After an embarrassing result in Nevada, Haley goes after her own party
After perhaps her worst showing in her Republican primary campaign — she finished second to “None of These Candidates” in the Nevada primary, in which the frontrunner, former President Donald J. Trump, did not run — Nikki Haley set out on her own party, painting the day not so bad for her, but for the Republicans.
In a social media post on Wednesday, Ms. Haley cast her party as embroiled in the same disarray surrounding the man who remade the party in his image. She pointed to three events that all occurred in the hours before her runner-up finish: Republican pushback in Congress over a border security bill; Ronna McDaniel's announcement that she plans to resign as chair of the Republican National Committee; and an appeals court's rejection of Mr. Trump's claim that he is immune from prosecution on charges of trying to overturn the 2020 election results.
“Republicans keep doing the same thing and achieving the same result: chaos. That is the definition of insanity,” she wrote, adding that the “RNC imploded,” the “GOP House can't pass ANYTHING” and “Trump lost yet another court case and threw another tantrum.”
The missive is the latest rift between Ms. Haley and her party as it has taken a sharper and more combative approach toward Mr. Trump in an effort to oust him from his position in the Republican nominating contest.
In the Nevada primary on Tuesday, Ms. Haley finished behind the “None of these candidates” option on the ballot. Technically, she will win the contest anyway, because state election law says that “only votes cast for named candidates will be counted.” But the confusing result has denied her even a symbolic victory. Ms. Haley's team has long said she has spent no time or money in Nevada after the state party changed the rules in Trump's favor and decided to award all 26 of the state's delegates to the winner of a caucus scheduled for Thursday was standing.
Ms. Haley has continued to project confidence, saying she will remain in the race until Super Tuesday, March 5. But she remains far behind Trump in most state and national polls. In South Carolina, where she was governor and which will hold primaries on February 24, she trails him by about 30 percentage points. She is in California, a Super Tuesday state, and where she will appear for a rally on Wednesday evening more than 50.
Both on the campaign trail and in national interviews this week, Ms. Haley has continued to call for a new generation of leadership and criticized Mr. Trump for holding up a border security deal, calling the delays irresponsible and urging Congress to pass the legislation to approve.
“The problem I have is – here you have President Trump telling Congress not to pass anything until after the election,” she told an audience of 500 people in Spartanburg, S.C. “We can't wait.”