The miscalculation that doomed Nikki Haley’s anti-Trump strategy

On paper, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley was the first candidate to jump into the doomed race to challenge Donald Trump for the Republican nomination.

In her launch announcement, she suggested she was ready to stomp the former president. “You should know this about me,” she swaggered. “I don’t put up with bullies. And when you kick back, it hurts them more if you’re wearing heels.”

In reality, we would have to wait nearly a year for any serious effort by Haley to challenge Trump’s candidacy, by which point her demise was already assured. Finally coming to terms with reality, NBC News has confirmed Haley will be ending her campaign on Wednesday, the day after being almost completely swept in the Super Tuesday primaries.

And so ends our pathetic excuse of a Republican primary.

As the candidates preached about the high stakes of November’s election, Republican voters were offered little more than a charade.

Like almost all her compatriots, Haley waited months to draw any real contrast with Trump and articulate the risk of putting him back in the White House. While Haley had seemed proud of her late-round swipes at the former president, when it counted — when indictments came down, when he dodged debates, before he left the field in his dust — she was no less timid than the other candidates at the kiddie table.

To her credit, Haley cleared the lowest of bars by running easily the most competent campaign. She honed a disciplined message and rarely deviated. Unlike Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, she didn’t pretend to be a milquetoast version of Trump. She remained true to her brand of conservatism, laying out a clear vision for our government’s role at home and around in the world, even if Republican voters are bored by that sort of thing.

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She also proved to be a proficient fundraiser. And she deftly reminded us with references to the “fellas” in the race that she was the only woman running without seeming to pander to female voters. While still searching for a winning message on abortion, she brought a different tenor than we’re used to seeing from Republican leaders.

Her debate performances were sharp and projected the kind of command of the issues that once was rewarded. In forums littered with dreadful canned attack lines, her arguments felt informed, not rehearsed. She was often the alpha on stage. She picked her fights well and marshaled strong counterpunches quickly.

The punches she pulled, of course, were for the clear and obvious front-runner.

She was so eager to be the last opponent standing that she allowed a 77-year-old man indicted 91 times and found liable for sexual assault during the campaign to cruise to the nomination without breaking a sweat.

Haley may be proud of her second-place showing, but the reality is she never came within 50 points of Trump in national polling averages.

Only in her campaign’s twilight did Haley turn up the heat, in itself a concession that what she’d been doing wasn’t sufficient. Her direct attacks on Trump beginning around the Iowa caucuses felt more like a death rattle than a serious threat to his nomination.

It is wishful thinking, of course, to suggest that Trump would have been easily slayed had only Haley and the others unleashed a more aggressive and comprehensive attack centering on his efforts to thwart democracy or any of his other countless vulnerabilities.

There is a quicksand-like element to attacking Trump. The more you thrash around, the deeper you sink with many Republican voters. Just ask Chris Christie, who took his shots and was rewarded with deeply underwater favorability ratings. Haley herself saw her unfavorable rating rise quickly as she began to more directly attack Trump. An NBC News analysis of November and January national polls found her popularity sank over the winter, even as her attacks on Trump increased.

But while going on the attack clearly has its risks, it was clear as day that ignoring him wasn’t a winning approach either.

We’re left to conclude that Haley’s strategy was never to defeat Trump; it was a wish and a prayer that he would defeat himself. She would have been happy to swoop in if Trump’s legal trouble overtook him and somehow his support fell off a cliff, but she was not willing to give him a push over the edge herself.

It is not crazy to think that political gravity would at some point weigh down Trump, given his immense baggage. That is of course unless you have any understanding of what Republican voters want. The baggage is a feature, not a bug.

In the end, this collapse never came; it never does, and it was foolish to count on it.

As Democrats sneer at Haley’s failure, the Biden campaign should not overlook the core fallacy of the Haley campaign. Waiting for Donald Trump to implode is not a winning strategy.