The big question for Nikki Haley is what to do about Trump after she drops out

When Nikki Haley drops out of the presidential race, she will have to decide conclusively whether she is in or out on former President Donald Trump.

It’s the single most important question of her soon-to-be post candidacy, with enormous implications for the future of a politician who raised her profile in her campaign’s late stages by relentlessly criticizing Trump.

And it is a question Haley does not yet have an answer for.

Asked by POLITICO on Friday if she intended to continue critiquing the direction of the Republican Party under Trump, regardless of whether she remains in the presidential race after Tuesday, Haley paused.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I mean, that’s not something I’ve thought about.”

Sitting before a group of D.C. political reporters in a hotel conference room, Haley had argued that the party under Trump was in a poor state and failing to expand its tent. But Haley wasn’t sure, she said, whether she would continue her current crusade about the GOP once she ends her bid.

“I'm thinking about Super Tuesday. All I'm thinking about is where we're going to go,” Haley said. “I'm not thinking that far ahead.”

Candidates who run for president and lose — and don’t have an elected office to go back to — already have a difficult enough time finding relevance in the aftermath. Many fade into obscurity, serving on corporate or nonprofit boards or launching issue organizations. Others join the ranks of cable news.

But Haley’s post-candidacy place in the Republican Party is even more uncertain than most. Based on her vacillating attitude toward Trump over the years — and her previous pledge to support the eventual nominee — Haley may turn around and endorse him. After painting Trump as wholly unfit for office, however, and departing so thoroughly from Trump’s MAGA orthodoxy on spending and foreign policy, Haley will be relying more than most on his willingness to forgive.

“She’s going to need to get the Trump blessing in order to resuscitate a profile within the Republican Party, at least as long as Trump dominates,” said Jason Roe, a former adviser to Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign. “I think if she kisses the ring, Trump’s history demonstrates you can very quickly repair the relationship with fealty.

“If she continues post-campaign to be a Trump critic, then I think she’ll be relegated to the Liz Cheney treatment.”

And if Haley’s future holds more board seats and university speeches than CPAC appearances and warm acceptance by the GOP base?

“Listen, that’s not a bad life,” Roe said. “It’s a lucrative life. Her consolation prize is not that bad.”

When Haley exits the race, which could come as soon as next week, after Super Tuesday, the former U.N. ambassador will have outlasted every other one of Trump’s serious rivals. But her incentives to remain in the race are vanishing, and Haley has only pledged to continue campaigning through Tuesday. Even if Trump were to be sidelined for some non-electoral reason — an unforeseen health event or a conviction in his first criminal trial, which is scheduled to start this month — few Republicans think Haley would be the choice of a majority of delegates at a contested convention.

Politically, the best outcome for Haley, who at 52 could run for president again, would likely be for Trump to lose to President Joe Biden in November. If that happens, Haley’s warnings about Trump’s electability may seem prescient.

“It looks like she’s trying to head up the ‘I told you so’ party after November, at least that’s the direction it’s going right now,” said Scott Reed, a veteran Republican strategist. “How she exits the race and how she handles herself over the summer and fall, that’s what 2028 will be about, win or lose for Trump.”

However, he said, “If she goes out with a flamethrower, I’m not sure that’s going to help her long term.”

For weeks as her campaign faltered, Haley escalated her criticism of Trump, inflaming both the former president and the MAGA base. She articulated a vision for a Republican Party out of step with Trump’s populist rhetoric and isolationist policies abroad.

And in state after state, Republican voters have chosen Trump over her.

“She definitely shot herself in the foot,” said Andy Sabin, a prominent Republican donor who backed Haley this fall, but said she should have left the race after losing the New Hampshire primary. He called her a “glutton for punishment.”

“I guess a lot of people like me are saying, ‘What are you trying to prove?’” Sabin said. “She went into Michigan, she lost by 40 points.”

Haley has racked up a string of defeats, a trend expected to continue across the map on Tuesday.

“If she leaves, in four years — after the next Trump disaster, be it losing to Biden or disastrous midterms — she’ll be able to say, ‘I tried to warn the party,’” said Mike Murphy, a veteran Republican strategist. “If she stays in much longer, she gets into Chris Christie territory, where she’s no longer viable.”

Haley on Friday took the initiative to preempt any comparisons to the former New Jersey governor, who ended his presidential bid in January after playing the role of top Trump critic in the GOP primary.

“I'm not anti-Trump,” Haley said. “Look, if I was doing that, I would be Chris Christie.”

Rob Godfrey, a former Haley aide from her time as governor, said he expects that after ending her bid, Haley will spend as much time as she can with her family — not just her children, but her elderly parents, who live with her — and after some time out of the public eye, go back to highlighting the policy initiatives she has championed over the last year. And she’ll have to decide whether she wants to spend the rest of the year campaigning for down ballot candidates — or even for Trump.

“She’s never lost a race before and had to consider whether the person who defeated her is someone with whom she wants to work on the campaign trail,” Godfrey said. “I think that period of reflection and relaxation immediately following the end of a primary campaign could be a little longer for Nikki Haley than for others.”

If the GOP remains in Trump’s control after the 2024 election, Haley is as likely as anything to be outcast. Any number of Republicans critical of Trump — even some more prominent than Haley — have suffered similar fates, as Trump erased whole dynasties of the traditional Republican establishment.

The only benefit of Haley’s continued campaign as a career move, said Joe Walsh, a former Illinois representative who challenged Trump in the 2020 GOP primary, is “if she’s done as a Republican.” Walsh himself announced he was leaving the party after his presidential run.

“It doesn’t set her up for 2028,” he said, “because the base then is still going to be what it is now.”

And if Haley endorses Trump on her way out, Walsh added, “everything she’s said in the last month and a half doesn’t mean a damn thing.” But even if Haley, as Walsh put it, is “smart enough to know she’s in trouble with MAGA … she’s ambitious enough to keep going.”

And Haley’s admirers in the GOP have already begun looking past Super Tuesday — and Haley’s eventual withdrawal — to 2028.

“The pattern is there before, where unsuccessful candidates usually end up being the frontrunner four years later when the seat opens up,” said Art Pope, the former chair of Americans for Prosperity and a GOP donor backing Haley.

In a sign of her continuing appeal to donors reluctant to embrace Trump, the Haley campaign on Friday reported raising $12 million in February.

Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who ran in the 2012 Republican presidential primary, said his “hope is Trump will ask her to be his vice president.” But barring that — which Trump and Haley both have acknowledged is unlikely — Pawlenty predicted Haley will “have a ton of other options to consider.”

“Her campaign dramatically exceeded expectations, which puts her in line to be an early favorite in 2028,” Pawlenty said. “If she wants to keep that option open, she will spend a good chunk of her time over the next four years maintaining and expanding her political profile, network and operations.”

It worked out that way for Mitt Romney, who abandoned his 2008 campaign shortly after that year’s Super Tuesday primaries, then went on to become the party’s nominee in 2012.

After his first presidential campaign, Romney and his team went to great lengths to keep their connections alive with party leaders and activists around the country, said Kevin Madden, a former adviser to Romney’s campaigns. Romney issued endorsements and, between his 2008 and 2012 runs, spoke out frequently on economic and health care policy issues.

“I would expect Haley to take a similar approach,” Madden said. “This campaign was an incredible investment in the national political profile of Nikki Haley.”

“I rarely make guarantees in politics because it’s such a volatile business,” he said. “But Nikki Haley is going to be president one day. She’s 52 years old and has an extraordinary resume.”