Nikki Haley:  Politically and Personally the Best Republican Candidate for President

I have been a moderately conservative independent since my days as a conservative Democrat through, say 1974, when I was a young professor.  I still have some of the same heroes from those days, including Phil Hart, Paul Wellstone, and later Howard Baker (R-Tenn), and my values have not changed.

I have been following the presidential race closely and can find no likely candidates among the Democrats to support – Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom, etc.

There is one candidate, the only one in recent months to whom I have made a contribution but with whom I have no ties, who represents a presidential candidacy I can support strongly: Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina (2011-2017) and the 29th United States ambassador to the United Nations from January 2017 through December 2018.

Let me start with a specific encomium:  Yesterday, October 10, I heard Haley on Fox News discuss articulately but passionately the long teaching of Jew-hating promoted by Hamas in Palestinian schools.  She discussed Hamas’ tunnels underneath schools and hospitals to make approaching them there repugnant to Israel.  She spoke of the fact that protecting Israel used to be a bipartisan policy before the birth of The Squad.  She spoke clearly and eloquently about the savagery of the Hamas attack on Israel proper with the beheading of babies and massacring of unsuspecting families as well as a wholesale slaughter of over 200 Israelis attending a music festival and the taking of Israeli and American hostages.  She is more on top of this as she is more on top of virtually all issues than her competition.

Let me detail why I support her and not other conservatives and why you should, too:

1. The elephant in the room (pun intended) is all intensity and no majority winner for the foreseeable future:  Donald Trump runs on his success economically and in foreign policy, but his style is so repugnant that he could not beat Joe Biden in 2020, and lost a tremendous number of votes for the Republicans in 2022, leading to the Speaker’s fall and chaos among Republicans.  This is added to his considerable legal problems.

Nikki Haley is a throwback to honest politicians – remember them? — who take positions and support them if they make for important U.S. policy regardless of pushback.  She sees the big picture of the consequences for the West if Russia conquers Ukraine.  Ron DeSantis has been nothing but indecisive, leaning toward withdrawal with no indication that he knows the global consequences of losing Ukraine.

2. Nikki Haley understands the cruciality of protecting our borders; she did not have to wait for catastrophic results, such as we have now, to support a border wall, as the waffling Joe Biden now apparently does reluctantly.

3. Nikki Haley is precisely the reasonable candidate who will stem Republican losses on the issue of abortion that Democrats salivate on.  Lisa Lerer of The New York Times has argued that Haley has crafted “an anti-abortion message that doesn’t alienate moderate Republicans and swing voters….”  Haley has opposed a 15-week federal ban but supports a ban “on late-term abortions, encouraging adoption, providing conception and not criminalizing the women who have the procedure.”

4. Haley is not quiet on China.  She recognizes the importance of general confrontation and will not be asleep at the wheel when spy balloons invade the United States.  China’s promotion of fentanyl, military expansionism and territorial expansion in the United States, and putative aggression towards Taiwan call for a tougher, more alert president and administration, and that is she.

5. Ex-governor Nikki Haley knows how to lead an administration.  Please no more single term Senators or good businessmen who lack experience.  Experience counts, as supporters of Richard M. Nixon used to argue, but consistency and resolution count as well.   Haley has forthrightly focused on a consistent America-first policy and does not waffle with the polls.  She has articulated how central such a policy is for the United States.

6. Haley is reasonableness personified on education in the United States.  While in so many locales the only answer to widespread reading and math score embarrassment is more money, she said in New Hampshire,  and has articulated her support consistently, school choice and transparency are crucial:  “No parent should ever wonder what’s being said or taught to their child in the classroom. We need full transparency in the classroom always.” In addition “she promised to ‘neuter’ the U.S. Education Department and assailed transgender girls competing in sports against cisgender females.”

I have watched the Republican debates.  Debate was always a main portion of my classes for 50 years.  I do not believe that political/presidential debates should always be definitive, but Nikki Haley clearly has won debates each time I have witnessed her in one.  She is on top of everything – everything; she is articulate; she is not single-issue focused (sorry Gov. Christie); she is not personally off-putting (sorry Ted Cruz) and she is on the whole presidential material (Sorry Sen. Scott, Ramaswamy, Gov. Burgum and former V.P. Pence).  She is not stumped for an answer on health care reform,  as are DeSantis and others.

It is no surprise to me that Haley has gone ahead of DeSantis in polling in New Hampshire.  Many voters do not indicate their support for a candidate until elections approach.  This is why polls were so wrong on Hilary Clinton historically but also because most polls do not measure intensity and, if they do, they don’t measure it well.

At the risk of using a slogan whose author, Jimmy Carter, was not the answer to the question, I hope voters will answer it with Gov. Nikki Haley: “Why not the best?”