Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley has a certain look when she’s grappling with criticism. She locks her expression into place, waiting for the storm to be over.
We have seen this several times during the GOP primary debates, including at least twice when fellow contender Vivek Ramaswamy attacked Haley on Dec. 6.
The former South Carolina governor just stood there, frozen-faced, as she processed the remarks and calculated her next move.
I made a bet that @NikkiHaley couldn’t even name just three regions of eastern Ukraine that she wants to send America’s sons & daughters to die fighting for. Turns out, I was right. pic.twitter.com/HvZRxsEpp0
— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) December 7, 2023
Vivek Ramaswamy blasts Nikki Haley: “Nikki is corrupt. This is a woman who will send your kids to die so she can buy a bigger house.” pic.twitter.com/1EJoYs4ily
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) December 7, 2023
At a town hall Wednesday in Newport, New Hampshire, Haley did it again in response to a comment no Republican presidential candidate wants to hear.
The voter in the audience superseded his unsavory comparison with an explanation of how he hadn’t originally intended to be at the event. Haley surely would have preferred he’d stayed home too, given the grave impact of his words.
“You sound really good,” the man said. “You’re a strong speaker. Some of your policies I do agree with. You sound like a Democrat sometimes. Sorry about that.”
Haley locked her expression into position as she absorbed the blow and rallied to figure out what to do with it.
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The comment came one day after Haley received New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu’s endorsement.
Sununu is one of the few governors left in New England who isn’t a Democrat — although he, like Haley, sometimes sounds like one.
Just as Haley has mastered the art of “conspicuous in-betweens,” as Politico put it, so has Sununu.
Both have sharply criticized the Republican front-runner, former President Donald Trump.
In an eye-opening interview on “The View” six months ago, Sununu declared that Trump “won’t be the nominee.”
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For her part, Haley — who served in Trump’s administration as U.N. ambassador — has described the prospect of another Trump term as “four years of chaos, vendettas and drama.”
On Wednesday, the campaign of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — who is in the No. 2 spot in the GOP primary race between Trump and Haley, according to the RealClearPolitics polling aggregate — shared a montage explaining all about the Democrat living inside of Haley, beginning with how she admittedly got into politics because of Hillary Clinton.
Here are the many times Nikki Haley sounded like a Democrat.
(Because she is)pic.twitter.com/aAjNWRvhbb
— DeSantis War Room ? (@DeSantisWarRoom) December 14, 2023
As Politico said of Haley in a February profile, “She was a Trump critic who became a Trump appointee who now officially is a Trump rival. Throughout her compelling, nearly two-decade-long political ascent, she has been nimble, or as her critics would say, uncommonly calculating.”
Thus as it now suits her, the former governor seems to have staked out the GOP establishment/anti-Trump position in the primary race — with the support of some Democrats.
Last week, Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn and a prominent Democratic donor, gave $250,000 to a super PAC supporting Haley.
The move reveals just how in line Haley’s strategy is with Democrats as well as how much Hoffman hates Trump. According to CNN, supporting her “represents the first of just two opportunities to stop Donald Trump from winning the White House again.”
“Nikki Haley would not be as good for America as Joe Biden,” Hoffman said, “but America would survive her administration.”
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