How former SC Gov. Nikki Haley went from political miracle to probable obscurity | Opinion
You gotta hand it to Nikki Haley. She sure knows how to screw up a once-promising political career and waste her immense talent. She’ll be studied in the history books for decades to come. Haley went from performing a political miracle to probable obscurity as a talk show host on satellite radio.
She became a burgeoning political superstar by becoming the first non-white person and the first woman to become governor of South Carolina, the first state that seceded from the Union to preserve race-based chattel slavery, to . . . it’s unclear at the moment after Donald Trump stiff-armed her.
She won’t be serving in the second Trump administration, the once and future president has announced. It means she won’t even be the favorite to secure the 2028 presidential nomination after a strong showing during the 2024 GOP primaries. That position is occupied by Vice President-elect JD Vance.
Her trajectory is among the most bizarre in the modern political era, from highs such as winning the South Carolina governorship , serving as United States ambassador to the United Nations during Trump’s first term, and taking on Trump in the Republican presidential primary. She even got more credit than she deserved for the removal of the Confederate flag from the Statehouse grounds. The blood of nine Black people massacred in a historically-Black church led to that change.
Many South Carolinians, myself included, mistakenly believed she could be a stateswoman. It was a delusion. She’s as power-hungry as Sen. Lindsey Graham, willing to toss aside all principles — if she had any at all — to continue climbing the ladder. She pretended to be a stateswoman in the immediate aftermath of Jan. 6, 2021, a violent insurrection attempt in our capitol sparked by Trump’s rhetoric and lies about a supposedly stolen election.
Haley was frank about the person Trump really was.
”We need to acknowledge he let us down,” she told Politico. “He went down a path he shouldn’t have, and we shouldn’t have followed him, and we shouldn’t have listened to him. And we can’t let that ever happen again.”
But she listened to him again. She let it, another Republican rallying around Trump, happen again. After losing the nomination to Trump, Haley threw her full support behind the insurrectionist-in-chief, endorsing him at the Republican National Convention and saying she was “on standby” if Trump needed her on the campaign trail. That call never came. Trump had already shown her the door. He just hadn’t told her, though everyone paying attention knew he had.
That was before he kicked her to the curb via a post on X. Her response was pathetic, though not surprising.
“I was proud to work with President Trump defending America at the United Nations,” she wrote. “I wish him well, and all who serve, great success in moving us forward to a stronger, safer America over the next four years.”
That was her reward for bending the knee to Trump, a reward she earned.
Don’t cry for her, though. She still gets to host “Nikki Haley Live,” a weekly show on SiriusXM. Even that might not last long, though. Haley is scheduled to host the show through Trump’s inauguration. But she’s open to continuing the show beyond January “if Americans like what they hear,” she told the Associated Press.
At this point, what does she have to say that anyone wants or needs to hear?
We can’t trust her words. She will change them week to week if that’s what drives ratings in the same way she was willing to say different-conflicting things at different times if that put her in the best political position. But, then again, that might make her the perfect political host.
It’s not about speaking truth to power, but gaining it, either through clicks or ratings. Haley is the ideal candidate in such a setting — what we once wrongly believed she was in a fractured country.