Will Donald come to regret pushing US ‘Iron Lady’ into the limelight?
WITH ten inches of snow, gusts of up to 90kph and temperatures as low as -20C, the conditions in Iowa over the weekend were neatly summarised by the National Weather Service as ‘life-threatening’.
And yet one man has been celebrating the blizzard. For ahead of today’s Iowa caucus – where Republican party members will vote for their presidential nominee in the first contest of the 2024 election – Donald Trump declared that his supporters are more likely than his rivals’ to brave the weather and vote. ‘Our people are more committed than anybody else, so maybe it’s actually a good thing for us,’ he said. If the polls are to be believed, the former president has every reason to be positive. In the final pre-election survey, published on Saturday, Trump was predicted to win with an impressive 48 per cent of the vote.
The real story in Iowa is who will come second. Because what Republicans and Democrats alike want to know is who has any hope – even a smidgen – of defeating Trump for the nomination and avoiding the bleak prospect of a November run-off between 81year-old Joe Biden and a man facing 91 criminal charges. Until now, many considered Florida governor Ron DeSantis to be the most likely challenger – a macho, anti-woke figure forged in The Donald’s image.
But according to recent polling, DeSantis will come third with just 16 per cent of the vote. Instead, the runner-up in the Iowa caucus is set to be 51-year-old former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley. Yet most people outside the US have never heard of ‘America’s Iron Lady’, a staunch conservative in fiveinch heels.
If Haley does receive her predicted 20 per cent vote share and beats DeSantis in a state as pro-Trump as Iowa, it will establish the mother of two – who was born in South Carolina to Sikh immigrant parents – as the ex-president’s main rival.
She’s positioned herself as a traditional Republican who will restore political civility and competence both to her party and to a deeply polarised America, after the chaos of the Trump years. So what exactly does she stand for? Domestically, she has softened her party’s opposition to abortion – a crucial area where Republicans are vulnerable to losing women’s votes.
SHE’S often equally at odds with fellow right-wingers on foreign policy, supporting military commitments such as increased aid to Ukraine. She argues that the US needs to confront dictators like Vladimir Putin – not, as Trump seems to believe, pander to them. ‘We cannot have four years of chaos, vendettas and drama,’ she has said.
And so while she may be conservative on social policy and spending, Haley is also a pragmatist – which might just convince wavering Democrats to jump ship and support her campaign instead of the increasingly doddery Biden.
Indeed, polls have shown that Haley would beat the incumbent by as much as ten points in a general election. No one would be more appalled by this than Trump himself. It was he who pushed Haley into the limelight and who now feels, as he does with everyone who dares cross him, betrayed.
Their relationship has been bumpy to say the least. She initially supported other candidates for the 2016 Republican nomination, condemning Trump for his refusal to disavow the Ku Klux Klan and insisting she was ‘not a fan’ of him, before belatedly endorsing him.
Trump reportedly considered her as his secretary of state but she wasn’t interested. Instead, in 2017 she became US Ambassador to the UN.
While others slavishly followed him, she did her political reputation no harm by taking positions at odds with his. Notably, she fought hard to impose new sanctions on Russia and on the Assad regime in Syria.
She has a hawkish approach and is certainly self-made in a world of political dynasties.
Nimarata Nikki Randhawa grew up in rural South Carolina to Punjabi parents, where several racist landlords refused to rent them a home.
Haley has said she and her family were ‘not white enough to be white, not black enough to be black’.
When the family’s fashion and homeware business took off, Haley – who earned an accounting degree – became the company’s chief financial officer.
She converted to Christianity in 1997, a year after her marriage to Michael Haley, an officer in the South Carolina Army National Guard.
The couple have a daughter and a son – Rena, a 25-year-old nurse and Nalin, a student at the University of Pennsylvania. After winning a seat in the South Carolina House of Representatives at her first attempt in 2004 (the same year she became president of the National Association of Women Business Owners), she was elected the state’s first female and first non-white governor in 2011, aged 38.
HALEY credited Hillary Clinton’s call for more women in public life for inspiring her to run for office. Moderate Republicans would relish the irony if, after all these years of Democrats virtue-signalling and breast-beating over how Hillary Clinton was ‘robbed’ of the presidency, the first woman in the White House came from their party instead.
After the Iowa caucus, the New Hampshire primary on January 23 will further reveal just how close this race really is. DeSantis told reporters last week he wouldn’t be visiting New Hampshire at all, instead flying from Iowa directly to South Carolina – Haley’s home state – where the third contest takes place and where Haley still trails behind Trump.
Even if polling is correct and Haley beats DeSantis in Iowa, there will be no let-up from the Republican Right who – between Trump and DeSantis – are committed to freezing this moderate upstart out of the picture.
Her supporters, meanwhile, are adamant she will stick to her principles and fight to the end. The lady, it appears, is not for turning.