HGotW: Nikki Haley

In a bumper crop of candidates for this week, one rises to the top

She was against him, before she was for him, and she worked in his administration before she denounced him.

Yeah, that makes no sense to me, but two days ago, about 2 months after she exited the Republican primary race for president after Trump embarrassed her on Super Tuesday, even in the state that she was Governor of, South Carolina.

A lot of the so called “normie” Republicans were big sadz that she failed to catch on and defeat the Tangerine Turd, but they were cautiously optimistic that because she didn’t immediately get in line and kiss the ring, that just maybe she would retain her dignity and refuse to endorse or vote for Trump¹.

On Wednesday, she finally took her first baby steps to get back into the fold and said publicly that she was voting for Trump. Sure, it isn’t a full-throated endorsement, but it is all but inevitable.

From the AP:

Nikki Haley said Wednesday that she will be voting for Donald Trump in the general election, a notable show of support given their intense and often personal rivalry during the Republican primary calendar.

Ayup, that is the chink in the armor, the hole in the dam that will lead to the next step.

Of course, many of the Never Trumpers such as The Bulwark, Rick Wilson, and all others reflected their dismay at the once again flip-flop of Haley².

When she suspended her campaign, she did say that Trump (and the Trump campaign) really needed to work to gain her supporters’ confidence. What did the Tangerine Rhino do?

If you said that he was crystal clear that the Haley supporters were irrelevant, that they weren’t really Republicans, that this “tiny” sliver of the electorate was irrelevant to his steamroller of a campaign.

But, since the suspension of the Haley campaign, an interesting phenomenon has manifested itself. In subsequent primary races, there has been a consistent 15 - 20% margin of voters pulling the lever for her, even though she was officially out of the race.

Trump and his surrogates have dismissed this as crossover of Democrats poisoning the Republican primaries in open primary states. Yet even in states like Pennsylvania that have closed primaries (that is, you can only vote in the primary you are registered in; thus Democrats can’t vote for Republicans, and Independents don’t get to vote at all) she has siphoned off high teens percentages of the vote.

Whilst this might not filter its way past the ferrets in Trump’s mind that control his combover, it certainly does mean something to the two top pols running the Trump campaign, Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita. No doubt they are terrified of roughly 20% of registered Republicans either sitting out or crossing over to vote for Biden. They know that this will likely doom the election for the Orangina Turd in November.

I would be shocked if there hadn’t been a constant stream of back-channel communications from the Trump campaign and the Haley team for a reproachment to pave a path³ to Haley rejoining the fold.

And suddenly Trump is no longer calling her “birdbrain” and instead saying that he thinks she will be happy on Team Trump⁴.

Suddenly, she seems to be in the mix for the Veep choice, and the others prostrating themselves in humiliating ways (cough Stefanik, Scott, Rubio, et. al. cough) are now losing their luster. One has to believe that the dynamic duo of Wiles and LaCivita are whispering in the cheeto dusted shitgibbon’s ears that Haley brings close to 20% of the base with her. That likely will get past the mental fog that clogs Trumps swiss-cheese brain and will lift her stock.

Mark my words, Haley is going to jump the line in the Veepstakes.

So much for normality returning to the GOP, the rot runs riot in their ranks.

And for that, Nimarata “Nikki” Haley is my Human Garbage of the Week!

1. To be fair, the Never Trump folks all wished her to stand strong, but they all believed that she would eventually get into line. They understood the mentality of the current crop of cowardly pols.

2. I mean, Haley has been a creature of being on the wrong side until it was no longer tenable, c.f. her stance on the Confederate Battle flag where she supported it until it became toxic after the Charleston church shooting

3. Paved in shit bricks. A friend who built a house in San Filipe, Mexico explained that his landscaping that used these rather beautiful hued bricks, and he explained to us that they were local clays, that were fired using dung pellets and thus were “shit bricks”. The path for Haley back to team Trump is certainly paved with these shit bricks. Fun fact, when I searched for a link, I got this from the MSFT Copilot (aka Chat GPT):

I more than giggled about that.

4. Typing that made me throw up a little bit in my mouth.

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