Nikki Haley has kept busy since leaving her post in the Trump administration as United States ambassador to the United Nations.
A former governor of South Carolina, Haley is often mentioned as a potential Republican presidential candidate for either 2024 or 2028 – depending on whether Donald Trump wins re-election in November.
There has even been speculation that Trump might switch out Vice-President Mike Pence for Haley as his running mate in the hopes of boosting his lagging approval numbers among the broader electorate, though there has been no strong evidence that that will happen.
Either way she has positioned herself as a national leader within the Republican party.
A rare woman of color in the party’s senior ranks, she has been fundraising for Republican congressional candidates as well as in the Senate and gubernatorial arena. She has set up a non-profit organization to boost her policy priorities. She has continued to pen editorials on foreign policy. And she has retained a small, tightly knit orbit of advisers.
Haley is one of the few high-ranking Republicans to leave the Trump administration on good terms. She has pledged to campaign aggressively for the president and has echoed some of the same arguments Trump has made on national topics such as cancel culture, defunding police forces and statue removal, although the tone and frequency between Trump and Haley vary dramatically. At other times she has kept her distance.
After serving in the Trump administration, some top-level officials have receded from public life, taking jobs at thinktanks and other academic institutions or retiring outright. But former and current aides to Haley see her recent moves as a carefully executed plan to stay involved in key Republican policy circles and the national discourse.
“When she left the administration she told the president that she wanted to stay engaged and promote good public policy,” said Tim Chapman, the executive director of Haley’s Stand for America non-profit group, the primary vehicle for Haley’s policy-related initiatives. “SFA is partly a platform for her to do that type of voice, to be engaged in public policy.”
Stand for America is composed of a small team of about six people, including Chapman. The team has a weekly Zoom call with Haley and Chapman spends much of his time coalition-building and working with outside groups and policymakers.
Haley often weighs in on foreign policy or “Democrats’ embrace of socialism” as she did in a February op-ed for the Wall Street Journal’s editorial section. Warning about advancing socialism is a favorite topic for Haley and her organization. A recent mailer sent out to supporters asked them to participate in a “REFERENDUM ON SOCIALISM”. The mailer went on to tick off some liberal policy proposals like free college tuition or the Green New Deal proposed by the Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
