And then there were two: Nikki Haley joins Trump in 2024 race

In April 2017, then-U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley publicly addressed speculation that she had her eyes on the presidency. “Everyone thinks that I’m ambitious and everybody thinks I’m trying to run for something and everybody thinks I want more,” she said at the time. “I can’t imagine running for the White House.”

Almost exactly four years later, the South Carolina Republican again addressed her future plans, telling the Associated Press, in reference to a national campaign, “I would not run if President Trump ran.”

Evidently, Haley changed her mind. NBC News reported this morning:

If the timing seems unexpected, it’s not your imagination: Haley indicated weeks ago that she’d make her 2024 announcement on Feb. 15. For whatever reason, she and her team decided to get the ball rolling a day early.

The Republican Party’s field now has two candidates — Haley and Trump — though the total is expected to grow considerably in the coming weeks and months.

On paper, the South Carolinian appears to be well positioned to be a credible national candidate. After all, Haley has experience as a state legislator, a two-term governor, and an ambassador to the United Nations. She’s routinely bragged that she’s never lost an election, which is entirely accurate.

What’s more, Haley, who recently turned 51, is a relatively young woman from an immigrant family, which might help broaden her electoral appeal.

But all kinds of challenges remain, including her meandering approach to the former president, who also happens to be her former boss.

As Stuart Stevens, a former Republican political consultant, explained in a New York Times opinion piece yesterday, Haley was eager to reject Trump — and Trumpism — during the 2016 campaign. “I will not stop until we fight a man that chooses not to disavow the K.K.K. That is not a part of our party,” she said while endorsing Sen. Marco Rubio. “That is not who we want as president.”

It was around the same time that Haley, occasionally comfortable breaking with party orthodoxy, added, “I have to tell you, Donald Trump is everything I taught my children not to do in kindergarten.”

Then Haley reversed course and joined Trump’s team. Then Haley reversed course again and denounced Trump after Jan. 6. Then Haley reversed course again and said she’d stand down if Trump launched a comeback bid. Then Haley reversed course again and decided to run against Trump for the GOP's 2024 presidential nomination.

I’m reminded of something National Review’s Philip Klein wrote via Twitter in 2021: “A few weeks ago, back when she thought tide was turning against Trump, Haley said he would be ‘judged harshly by history.’ Now she realized she got ahead of her skis and is trying to take it back. As I’ve written, she is a human chameleon. She thinks we’re too dumb to notice.”

Stevens added in his piece for the Times: “Ms. Haley, for all her talents, embodies the moral failure of the party in its drive to win at any cost, a drive so ruthless and insistent that it has transformed the G.O.P. into an autocratic movement. It’s not that she has changed positions to suit the political moment or even that she has abandoned beliefs she once claimed to be deeply held. It’s that the 2023 version of Ms. Haley is actively working against the core values that the 2016 Ms. Haley would have held to be the very foundation of her public life.”

It’s possible that she’ll try to thread the political needle, presenting herself to voters as both the 2016 version of Nikki Haley as well as the 2023 version. The former is electable and forward-thinking, the latter is an unyielding partisan. The former is willing to challenge Republican assumptions, the latter is eager to stick to a predictable script. Maybe she’ll try to convince GOP factions that she’s all of the above.

But by any fair measure, Haley starts off as an underdog, with a long road ahead.