Nikki Haley, the proud daughter of Indian immigrants and the former governor of South Carolina state during Trump’s government, announced her candidacy for president a few weeks ago. Nikki Haley is a woman of many firsts. She was the first woman of colour to participate in the Republican presidential nomination and the first female governor ever to run for President. She was the youngest female governor when she took the office in 2011 and South Carolina’s first female governor.
During her tenure in South Carolina, she led the state through a period of economic growth and job creation which led to her being re-elected, yet again in the 2014 election. She was later chosen by Trump as the UN ambassador and never hesitated in speaking out. She had always been committed to putting America first which she had constantly proved in advocating to cut foreign aid to countries that stand against America and calling out the UN for years of bashing Israel.
Despite her impressive record, Haley’s announcement has not been met with enthusiasm from some quarters. With the MAGA republicans focusing their attention on Trump and many others on Ron DeSantis and her inability to clearly articulate why she would be a better candidate than Trump, many have dismissed her campaign as a joke over the past few days.
A strong republican woman with a political record like that, being smashed on the tv channels is quite disheartening. But the media does have a point, she never did say how she was better than Trump except for the statement that ‘it’s time for a new generation’. And shockingly in an interview with CBN, when asked for the pitch to the evangelical voters, she mentioned that she doesn’t have any. All she did say was that they see it and they feel it. The only problem with that is ‘nothing could be farther from the truth’. The polls revealed that she stood in the fourth position following Trump, Ron DeSantis, and Mike Pence.
The GOP didn’t see many female candidates and certainly not candidates with a powerful voice like Haley’s, who was bold enough to admit that the republicans lost the last 7 out of 8 popular votes because they keep getting something wrong. But that doesn’t make Haley any less republican. In fact, she is as republican as they get. She is hugely ‘pro-life’ and believes that the ‘don’t say gay’ law didn’t go far enough and that the entitlement programs need to be changed for younger people. The only thing that would make her any less republican than Trump or DeSantis would be her reluctance to step in the mud and backlash at her competitors while losing her dignity. However when needed, she can get sassy and brutal with Joe Biden and the consequences, she believes, his actions have caused to the people of the United States with him not being able to handle the worst inflation, not providing military aid to Ukraine until it was too late and now deciding to bail out tech companies.
The polls show that it’s implausible for her to become the President but “she had been underestimated all her life, and kept surprising people all along”. So if the GOP is ever ready for a revamp, it would be now.