Nikki Haley Lost the South Carolina Primary Back When She Was Still Governor

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

83% : Even if some voters like Haley, they love Trump, just as they strongly preferred his style over those of Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio eight years ago.
72% : "In Haley's home state, Trump leads her by thirty-six points in the polls, and he has collected endorsements from almost the entire South Carolina Republican political establishment.
68% : as Trump hugged the flag.
65% : She set her hopes on the U.S. Virgin Islands as a possible surprise triumph; Trump beat her by forty-eight points.
64% : Of course, at this point, both Trump and Haley are insiders; both of their main residences are adjacent to golf clubs, but Haley now plays the country-club Republican while Trump claims to stand for the blue-collar working class.
63% : In the past few months, her favorability in her home state has fallen, while Trump's has improved.
62% : As Haley delivered a classic political speech, talking about childhood-literacy rates and e-mails she gets from a mom who wants America to be normal again, a crowd of hundreds of Trump supporters was gathering nearby at an airport to welcome the former President when he landed in his plane, which he calls Trump Force One.
60% : Then, when Trump won and called up the state's lieutenant governor, Henry McMaster, to ask what job he wanted in the Administration, McMaster said he simply wanted to be the governor of South Carolina, so Trump agreed to find a position for Haley, as the U.N. Ambassador.
59% : It really is that individualism, and Trump is just the embodiment of all of that.
58% : ("She was O.K., but I didn't put her there because I wanted her there," Trump said at a recent rally in Conway, South Carolina.)
57% : At a rally of his own in North Charleston, Trump told the crowd, "The radical-left Democrats want Nikki Haley because they know she's easy to beat . . .
53% : Trump controls the state."
49% : As the only candidate on the ballot for the Nevada primary, she was counting on at least a symbolic victory -- Trump would automatically get all the delegates in that state's caucus, in which he ran unopposed, but she could at least say she won something.
49% : Trump ended up becoming a successor to the Tea Party, inheriting much of its constituency and taking up the mantle of draining the swamp.
49% : Smoak went on, "We see Trump pulling in thousands of people.
49% : I'm tickled to death at the crowd here, but if Trump were here you couldn't even get to the beach!"The gathering in Kiawah was a slice of Haley's imagined idyll of a normal weekend morning.
48% : The day after January 6, 2021, Haley gave a speech at the R.N.C. and condemned Trump; soon afterward, she said she considered him a friend, but she was certain he'd never run for federal office again.
46% : In a deeply Christian, conservative, and white district, Koon referred to Haley, as Trump now does, by her birth name, Nimarata Randhawa, and sent out mailers showing her with her father in his Sikh turban.
46% : Haley has spent the past few years revising how to position herself in relation to Trump, and her delicate balance when it came to the former President got her further than any of the "fellas" in the race.
45% : Though she rejects the label of the de-facto leader of the Never Trump movement, her long-shot campaign is heartening for those who like to imagine the Party as more than a subsidiary of Trump, Inc.
45% : "The bickering between the two remaining candidates has fuelled the race and Haley's fund-raising: she brought in a million dollars in the forty-eight hours after Trump attacked her husband, campaign sources told the Wall Street Journal.
42% : Still, Haley's speech reaffirming her dedication to running was her stern reminder that she won't be bullied out of the race by Trump.
40% : Most people are still cleaving to Trump like Tiberian bats in a cave.
34% : "I'm not going to talk about an obituary," she said in New Hampshire, responding to her party's call for her to step aside and just anoint Trump as the nominee.
32% : ("The Never Trumper transformation is complete," Trump's senior adviser responded, when Haley declined to confirm that she would support Trump as the nominee.
32% : Many of Haley's events had been interrupted by protesters and Trump supporters; this morning, a man walking by on his way to brunch screamed "Free Palestine!""A lot of people are bad-mouthing her," Jerry Smoak, a retired advertising executive from Charleston, told me.
30% : He went on, "Trump is fighting a battle against the current regime.
29% : Trump suggested that Haley's husband, who is serving with the National Guard in Djibouti, got himself deployed as a way to get away from her.
29% : Haley still maintains that, as President, she would pardon Trump if he were convicted of a crime -- to help the country heal, instead of dividing it further.
26% : "You become an external critic because the Party is Trump's.
25% : Jesse Absher, an electrician who came to Haley's Rock Hill event alone, having cut ties with much of his family over their support for Trump, told me, "She's the only damn alternative."
21% : Haley had long hoped to become the last woman standing against Trump -- "12 fellas down.
16% : I'd rather vote for Genghis Khan than Donald Trump.
16% : When Trump came to South Carolina, he moved from calling Haley "Birdbrain" to "Brain-dead."
15% : Trump handily took South Carolina in 2016, when Haley was, as she is now, speaking her hard truths about his shortcomings.
11% : People filtered in, many of them wearing "Too Chicken to Debate" stickers, referring to Trump, who still refuses to take the stage opposite Haley.
10% : In the 2016 G.O.P. primary in South Carolina, Haley stumped for Marco Rubio and railed against Trump throughout the national election cycle.
8% : Her rallies recently have something of a resistance-liberal energy to them, a release valve for the not small demographic who are sick of Trump and Joe Biden.
5% : You must really hate her," Trump said to Tim Scott, the junior senator from South Carolina, appointed by Haley.
5% : "After Trump declared that Haley's donors and supporters were "permanently barred from the MAGA camp," Haley framed herself as the insurgent underdog -- David going after Goliath, running against Trump as the establishment candidate.

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