Haley's "Courageous" Break With Trump Ends After Less Than One Month

When it came out that Nikki Haley was "breaking" with Trump, publicly saying "we shouldn’t have followed him, and we shouldn’t have listened to him. And we can’t let that ever happen again," I observed that this seeming profile in courage was anything but for a host of reasons. Chief among them: Haley could and would always come groveling back to Trump if it seemed like he was holding onto his position as a GOP power broker. 

Still, even I thought she'd take more than a month to complete the journey:

Former United States Ambassador the the United Nations Nikki Haley on Monday praised former President Trump over his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) the day before, after sharply criticizing him last month for his rhetoric and actions ahead of the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.

“Strong speech by President Trump about the winning policies of his administration and what the party needs to unite behind moving forward. The liberal media wants a GOP civil war. Not gonna happen,” Haley wrote on Twitter.

What an utter sleazeball. 

What To Make of Haley's "Break" With Trump?

The JTA's headline says it all: "Nikki Haley broke with Trump. It could make her a Jewish GOP favorite in 2024."

Well, perhaps not all. "Broke" is a very friendly way of putting it; I might go with "lickspittle stops licking." But that's editorializing.

In any event, what do we make of this decision by Haley?

Let's start with the Jewish angle, since that's how JTA frames it. I do think that Haley is well-positioned to be the Jewish GOP favorite in 2024, since she's followed a similar trajectory as most GOP Jews with regard to Trump. Start by loudly disavowing him, shift to "well, but look at what he does for Israel," crest at treating him like their God. Now that we're falling off that peak, I suspect they'll settle back into the groove of "sure he wasn't perfect, but Israel!", and Haley, viewed as the human instantiation of Trump's Israel advocacy, is well positioned to take advantage of that. The incongruity of going from genuflecting at Trump's magnificence to "breaking" with him will be easily overlooked, since much of the Jewish GOP will be doing the same contortion.

But what about Haley's 2024 prospects more generally? Certainly, there's risk -- as the last few weeks have shown, the GOP is still very much Trump's party. Nonetheless, I think this is a savvy move. Simply put: Haley wants to be President in 2024. That won't happen if Trump is strong enough in the GOP to win the Republican nomination. So Haley might as well act as if he won't be -- if he is strong, her support for him will be moot, and if he's weak, she has the advantage of presenting a clean ("clean") break.

Moreover, Haley doesn't currently hold elected office, so she doesn't have to worry about a primary backlash or other ways of the Trumpist base directly humiliating her. And even if Trump does hold his position, he's perhaps surprisingly tolerant of welcoming former adversaries back into his orbit if they grovel hard enough (see Graham, Lindsey). Haley may be saying that "we shouldn’t have followed him, and we shouldn’t have listened to him. And we can’t let that ever happen again," but I guarantee that if Trump remains the prime 2024 GOP power figure, Nikki Haley will absolutely be eager to do it all over again. And fortunately for her, that puts her in the same position as 95% of the GOP.

Well played, Haley. Well played.

Nikki Haley, Heroic Figure!

Now that she's back in private life, former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley is showing that principled advocacy and public dignity that set her apart from other Trump administration apparatchiks.

Here she is trying to act like complying with simple anti-corruption measures prohibiting public officials from using the office to gain private benefit was a deliberate Obama-led plot to target her and her Twitter feed.

And here she is, on her newly relaunched Twitter platform, giving fulsome praise to newly inaugurated Brazilian President Jair "I'm pro-torture" Bolsonaro. His first acts as President, unsurprisingly, were sweeping attacks on Brazil's gay community (he famously said he'd prefer his son die in a car accident than be gay) and indigenous populations. Human rights!

In conclusion, Nikki Haley is a fair-minded, principled advocate for the dignity of the least among us worldwide and one of the rare bright spots to come out of the Trump Administration.

And Nikki Haley's Reputation Was Ruined Forever

The Obama administration struggled when it came to Syria. That struggle was honestly arrived at. It pitted a brutal tyrant, massacring his own people, against a deeply unstable region beset by factionalism (of which ISIS was only the most terrifying), coupled with an America chastened in its ability to effectuate positive regional change at gunpoint from the debacle in Iraq and, more recently, Libya. That is not a cocktail which lends itself to any simple solution.

Of course, some people were less forgiving. Lee Smith at Tablet was brutal in lambasting Obama for his softness on Syria. And perhaps nobody was more viciously targeted than his UN Ambassador, Samantha Power, whom Smith deemed the "Ambassador from Hell." Power had and remained a constant and vocal critic of Assad and his barbaric attacks on civilian populations. But her inability to actually translate such vocalizations into tangible actions aimed at getting Assad out made her into a monster. Syria would be her everlasting shame.

Sadly, as much as some folks might miss it, Obama is no longer the President. Donald Trump occupies the Oval Office, and Nikki Haley is our UN Ambassador. A change of tone in the air? You could say so: Haley just announced that the US no longer cares if Assad stays or goes at all. She's right in line with the rest of the Trump administration -- Sean Spicer lectured the press corps that we needed to accept the "political reality" of Assad's leadership.

Now just to be clear: My opening paragraph continues to reflect my view on Syria. It doesn't become less knotty or nettlesome just because Trump's in office. And while I am (I believe justly) skeptical of the Trump administration's ability to successfully navigate such a delicate and thorny situation, there is no obvious path for Trump to take that one can fairly lambaste him for foregoing.

But Smith clearly didn't agree. He had no hesitation about drawing deep from the rhetorical well, and never assuming complexity when malice would suffice. So can we look forward to blistering editorials about how Nikki Haley is forever tarnished, a tool of genocidaires with the blood of countless Syrians on her hands? Can we expect him to speak of Trump's "deliberate" decisions to allow civilians to die, the better to snuggle up to his pals in Russia?

Color me dubious. Once Obama's gone, it's amazing how passé these hysterics suddenly get.