Haley says she's not dropping out: 'I don't feel the need to kiss the ring'

Days removed from a heated Republican primary on her home turf, Nikki Haley pushed back Tuesday against skeptics who have long urged her to drop out of the race, saying that while other members of her party had given in to a “herd mentality” and in line behind former President Donald J. Trump, she would not.

“I have no desire to kiss the ring,” she said in a major speech in Greenville, S.C., vowing to continue her push for the nomination after Saturday's primaries in South Carolina, her home state. “And I'm not afraid of Trump's retaliation. I don't look for anything from him.”

Ms. Haley also claimed that many of the same Republican politicians “who now publicly embrace Trump fear him personally” and were “too afraid” to say anything, despite knowing he had been “a disaster” for the party. She argued that Americans deserved a choice and not a “Soviet-style election,” which she said was just one candidate getting 99 percent of the vote.

“We don't anoint kings in this country,” she said. “We have elections. And Donald Trump in particular needs to know that we are not manipulating the elections.”

The comments were her sharpest yet against Mr Trump and the way he has remade the Republican Party in his image. After taking a calibrated approach to Mr. Trump for much of the race, Ms. Haley has adopted a more combative stance as she has become his latest major rival.

But Ms. Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and ambassador to the United Nations under Trump, trails her former boss in her home state by double digits. The national prospects for her campaign don't look much brighter.

In a memo emailed to his supporters on Tuesday, Mr Trump, who for months fueled lies that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen from him, suggested that Ms Haley was “like any whining loser hell-bent on an alternate reality” and that she is “rejected by those who know her best” in South Carolina. The memo also claimed she had no path to the nomination, pointing to her string of losses to date.

Trump himself was expected to appear in Greenville later in the day for a Fox News town hall-style event.

With questions about when she will leave the race continuing to haunt her campaign, Ms. Haley continues to reiterate her pledge to remain Super Tuesday on March 5, regardless of the outcome on Saturday. Some of her closest allies have not ruled out the possibility that she could stay longer.

Her campaign has continued to raise money from major donors and announce elected officials, business leaders and prominent community members who are helping lead their efforts across the country, including in Alaska, California, Georgia, Idaho, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Texas, Utah, Vermont and Washington.

On Tuesday, she reiterated a strong response to her opponents that she incorporated into her stump speech in recent days, suggesting a majority of Americans did not want to see a rematch between Mr Trump and President Biden.

“Trump and Biden are two old men who are just getting older,” she said. “Nearly 60 percent of Americans say Trump and Biden are both too old to be president — because they are.”

She claimed that Mr Biden and Mr Trump had both “replaced normalcy with chaos”.

“The truth is, Americans already know what Joe Biden and Donald Trump will do,” she said. “But we're just as concerned about who they are. They are dividing lines at a time when America desperately and urgently needs a unifier.”