Why is Nikki Haley?
By 
The innovation Nikki Haley appears to be bringing to the Republican race is to run on the plank that Ron DeSantis isn’t homophobic or transphobic enough:
Haley’s introductory speaker in Charleston, South Carolina Rep. Ralph Norman, fit the same mold as Bolduc. He pushed the Trump administration to declare “Marshall Law [sic]” after the 2020 election, in text messages obtained by the Jan. 6th committee. Then he’d moved on, deciding that the GOP needed “new leadership” at the top of its ticket, and that Trump could ride into the sunset.
In Exeter, Haley distinguished herself from Trump on one issue: American military support for Ukraine. “This is about a war on freedom, and it’s a war we have to win,” she told one voter. “If Russia takes Ukraine, they’ve said Poland and the Baltics are next, and we’re looking at a world war. And if Russia wins, you can bet China’s gonna take Taiwan, Iran’s gonna get the bomb.”
It was the only stance Haley took that set her apart from most GOP primary voters; she opposed a “blank check” for war funding, but didn’t say how much was too much. She left no other room between herself and other potential candidates, calling for an end to congressional earmarks and endorsing the “parental rights” bill that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed last year, even suggesting that the legislation’s only problem was that it might have been a little meek.
“They’re trying to talk about gender in schools,” she said. “There was all this talk about the Florida bill, the ‘don’t say gay’ bill. Basically, what it said was, you shouldn’t be able to talk about gender before third grade. I’m sorry, I don’t think that goes far enough. When I was in school, you didn’t have sex ed until seventh grade.”
I guess at least she realizes that the only constituency for a Reasonable Republican Alternative is roughly 6 op-ed columnists, but “trying to out-fascist Trump and DeSantis” is really not going to end well either. The Hochul Humiliation Fetish keeps spreading — hope she likes rubber chicken dinners in Iowa and New Hampshire!
We can at least salvage this by listening to some Robert Quine: