Your move, Nikki Haley. The clock is ticking.
When are you going to endorse Joe Biden for president?
Haley stands as the last major contender from this year’s GOP primaries to refuse to bow down and endorse former President Donald Trump.
Her refusal has power, because she still has clout with voters. In last month’s Pennsylvania primary, the former South Carolina governor, without campaigning, still won more than 16 percent of Republican votes.
Moderate Republicans continue looking to Haley because they have no place in the party of Trump.
Haley and other non-Trump Republicans need President Biden to win to open the door to reforming the Republican Party into a party that welcomes traditional conservatives.
Haley knows that Trump, as a leader, is a loser. That is to say, he led the party to losses in 2018 and 2020, and to a disappointing finish in 2022.
She has called Trump “unhinged,” “toxic,” and lacking in “moral clarity.” She has said that he is responsible for Congressional Republicans refusing to support a border security bill that included most of their demands.
“How much more chaos are Republicans willing to put up with?” she asked during the campaign. Trump, she said, has “broken” so much in American life, “but he doesn’t know how to fix things.”
But fearing the blind loyalty that Trump enjoys from most Republicans, she has not endorsed Biden. On the contrary, pressure is growing for her to get in line and endorse Trump.
Last week, another former Trump critic, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) met with Trump in Miami. Trump declared that he “greatly appreciated” DeSantis’ support.
This is a man whom Trump smeared viciously. He suggested that DeSantis was guilty of “grooming high school girls” with alcohol when the governor worked as a teacher. He labeled him “Ron DeSanctimonious.”
DeSantis is just another name in a line of groveling Republicans seeking to become Trump acolytes. New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu famously called Trump “f—ing crazy.” But last month he announced he is now supporting Trump.
Trump’s Attorney General Bill Barr, who resigned in December 2020 amid Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election had been stolen, and who last year called him “unfit for office,” now says that he too will vote for Trump.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), having been famously demeaned by Trump as “Little Marco” and falsely accused by Trump surrogates of having a secret gay lifestyle, now endorses Trump.
Sen. J. D. Vance (R-Ohio) is on the record calling Trump an ”idiot” and a ”loathsome” man. On “Fox News Sunday,” host Shannon Bream recently asked him “what’s changed with you that…you are [now] supporting him?”
Vance, looking quite timid, said that his perspective changed when, instead of considering Trump’s “degradation” of politics, he instead looked at the “reality…that Donald Trump was a success.”
Vance has sheep-like company in Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). As Senate minority leader, McConnell said that Trump was “practically and morally responsible” for the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Meanwhile, Trump launched a racist attack on McConnell’s Taiwanese American wife, Elaine Chao deriding her just last year as McConnell’s “China-loving wife, Coco Chow!”
But McConnell now says he will vote for Trump anyway.
And don’t forget Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), whose wife Trump insulted and whose father Trump baselessly accused of being involved in JFK’s assassination. At the time, Cruz called Trump a “sniveling coward.” But he went on to become one of Trump’s strongest supporters in Congress and is now endorsing him.
What does it say that so many prominent conservative politicians have been willing to debase and humiliate themselves in service of Trump?
And what will Haley do?
Trump insulted her at a rally earlier this year by asking: “Where’s her husband? Oh, he’s away.” Haley’s husband was deployed with South Carolina National Guard.
Haley called the dig “disgusting.”
She has some company in not yet endorsing Trump. Former Vice President Mike Pence (R) has not endorsed him. Pence said that he “cannot in good conscience” vote for Trump.
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) said that he would not vote for Trump “under any circumstances.”
Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson has not endorsed him, either.
Hutchinson, referring to the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters, wrote that Trump “continues to undermine our democracy by defending the actions of that dark day.”
President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have not endorsed Trump. But Haley and other GOP leaders who have not endorsed Trump somehow refuse to take the logical step of endorsing President Biden.
Half-measures are not good enough in an election where one of the candidates said he would “terminate…the Constitution.“
The last time Trump was on the ballot, plenty of Republicans stood for principles, putting country before party by supporting Biden. History will remember their names kindly: John Kasich, Susan Molinari, Charlie Dent, Christine Todd Wittman, David Jolly, Michael Steele, Tom Coleman.
This year, Haley can set herself up for the 2028 presidential race by separating herself from the Trump-mania washing over her party.
If Haley endorses Trump, the corruption of the GOP will be complete.
But if Haley endorses Biden, she will put country before party and earn the respect of mainstream Republicans, her countrymen and a place in history.
Ambassador Haley, do the right thing.
Juan Williams is an author and a political analyst for Fox News Channel.