Election 2024: Should Nikki Haley Drop Out or Stay In?

I'm seeing a lot of people with strong opinions on that question, and quite a few asking that question.

My answer: It depends on what she's trying to accomplish.

Unless all those hamberders finally clog Donald Trump's arteries up enough to cause a stroke or heart attack, she has almost no chance of winning the GOP's 2024 nomination for president, so if that's her only angle, she should probably drop out.

On the other hand, if she's thinking about the 2028 or 2032 nomination, or even just about rebuilding the Republican Party after 8-12 years of Trumpist carnage, staying in makes sense.

If Trump loses a fourth election in a row, she'll have been the last big name barnstorming from state to state telling Republican voters that's what's going to happen. The voters she's already convinced of that will likely still be on board with her four years from now, at least some of them who wasted their vote on Trump will have changed their minds about her, and the Trump-dominated GOP apparatus will be in disarray while she'll already have a campaign structure in place and waiting to be reactivated.

If Trump wins, she can go into political exile, spend time with her family, and probably write a poor poor pitiful me book and hit the speaker circuit. If Trump loses, she can try to be her party's savior next time around.

I suspect she will stay in, taking her lumps in virtually every state primary, so as to possibly keep her future ambitions alive.

Just to clarify things, I have no love for Trump and won't be voting for him under any circumstances ... but Haley scares me more. She's younger, more energetic, at least as authoritarian, and even more batshit unhinged (although less random) on foreign policy than Trump.