Nikki Haley, a she-wolf in moderate’s clothing. But Trump is worse.

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley wants to delay Social Security benefits for millions of Americans who depend on them to live. She proposes term limits on every public servant in government — churning through air traffic controllers, meat inspectors, and nuclear scientists every five years. She has said that Florida’s odious “don’t say gay” law, which prohibits gender discussions before third grade, “doesn’t go far enough.” She is dangerously hawkish on foreign policy, rattling “retribution,” promising to wield the awesome power of the state to smite his enemies, whom he dehumanizes with terms like “vermin,” “thugs,” and “fascists.” He says immigrants “are poisoning the blood of our country,” a sentiment terribly close to the rhetoric of Nazi Germany. He’s advocated violence against everyone from protesters to shoplifters. He has pledged to liberally employ the Insurrection Act and send federal troops to Democratic-run cities to enforce public order.

Trump makes appeals to the basest, most Prosperity Action Super PAC, run by the industrialist Koch brothers’ network. Although Trump still holds wide leads in the Iowa caucuses and in national polls, a Haley victory in New Hampshire could begin to undermine the belief that Trump is the inevitable GOP nominee.

Let me be very clear that this is not an endorsement of Nikki Haley. I can’t imagine any scenario in which I would vote for her. And indeed, this thought experiment is risky, because should Haley, by some twist of fate, actually win the Republican nomination, she would probably pose a greater threat to President Biden in the general election than would Trump. Just as Trump, in a bizarre act of political jiu-jitsu, won some of Bernie Sanders’s voters in 2016, Haley appeals to many of the same independent suburban voters — including women — as did Hillary Clinton. After reporting on nine presidential elections, I’m as leery as anyone about polls, especially almost a year out from November, but recent findings that a significant bloc of voters who now side with Biden against Trump could switch to Haley if she is the nominee makes intuitive sense to me.

So those New Hampshire voters — independents, moderates, traditional conservatives — with legitimate fears of a second Trump term might consider Haley (as might former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, whose healthy support in New Hampshire would mostly go to Haley if he were to drop out). It may feel like an act of desperation, but these are desperate times. As Sununu warned in the chilling last line of his campaign ad for Haley: “We’ve got a country to save.”

Renée Loth’s column appears regularly in the Globe.