Haley Can’t Beat Trump, but She Can Sting Him

Nikki Haley absorbed a double-digit loss to Donald Trump in the New Hampshire Republican primary, but vowed to soldier on: “This race is far from over,” she said Tuesday night. But in truth, as the saying goes, it’s all over but the shouting.

I went to Haley’s Monday night rally in Salem, N.H., and as I sat there watching her throw the softest possible punches at Trump, it occurred to me that she doesn’t even appear to be running to beat Trump, but merely to prove that she can compete with him. I don’t even get the sense that she thinks she can win.

She knows how to jab, but no knockout is forthcoming.

In the Republican race, Haley is the last real challenger standing of a truly sad lot, many of whom have since tucked their tails in submission to Trump. And some, like Vivek Ramaswamy and Tim Scott, have endorsed the former president in such a bromance-ish, sycophantic fashion that it makes the way Mike Pence used to gush over Trump’s “broad shoulders” pale in comparison.

Haley’s survival is a testament not to a steel spine, but to a gelatinous one: her Play-Doh-like tendency to try to fit the mold of whomever she’s talking to; her attempts to be authoritative while simultaneously tying herself into knots trying not to offend a Republican base that has ditched her brand of Republicanism.

And although she has lately ramped up her verbal attacks on Trump, those attacks are wobbly and mostly trivial. Haley still suffers from what brought down most of Trump’s other opponents: She doesn’t want to vanquish him as much as tiptoe past him.

Haley keeps insisting that she’d do better than Trump in a general election matchup with President Biden, pointing to the other side of a mountain that won’t be moved.