Hi Rulers! Happy Friday! Ahead of the S.C. primary tomorrow, we're talking about Nikki Haley: On Saturday, Nikki Haley will face the biggest test of her candidacy yet: a primary in her home state, South Carolina. If polling is any indication, she’s going to lose to former President Donald Trump. But even though the former U.N. ambassador is facing what feels like an impending defeat, she’s still broken some glass ceilings during this campaign. Her bid is the closest any Republican woman has come to securing the GOP nomination — and she beat out a crowded field of men vying to be the alternative to Trump. So, even though she likely won’t be heading to the Oval Office anytime soon, her campaign — and the response it’s received from voters and politicians — can offer some insights about the landscape for a woman presidential candidate in the GOP. I talked to Republican strategist Sarah Longwell, publisher of The Bulwark and president and CEO of Longwell Partners, about those insights — plus why Haley has stayed in the race so long, and whether Haley has a future in the GOP once her campaign comes to an end. (Spoiler alert: Longwell, a devoted never-Trumper, says she doesn’t.) Here’s our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity: Gardner: Over the course of Haley’s campaign, is there anything specific you’ve noticed that gives you any insight into the landscape for Republican women — and women of color — in the GOP right now? Longwell: A lot of my perspective on this comes from listening to voters in focus groups that I do all the time, and how they see Nikki Haley. One of the things that struck me in some of the early debates was that she had a couple of these canned lines that she would use, where she would talk about kicking people with high heels and how the heels hurt more. I remember thinking, ‘That's not going to work.’ The voters in the Republican Party do want a fighter, but they also want it to seem authentic. I think that she has done much better demonstrating her strength in the latter part of her campaign — like being the last person standing. The thing about Republican voters is that they are much less interested [than Democrats] in the symbolization of Nikki Haley and what she represents. I hear people in the focus groups say, ‘I don't care that she's a woman’ and they don't even use the term ‘person of color’ — like that's not a thing Republicans say. But I think it's worth noting, too, that in the focus groups, there have been a lot of Republicans I've heard talk about the fact that they didn't want to vote for a woman — that they just had concerns about whether or not a woman would be strong enough. I've heard a lot of — not gendered attacks, but gendered doubts — about whether or not a woman can be president. But where Nikki Haley shines is in her sheer tenacity, like the speech she gave just this week, where she refused to kiss the ring. I think that a woman can win in the Republican Party. But I don't think that they can win if they talk about being a woman very much. … But I don’t really know how to talk about her as a woman, woman of color, because that is not the thing that voters either like or reject about her. What they reject about her is that she is a pre-Trump Republican — that she seems establishment. Gardner: She’s said that she’ll stay in the race, even if she loses South Carolina. What do you think of that decision? Longwell: I think it's awesome that she's staying in. If she's got the money and the will, then she should keep fighting. Nikki Haley has almost been two different people during this race. The first was the one that she was in the beginning, where she was just backing up what Trump said. She didn't sound like she believed what she was saying, and she was using those canned lines about the heels — that version of her wasn't really resonating with people. But the person that she is now — which I think is closer to who she really is — looks tough, and she's saying, ‘I'm gonna fight him and I'm gonna keep fighting him.’ It also feels like she's realized that the Republican Party that she was the future of is gone, and it’s time to make her stand. But of course, all of that will be absolutely washed away if ultimately she endorses Trump. Gardner: After her campaign is over, if Trump is the nominee, is there any future for her in the GOP? Longwell: No. The Republican Party wants something fundamentally different than what she represents — and by represents, I mean somebody who believes that America has a leadership role in the world to play, somebody who talks about the debt and the deficit and the out-of-control spending. The voters are much more isolationist. They aren’t interested in engaging globally. The Republican Party that shared the values that Nikki Haley has staked her career on is gone.
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