Nikki Haley is telling Republicans it is time to come to grips with the fact that former President Trump has the “Sadim Touch:” a reverse Midas quality in which he tarnishes everything he touches.
Grasping for ways to dent Mr. Trump’s armor in the race for the GOP presidential nomination, the former South Carolina governor is attributing the embarrassing setbacks Republicans experienced this week on Capitol Hill and the bubbling turmoil at the Republican National Committee to Mr. Trump’s negative influence on the party.
“The Republicans couldn’t get a border situation down. They couldn’t impeach [Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro] Mayorkas, they couldn’t pass a pro-Israel bill,” Ms. Haley said this week on Fox News. “The RNC is imploding.”
“All of that had Trump’s fingerprints on it,” she said, alluding to his opposition to legislation that faced blowback from House conservatives. “Everything he touches is chaos, and we continue to lose. How many more times do we have to lose before we realize that that is the problem?”
Ms. Haley also argued that the party is in line for more tumult after a federal appeals court ruled Mr. Trump does not have immunity from charges he plotted to overturn the results of the 2020 election defeat, at a time when the former president faces a string of criminal court cases from New York to Florida.
Ms. Haley is trying to turn up the heat on Mr. Trump ahead of the Feb. 24 primary in her home state of South Carolina, where she served as governor from 2011 to 2017. She faces a daunting challenge after falling well short of besting Mr. Trump in the opening nomination contests in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Ms. Haley also faced an embarrassing defeat this week in Nevada where she finished far behind “None of these candidates” in a state-run primary race, which did not include Mr. Trump.
“It has been a while since the political world was treated to such a humiliating, embarrassing and utterly overwhelming defeat than Nikki Haley suffered yesterday in Nevada,” Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a statement. Ms. Haley “was crushed by ‘none of these candidates’ by over a 2-1 margin, which led to some devastating headlines mocking her ridiculous campaign.”
Things will likely get worse for Ms. Haley, who served as Mr. Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, before they get better.
On Thursday, Mr. Trump is poised to score a landslide victory in the Republican-run Nevada caucuses and extend his lead over Ms. Haley in the race for delegates needed to sew up the party’s presidential nomination.
Vowing to fight on, Ms. Haley’s latest attempt to slow Mr. Trump’s momentum is an extension of a broader argument she has been making about Mr. Trump’s uneven record at the ballot box.
“With Donald Trump, Republicans have lost almost every competitive election,” Ms. Haley said after finishing a distant second to Mr. Trump in the New Hampshire primary last month. “We lost the Senate. We lost the House. We lost the White House.”
“We lost in 2018. We lost in 2020 and we lost in 2022,” she said. “The worst-kept secret in politics is how badly the Democrats want to run against Donald Trump.”
• Seth McLaughlin can be reached at smclaughlin@washingtontimes.com.
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