in the summer? So she's really surged in the early states, you know, after being less than 10% in these early states, she is now at 20%, nearly 20% in New Hampshire and South Carolina, where she is in solidly second place. And in Iowa, she's climbing. She's reached Ron DeSantis. She's tied in some polls about 16 percent in the last poll in October. And that steady climb in the polls, the breakout performances, and then the fact that you had former Vice President Mike Pence and Senator Tim Scott, who was a fellow South Carolinian, drop their bids this fall. All of these things have kind of

led up to her seeing not only a rise in enthusiasm on the trail, but this rise in donations. And she's really caught the attention of more affluent donors, more Wall Street executives have really warmed up to her. And on top of all of that, she has attracted the attention of one of the most influential Republican donors, billionaire David Koch, whose network, Americans for Prosperity Action, just last week endorsed her. And this is one of the moment. And that endorsement means that all that organization's money, all of its political muscle is suddenly behind Nikki Haley. And it really seems to cap this pretty remarkable transformation from a candidate who can't really fill a room,

isn't covered by a lot of national reporters, and is in the single digits to what Nikki Haley is now at the close of 2023, which is a candidate who looks like pretty much the number two in this race across many of these early voting states. Right. I mean, within a week of that endorsement, the organization had already poured $3.5 million into hiring door knockers and placing digital ads. So that really is going to change the game for her on the mobilization front,

because this is a candidate who now has hundreds of volunteers in each of these early states. And so it's been quite a few months for her, and it's been pretty remarkable to watch her climb from such a low position in the race to this strong challenger, representative of people who want something other than Trump. So Nate, as Jasmine just explained,

Nikki Haley's success over the past few months is both undeniable and mathematically quite impressive. And now we want to turn to you to put it into context. So help us understand what Haley's surge means and doesn't mean in a race that is so thoroughly dominated by Donald Trump? I think that what Nikki Haley is doing is she has positioned herself as the best candidate for voters who do not want Donald Trump to be the Republican nominee for president. And Donald Trump is the clear frontrunner in this race. A majority of Republicans want him to be the nominee, but many do not. And what Nikki Haley is doing is something that's actually really common in presidential primaries.

And if I could use a fancy term for it, that term would be to call her a factional candidate. That's a candidate that appeals squarely to the wants and needs of a faction of a political party that is dissatisfied with the front runner of their own party. And if you think about it, even the strongest front runners, a George W. Bush in 2000, a Ronald Reagan, a Hillary Clinton, don't perfectly appeal to everybody. And as a result, there is almost always an opening for the candidate that appeals most directly to that disaffected faction of a party. And in this election, that's Nikki Haley. Okay. Well, remind us of some of the historical factional candidates because I think that might be illuminating.

Bernie Sanders appealing to the democratic socialist left against a establishment moderate like Hillary Clinton. Rick Santorum appealing to the religious right against a establishment Mormon from the Northeast like Mitt Romney. John Kasich in 2016, the establishment moderate in that election against Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. Howard Dean, Ron Paul, Jesse Jackson. I mean, we could do this for almost every election, that there is a candidate who speaks to the needs of a part of the party that isn't satisfied by the frontrunner and in some cases is outright opposed to the frontrunner. Right. A way to think about factional candidates as a result might be to see them as repositories for voters' disillusion with their party's frontrunner. for voters' disillusion with their party's frontrunner. That's half of it, but it's worth remembering that they usually have organic and authentic appeal to these same voters too. You know, Jesse Jackson is not just a candidate who is there for black voters who don't like

Michael Dukakis. He had a real connection with left-leaning voters and African-Americans in the 1984 Democratic primary. Rick Santorum had real appeal to evangelicals. He's not some faker. Bernie Sanders has real appeal to Democratic socialists. He's a true believer. And they usually have both of those traits. Okay. So how has Nikki Haley become the factional candidate success story in this Republican primary in such a crowded field where we anticipated that so many other Republicans might fill that role and where she herself is a somewhat complicated

figure, right? She's a former high-ranking member of the Trump administration. I think you're right that she's a complicated figure. But I think that if you step back and look at her whole career, that she really does embody a more traditional kind of conservatism that's really at odds with the Trumpist brand of Republican politics that we've seen over the last few years. This is someone who when she ran and was elected as governor of South Carolina in 2010, she did support many conservative policies, but she also ran as the child of Indian American immigrants. And her defining moment as governor was ultimately deciding to support bringing down the Confederate flag from the state capitol in South Carolina after there was a mass shooting at a black church there. And it's worth remembering that she

vigorously endorsed Marco Rubio in the Republican primary in 2016, and that even once she joined the Trump administration as UN ambassador, she was not exactly parroting the MAGA talking points about foreign policy. And so if you think about the things that anti-Trump Republicans are looking for in terms of temperament, in terms of views on the issues, and particularly on the issues that define Donald Trump, like his views on immigration, his populist economics, and his foreign policy, Nikki Haley is exactly the kind of candidate they would be looking for. Right. You're saying she's been able to carve out a political identity separate from Donald Trump, even though she served in his administration. I want to zero in on an example of that, how she has managed to seize on issues in a way that distinguish her from Trump in this current Republican primary campaign.

I think the easiest example is the way that she has talked about foreign policy in these debates. First of all, the American president needs to have moral clarity. They need to know the difference between right and wrong. And in particular, in these high-profile clashes with Vivek Ramaswamy. And the problem that Vivek doesn't understand is he wants to hand Ukraine to Russia. He wants to let China eat Taiwan. Who has been acting as sort of the MAGA candidate on stage without Donald Trump there. You don't do that to friends. What you do instead is you have the backs of your friends.

She has blasted Ramaswamy for being naive and not seeing the connections between Russia and China and Iran for his willingness to potentially reduce aid to Israel. A win for Russia is a win for China. We have to know that Ukraine is the first line of defense for us. And she has very vigorously defended all of the tenets of a neoconservative Reaganite foreign policy. Look at what Putin did today. He killed Pergozin. This guy is a murderer, and you are choosing a murderer over a pro-American country. She's made this a defining issue for her in the campaign, and this is an issue that a lot of people who dislike Trump really, really care about. I just wanted to find a word that you have been using a little bit here, which is neoconservative. And correct me if I'm wrong, what you mean here is a foreign policy approach that harkens back to an older pre-Trump Republican tradition of being interventionist, seeing America's role as robust, elbows out,

who needs us, where do they need us. It's the opposite of Trump's more isolationist, America first approach to foreign policy. That's what you mean. Exactly, Michael. And the key is that she is holding the flag that these neoconservative Republicans who have a long tradition in the Republican Party want to see picked up and held on a debate stage. What about domestic issues? How has she distinguished herself from Trump and fueled herself as the factional candidate? So I think perhaps surprisingly abortion is the best answer to that question. Thank you, Martha. I am unapologetically pro-life, not because the Republican Party tells me to be. She's pro-life and she passed abortion restrictions as governor of South Carolina. She's been very skeptical about a federal abortion ban.

When it comes to a federal ban, let's be honest with the American people and say it will take 60 Senate votes. It will take a majority of the House. So in order to do that, let's find consensus. And she's argued instead, looking for consensus on the national stage on the issue. She's taking a respectful and conciliatory tone toward voters who are pro-choice. And can't we all agree that we are not going to put a woman in jail or give her the death penalty if she gets an abortion? Let's treat this like a respectful issue that it is and humanize the situation and stop demonizing the situation. And I think that contrasts with the rest of the Republican field in a lot of important

ways that appeal to voters who don't support Donald Trump. A lot of people who are skeptical of Trump are relatively moderate, including on abortion. and there are a lot of pro-choice Republicans out there. But it's not just about the issues. It's also about the tone. This kind of establishment-friendly, compromising, moderate, and conciliatory candidate is the sort of thing that a lot of voters want and are looking for, and they may not be a majority of Republicans. But if you're the sort of person who doesn't like Donald Trump because of his conduct, this is exactly the breath of fresh air that you're looking for from a Republican presidential candidate. and moderate voters make her a really imperfect fit for the rest of a very conservative Republican party and make it very challenging for her to actually beat Donald Trump. We'll be right back. So, Nate, walk us through why Nikki Haley's success at being a factional candidate so far means that it's going to be so hard for her to seriously challenge Trump.

Because I have to say, your description of what she has been up to so far seems like a plan to try to mop up every Republican voter who dislikes Trump, of which there are very many within the Republican Party. There are a lot of them, but there aren't nearly enough of them to power a winning Republican presidential campaign, Michael. I mean, if we just step back and look at the math here for a second, there are three big blocks of Republican voters. One group, let's call it 40% of the Republican electorate, is the Trump MAGA base. They've supported him at every point. They support him today.

Then there's another 20% or so of Republicans that doesn't like Trump, disagrees on the issues strongly or disagrees with his personal character and conduct strongly. A lot of these people will consider voting for Joe Biden in the general election. And Nikki Haley has a very good pitch for that 20%. Then there's another 40% of Republican voters who like Trump, but are open to voting for someone else. Some of them like him a lot on the issues and don't like his personality as much. Some of them may like his personality, but disagree with him on a few issues. And it's tempting to look at that 40% and say that those are voters that Nikki Haley can win over. But they're much more conservative than the kind of independent, moderate, Biden-curious Republicans or independents that Nikki Haley does to secure her base of support among the people who don't like Donald Trump very much, the more she could repel the persuadable voters who do like Donald Trump and who support him on all kinds of issues.

and that message gets out more and more and she finds more and more ways to reinforce it, she's going to be contrasting herself more sharply with Trump and therefore crystallizing for many Republican primary voters why they like Trump and why they don't like her. In other words, the more she will push away that 40% who are a little wishy-washy on Trump and clarify for them why they might actually really like him.

Yeah, many of these 40% think the Republican Party should oppose immigration reform. Many of them oppose aid to Ukraine. You know, so if Nikki Haley runs a campaign that's pro-immigration or pro-aid to Ukraine and is relatively moderate, many of those voters who are open to voting against Trump, but like him, are going to decide they'd rather have Donald Trump than Nikki Haley. Okay. I want you to project this math and this understanding that you have been explaining forward through the next couple of months in the primaries, which will start in early January. And perhaps you can do that by calling back to a previous factional candidate

who looked a lot like Nikki Haley. I have someone in mind, and that is... It is because I owe America more than she has ever owed me that I am a candidate for president of the United States. John McCain in 2000. Who was the factional candidate vis-a-vis George W. Bush. Exactly. And George W. Bush is really the only candidate in the history of modern political polling whose position in the Republican primary looks a lot like Donald Trump's position today.

It's interesting to see the Bush campaign at this point. He has the luxury because he has such a lead in the polls that he can spend his time looking toward the general election and reaching... Both Trump and Bush were polling over 60% nationwide. They had a lot of broad appeal in the Republican Party. Bush wasn't running for a third Republican nomination, but it would be the third Bush Republican nomination. It expresses a

certain amount of confidence on Bush's part that he is known by the family he keeps, for one thing. And John McCain at this time started out in the teens in New Hampshire. He wasn't considered one of the strongest threats to George W. Bush nationwide either. to George W. Bush nationwide

either. Governor George W. Bush, the governor of Texas, and Senator John McCain, the Republican senator from Texas. Arizona. From Arizona. I moved over. One state over. I don't think I'm allowed in Texas. But like Nikki Haley, John McCain could squarely appeal to the kinds of voters who were dissatisfied with George W. Bush. And interestingly, they look a lot like the voters who are dissatisfied with Donald Trump. Unless we get independence, reconstitute the old Reagan Democrats. Who didn't like George W. Bush in 2000? relatively secular, northern, moderate, college-educated Republicans who just didn't love a southern, conservative, evangelical Texan like George W. Bush. Doesn't mean they hated George W. Bush,

but he was never going to be a perfect fit for an independent voter in New Hampshire, right? But I'll tell you what, the Republican Party has lost its way. And so what ended up happening? Well, I mean, the most important thing that happened is that John McCain just kept gaining and gaining in New Hampshire. Thank you very much. I think we finally have a poll without a margin of error. And McCain didn't just win New Hampshire, he won it big. And we have sent a powerful message to Washington that change is coming.

And it propelled him to a new level nationwide. He cleared the field of serious competition. The other candidates got out. And John McCain ultimately won seven states in the election, even though a few months earlier he had been losing 65 to 10 in the polls nationwide. Right. He caught fire. He caught fire. He won a bunch of states. But he didn't come especially close to winning the nomination.

And in the end, John McCain ran into the same problem that every factional candidate does, which is that an appeal that is targeted at a faction of a political party and succeeds at consolidating it will often struggle to win over the majority of the party. And he was unable to break that wall. So if we extrapolate from that example, Nikki Haley, if she replicates John McCain's success. Which she is by no means assured to do. But if she does, she might win New Hampshire. She might quite logically win her home state of South Carolina. This is her best case, yeah. She could go on and win seven states, and it would probably create a real impression of success and viability as a challenger to Trump.

I'm saying this because I'm a journalist, and we can often lose our bearings. But you're saying, based on the math of being a factual candidate, based on the model of John McCain, it's very likely to then stall out. Right. I mean, remember what's going on here, Michael. This is not a party of moderate establishment types anymore. It's a very conservative and populist party, and Nikki Haley is not a very conservative populist. That fact is exactly what lets her win 20 percent, and it's the same fact that means she will have a very hard time to be generous winning 50%. Is there any scenario where Haley could somehow shock everyone and do more than win seven states but keep going and truly become somehow competitive with Trump? Or is what you're saying, and maybe I'm just too dense, mathematically, Michael, that's just not possible. So just shut that down.

Well, let me just start with a historic answer, which is that these factional candidates almost always lose. And the only time when these factional candidates win, like they almost show that they weren't factional candidates, right? So if Nikki Haley were to win the nomination with the campaign that she's run to this point, it would be tantamount to demonstrating that she's not a mere faction, that the things that she believes and that she represents are actually much more broadly appealing in the Republican Party than I'm giving credit for today. It would be an indication that much of what I've told you is wrong, not that she somehow

overcame it. And if that happens, then we can have this conversation. I've been wrong before. Inferences based on polling have been wrong before, of course. But historically speaking, for a candidate like Nikki Haley to win, it would be a sign that we're just wrong about the breadth of her appeal and of her faction today. That said, in this particular election, there is this big asterisk about Donald Trump's legal challenges. I think that we do have to continue to offer that caveat. As the campaign gets underway, those challenges

will become more real as he actually gets into a criminal trial. I think we have to at least allow the possibility, however small, that this will change the race, even though it has not to this point. But other than that, you know, there's not really much of a reason to think that, you know, a moderate establishment type figure in today's Republican Party is well positioned to win the Republican primary electorate. It's just not what the Republican Party is. And so in the end, the story of Nikki Haley's success, the story of this episode, is that it's yet another way of understanding Trump's historic anomalous and near total dominance of the Republican Party. Because the math of Haley's success at attracting the primary voters

who dislike Trump still ends with her very likely losing to him and losing really soundly over the next couple of months. Even right now, Nikki Haley is losing to Trump by like 50 points in the polls, Michael. What she is doing to this point is impressive given where she started, but it leaves her very, very, very far from seriously challenging Donald Trump. Well, Nate, as always, thank you very much. Thank you, Michael. Great to be with you. Nikki is corrupt. This is a woman who will send your kids to die so she can buy a bigger house. On Wednesday night, the fourth Republican presidential debate seemed to confirm Nikki

Haley's place as the leading alternative to Donald Trump. Throughout the night, rival candidates who are now trailing her in the polls, including Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy, repeatedly attacked her, a dynamic that Haley appeared to relish. I love all the attention, fellas. Thank you for that. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. Israel, which is under growing pressure to demonstrate that its operations in Gaza are working, said it has killed at least five key Hamas military leaders and roughly half of Hamas's battalion commanders. Among the leaders who have been killed,

according to Israel, were the head of Hamas's aerial division. In response, Hamas confirmed that several of its key leaders have been killed. And on Wednesday, former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who was ousted by fellow Republicans in October, said he would resign from Congress at the end of the year, a full year before his term is up.

That decision could further imperil Republicans' already slim majority in the House, which is currently just three seats following the expulsion of Republican George Santos of New York. Today's episode was produced by Rob Zipko, Mary Wilson, and Shannon Lin, with help from Diana Nguyen. It was edited by Rachel Quester, contains original music by Marion Lozano, Rowan Emisto, and Dan Powell, and was engineered by Alyssa Moxley.

Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. Special thanks to Maddie Macielo. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Bilboro. See you tomorrow.