Nikki Haley backers endorse Kamala Harris for US president

https://www.thetimes.com/world/us-world/article/nikki-haley-supporters-endorse-kamala-harris-6m8q62tsb

28 Comments

  1. twistedSibling on

    Haley will have some choice words to say about that! Right after giving her full-throated support to Trump.

  2. Text follows:

    Backers of Republican presidential challenger prefer to throw their weight behind the Democratic nominee than support a return to the White House for ‘unfit’ Donald Trump
    new

    Nikki Haley has herself endorsed the Republican’s presidential nominee

    Supporters of Nikki Haley, who challenged for the Republican presidential nomination, have backed Kamala Harris, arguing that she is the best candidate for the White House.
    Haley, 52, a former governor of South Carolina and from the moderate wing of the Republican Party, has formally endorsed Donald Trump. A group of backers who campaigned for her during the party primaries earlier this year say, however, that Trump’s behaviour as president between 2017 and 2021 make him unfit for a return to office.
    “I’ve been a Never Trumper back since 2016, I was one of the first people in national Republican politics to declare my opposition to him,” said Craig Snyder, the campaign director for the Haley Voters for Harris, an arm’s-length campaign group.
    Kamala Harris with her running mate Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, during a campaign rally in Milwaukee, Wisconsin
    Kamala Harris with her running mate Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, during a campaign rally in Milwaukee, Wisconsin

    “I got to know him in the late 1990s and found him then and since to be temperamentally unfit for the presidency. I’ve been opposed to him from the beginning.
    “The choice is simple: if you have a profound threat to the country, as opposed to, on the other side, people who you share basic values with but you perhaps disagree with on policy, that’s not a hard choice.”
    Trump and his campaign have sought to cast Harris, the vice-president, as dangerously left-wing and as someone who will diminish the US’s standing with allies and enemies overseas.
    Members of Snyder’s group concede that there are not vast numbers of Republicans who see Harris as a viable alternative, but argue that they are making headway.
    Trump’s Maga movement has so completely transformed the Republican Party that many moderates find themselves outcasts
    Trump’s Maga movement has so completely transformed the Republican Party that many moderates find themselves outcasts

    Kyle Sweetser was with the group at an event it hosted on a rooftop bar at a swanky Chicago hotel this week.
    From Mobile, Alabama, the construction worker says that he was initially attracted to Trump’s message of putting America first.
    “It resonated in 2016 at the time the political situation felt very stale and he offered something new,” Sweetser said.
    “I was with him in 2016, and in 2020, but around the time of the Ukraine war, I felt that what he was saying was not really how I thought America should behave around the world. We’re needed to help sort out these problems in my opinion, not walk away from them.”
    Moderate Republicans, of the sort who backed the late Arizona senator, John McCain in the 2008 presidential election, and Mitt Romney, now a Utah senator, four years later, have increasingly found themselves politically homeless.

    As Trump’s Make America Great Again — or Maga — movement has swept up the party machinery, they have become outcasts in their own party, lacking leaders to support, some are now falling in behind Harris.
    Speaking to the Democratic convention on Tuesday night, John Giles, the Republican mayor of Mesa, in Arizona, a key swing state, described himself as a “lifelong Republican” but said that he was voting for Harris because his party had become a cult.
    “Our Grand Old Party has been kidnapped by extremists and developed into a cult,” he said.
    “The cult of Donald Trump. Trump doesn’t know the first thing about public service. Like a child, he acts purely out of self-interest.
    “John McCain’s Republican Party is gone. And we don’t owe a damned thing to what’s been left behind. So let’s turn the page. Let’s put country first. And let’s put the adults in the room our country deserves.”
    John Giles, the Republican mayor of Mesa, Arizona, told the Democratic convention that his party had been “kidnapped by extremists and developed into a cult”
    John Giles, the Republican mayor of Mesa, Arizona, told the Democratic convention that his party had been “kidnapped by extremists and developed into a cult”

    Some of the people at the Haley Voters for Harris event differed in their enthusiasm for the vice-president, with some saying they were attracted to her messages, and others who said that their backing of the Democrat was simply a way of stopping Trump.
    Most said that their vote was simply on loan to their political opponents, and that should Haley or another moderate Republican emerge in 2028, they would switch back again.
    “I’m a left-wing Republican, but I’m still a Republican and I want a Republican White House,” said Stephanie Sharp from Women4US, a group made up of centre-right activists.
    “With Trump it goes to his foundational character. It’s not just his abhorrent behaviour, when you lack character it doesn’t matter how you approach policy issues.
    “Our first approach is to defeat Donald Trump. I’m excited to vote for Kamala Harris, some of the women we’re targeting are not. We say to them, ‘if you can’t vote for a Democrat but are willing to not vote for Trump either,’ we’ll take that.

  3. I predict a decent percentage of Republican women will vote for Harris. They will just lie to their families, LOL.

  4. lancer-fiefdom on

    Cool Cool Cool.. Dems get Nikki Haley’s never Trumpers… and Trump gets RFK’s never Think’rs

  5. Haley supporters: We won’t vote for Trump!

    Haley: 😀

    *Haley loses primary to Trump*

    Haley supporters: We still won’t vote for Trump!

    Haley: 😲

  6. FTA: “‘John McCain’s Republican Party is gone. And we don’t owe a damned thing to what’s been left behind. So let’s turn the page. Let’s put country first. And let’s put the adults in the room our country deserves.’”

    Trump’s MAGA movement had a huge impact but it was the Council for National Policy that took over the traditional republican party. They have an arrangement. Trump gets the votes, while the Council for National Policy and their primary think tank, the Heritage Foundation, take care of strategy, staffing, and policy.

    Washington Spectator – [How the CNP, a Republican Powerhouse, Helped Spawn Trumpism, Disrupted the Transfer of Power, and Stoked the Assault on the Capitol](https://washingtonspectator.org/nelson-cnp/)

    “Operating from the shadows, [the Council for National Policy’s] members, who would number some 400, spent the next four decades courting, buying, and bullying fellow Republicans, gradually achieving what was in effect a leveraged buyout of the GOP. Favorite sons, such as Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, were groomed, financed, and supported.”

    HuffPost – [How Dominionists Gained Control Of The Trump Campaign](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/dominionists-gain-control-of-trump-campaign_b_57c817d0e4b06c750dd8d25a)

    “Woody Jenkins, the [Council for National Policy’s] first executive director, told Newsweek quote: ‘One day before the end of this century, the Council will be so influential that no president, regardless of party or philosophy, will be able to ignore us or our concerns or shut us out of the highest levels of government.’”

    New Republic – [A Rare Peek Inside the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy](https://newrepublic.com/article/167002/council-national-policy-documents-right-wing-conspiracy)

    “The Heritage Foundation, a meeting sponsor, has been a core partner of the Council for National Policy from the start, and Heritage president Kevin Roberts is on the CNP board of governors.”

    “Together, the organizations would serve as a three-legged stool for the right, with Heritage [Foundation] as the think tank; [American Legislative Exchange Council] as a state-level ‘bill mill’; and the [Council for National Policy] as a coordinating body for donors, media, and activists.”

  7. esoteric_enigma on

    >“I was with him in 2016, and in 2020, but around the time of the Ukraine war, I felt that what he was saying was not really how I thought America should behave around the world. We’re needed to help sort out these problems in my opinion, not walk away from them.”

    All the outrageous shit Trump said and did during his presidency…but Ukraine is what made you reconsider?

  8. Can anyone name a past Trump associate that is not in fact, washed up, in jail or totally disgraced?

  9. PatriotNews_dot_com on

    That’s it for Haley, gonna be downhill from here for her politically IMO. Don’t buy the crocodile tears when the rat eventually jumps the sinking trump ship

  10. Think_Measurement_73 on

    That don’t surprise me, her supporters are probably pissed, and they probably will vote for Harris or not at all. I know that had to have bothered her supporters that she jumped right back to trump and kissed the ring. After how he spoke about her supporters and about her husband, they had to be disappointed, no doubt. My question at this point, is how low you can go.

  11. Busy_Method9831 on

    Ultimately, she hates that — she wanted to bring Handmaiden’s Tale to life as much as Trump, but in a more covert and quiet way that would enslave women before they knew they’d lost their civil liberties.

  12. Trump is the Hillary this time, a known dodgy entity. Kamala is what he was in 2016, an unknown alternative that voters are prepared to give a chance to.

  13. Necessary-Hat-128 on

    How ironic…They supported her and she (who has no back bone) is supporting Donald Trump!

  14. ghostfacekiwi on

    I mean.. duh 🥴 they were voting for her in the first place because they didn’t want to vote for trump.

  15. comeupforairyouwhore on

    I’m not a fan of hers but she called this whole scenario back in February, that the next president would be a woman. That it would be either her or Kamala succeeding Biden in the event of his death.

    Here’s her quote:

    [“[The female president] will either be me or it will be [Vice President] Kamala Harris. And if Donald Trump is the nominee for the Republican Party, he will not win,” Haley said on ABC’s “This Week” Sunday.](https://www.axios.com/2024/02/18/nikki-haley-female-president-republican-racee)

  16. Renegade-Ginger on

    I’m so tired of seeing my state representives making fools of themselves. Lindsey, Nikki, Tim Scott, Nancy Mace, and McMaster are all such tools.