Let me make it clear from the beginning that I think Nikki Haley (R-Boeing) is a vapid establishment automaton who is basically the Kamala Harris of the Republican Party, a Bushesque mediocrity who represents a dying ideology that peaked in 2005, and good riddance to it. She’s the worst – self-righteous, annoying, always spewing grrrl-power nonsense and hack clichés salvaged from the back catalog of the Weekly Standard. She’s a disaster on every level, one of those people who is both very aggressive and always wrong, the worst possible combination. That being said, should he win the nomination, Nikki! should absolutely be Donald Trump’s vice presidential pick
Stop laughing. I am serious. I am not being ironic. It makes sense. Hear me out.
Look at it from Donald Trump‘s perspective. She’s absolutely the person he should pick if he wins the nomination. I don’t like it. I don’t want it. But it’s a fact. She’s awful. She’s arrogant. She’s a squish. The thought of four years of that nattering nabob of nonsense – apologies to William Safire – is positively agonizing. But Donald Trump’s most important task is to get elected, and she would be the best choice to help him do it.
I hate writing that so much. But it’s true.
No, wait a minute, hasn’t Donald Trump slammed her? Not really. He’s been remarkably gentle with her, probably because he knows she’s his best choice. Even his nickname for her – the uncharacteristically unimaginative “Birdbrain” – is soft and spongy. I do need to point out, however, that in the week of her amazing “Anything but slavery” gaffe, it was pretty obvious that Trump needed to start calling her “Byrdbrain.” What a missed opportunity!
No, Donald Trump has been very nice to her. He’s reserved his fire for Ron DeSantis, a competent and effective conservative governor – in contrast to Nikki Haley – who provides real competition for the nomination, also in contrast to Nikki Haley. Everyone knows Nikki Haley‘s going to lose the nomination. Even Nikki Haley knows she’s going to lose. She’s been quite obviously running for vice president the entire time. She wants the gig. And there’s a lot that she brings to the table.
What does she bring to the table? Well, stupid people. There are a lot of people out there who think she’s a great politician and a great choice. I’m not one of them. If you’re reading this, I’m guessing you’re not one of them, but they are out there. Many don’t like Joe Biden, and many don’t like Donald Trump, but adding her to the ticket can win them over to the GOP. Winning the election is about addition, not subtraction. This isn’t the time to pick a favorite of the people he’s already got nailed down. Someone like Kari Lake or Vivek Ramaswamy is very popular with the Trump base, but Trump doesn’t need to win the Trump base because they are already the Trump base. They will fall in line, grumbling maybe, but fall in line they will. He has to expand the Trump base. I think Ron DeSantis would expand the base alone, but if he’s not on the ballot, Trump will need to expand beyond the Trump base. And Nikki Haley expands the Trump base. I don’t particularly dig the people she will bring in, but the point is to win, not to make people like me happy about how Trump does it.
It’s all about winning. Sigh.
He needs her to win over the doubters. For some reason, suburban women seem to like Nikki Haley. I don’t understand it, but the facts are the objective facts. Now, suburban women are the worst people in the universe, living proof that the 19th Amendment needs an asterisk to exclude anybody who prefers oaky Chardonnay. But there are many of these wine women, and they all vote. A good chunk of them will vote for a Republican ticket if it has Nikki Haley on it. Maybe it’s her girl power nonsense. Maybe it’s the fact that she looks like someone who tells you to use your inside voice. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. She wins over people Trump couldn’t win over alone.
And she brings in the Establishment. No one hates the Establishment more than me. They are terrible people with an unbroken track record of failure. They brought us McCain, and they brought us Romney, and they are utterly incapable of analyzing why they lost or understanding the rise of Trump. But there are many of them, and they’ll stay home if it is Donald Trump and somebody like Donald Trump on the ticket. Nikki Haley appeals to them because she’s just the kind of decline management Republican they seem to adore, one who won’t take any hard positions that upset the folks down at the country club. It is better to have them on the inside of the tent than on the outside, peeing on it.
It’s not just that they will vote for her but that they will write her checks. She’s the donors’ gal because she’s the kind of pol the big donors love. Big Republican donors are mostly idiots. Their political instincts are awful, and they cannot learn from repeated mistakes. That’s why they love her. That and the fact that she’s willing to do whatever they want and adopt every dumb position they want, whether it’s allowing in endless hordes of illegal aliens, genuflecting at the altar of companies like Disney, or not making fellow swells upset by banning the mutilation of children. With her on the ticket, they will send money. Trump will need money because it’s all going to lawyers right now. And while I typically like lawyers being paid a lot of money, I also like the Republican Party having enough money to compete in the general election. Nikki Haley brings that to the table – the bottomless checkbooks of sucker GOP donors, and that’s not nothing.
But shouldn’t we worry that Nikki Haley will somehow have a big influence in a Trump 2.0 administration? Frankly, no, though I’m sure she imagines she will. I think it will look like four seasons of “Veep,” with Nikki Haley as a less amusing version of Selena Meyer, constantly asking if the president called and being told he has not. That brings us to another vital attribute of Nikki Haley. She’s not going to overshadow Trump. And she’s not going to have any influence. She can get in there and advocate for whatever dumb war she’s supporting this week or whatever idiotic social fetish she refuses to fight, and Trump is going to do whatever he wants. The only problem is if somehow Trump falls out and she falls into the Oval Office. But Trump’s pretty robust. He’ll certainly live through his term, if only for spite.
Now, the ultra-mega-MAGA Trump people properly detest Nikki Haley. I mean, they just despise her, which is to their credit. But they love Trump even more. Hell, he announced we ought to reward the fascist FBI with a spectacular new building, and they cheered as genius what last week they would (correctly) call treachery. So, if he picks Nikki Haley, they will all support it. They’re going to swallow it whole and applaud. You’ll have @FatMAGADeadbeatDad69 putting out reams of memes about how this is a brilliant 27-dimension chess move. A few people will ask, “What the hell are you thinking?” They won’t get a good answer and’ll still fall in line in November.
I will fall in line in November. I’m going to vote for whoever the Republican nominee is. If the Republicans are intent on nominating Trump instead of a disciplined and effective governor who is not hated by 53% of voters and who has a really good chance of winning, I’m in. Would a Trump Haley ticket have a good chance of winning? I don’t think it would have a good chance of winning, but it would have a better chance than a Donald Trump/Anyone Else ticket.
If you think I’m happy about a situation where I think the Republican candidate would be cunning to pick Nikki Haley for any job not involving a mop and bucket, you are wrong. I’m not happy about this. I’m very, very sad. We still have a chance to avoid it by nominating DeSantis (who would pick Iowa’s Kim Reynolds for VP), but if we don’t avoid it, I don’t see a better pick for Trump in terms of winning the election as opposed to actually governing – fortunately, a vice president doesn’t actually govern. A vice president usually gets sent overseas to attend the funeral of Finland’s Secretary of Ennui and Reindeer Affairs. And standing there in the snow listening to the eulogy for some depressed Nordic elk wrangler seems like a great job for Nikki Haley.
Do I think Trump would pick her? I think Trump would do it in a heartbeat. After all, we all know his personnel selection track record, and he’s already picked Nikki Haley once for a big job.