The political calculation has changed again for Nikki Haley.
Not long ago, the former South Carolina governor was arguing that Donald Trump was too old, too chaotic, too "unhinged" and too prone to temper tantrums to be president again and said he couldn't beat President Joe Biden.
"I feel no need to kiss the ring," Haley said in February before suspending her primary campaign. "My political future is of no concern."
But on Wednesday, she delivered the implicit endorsement everyone knew was coming sooner or later. Haley said that while Trump had not been "perfect" on issues that matter to her, like foreign policy and the national debt, Biden had been a "catastrophe."
"So, I will be voting for Trump," said the former US ambassador to the United Nations, who served in the ex-president's Cabinet.
After a friendly photo-op in front of the Oval Office fireplace, she left that job in 2018 before she could be tarnished by association with Trump's mayhem. As 2024 loomed on the calendar, Haley said she wouldn't run for president against her old boss — then did so anyway — to Trump's lingering fury.
Before losing her home state's primary to Trump earlier this year, Haley lashed out at Republicans who backed Trump despite privately despairing over him. "In politics, the herd mentality is enormously strong," she said. "A lot of Republican politicians have surrendered to it. … Of course, many of the same politicians who now publicly embrace Trump privately dread him. They know what a disaster he's been and will continue to be for our party. They're just too afraid to say it out loud."
Now Haley is saying out loud she's voting for Trump. But she had little choice but to join the herd if she wants a future in a party dominated by its presumptive nominee. There's not much of a path in emulating former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, a onetime rising GOP star, who's become an example of what happens to conservative foreign policy hawks who refuse to temper warnings that Trump is a danger to democracy.
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