Nikki Haley should adopt a ‘No Labels’ race for president

For the rest of 2024, Nikki Haley should ditch the Republican label.

As the former South Carolina governor exited the race for the Republican presidential nomination, she quite explicitly declined to endorse former President Donald Trump. She was right to decline. Trump is unfit for the presidency in multiple ways. Two-thirds of voters “want someone new,” other than Trump or President Joe Biden, in the race for president. Haley should give those two-thirds of voters a real option.

Haley ought to make herself available to be the candidate of the No Labels movement, and No Labels should move expeditiously to select her — or, if she won’t do it, then it should pick former Wyoming Republican Rep. Liz Cheney or someone else sane, competent, principled, and mentally sharp.

Haley, though, has a built-in organization, fundraising base, high profile, and views generally copacetic with No Labels. The group is avowedly centrist, but almost all of its actual policy preferences either lean, or are broadly acceptable, to thoughtful conservatives. And for the first and probably only time, No Labels intends to choose a presidential candidate. The organization has spent months securing ballot access across the country, with the not-impossible goal of getting its candidate eligible in all 50 states and a high likelihood of doing so in at least 35 or so.

There is no reason an attractive, well-funded independent (or “third-party”) candidate can’t win this year. Far more people, 42% (and as many as 47% just seven months ago), consider themselves political independents than Democrats (30%) or Republicans (28%). With both Trump and Biden so unpopular and so many independent voters, this is a far more fertile situation for an outside contender than it was in 1992 when independent Ross Perot moved to a considerable polling lead above both George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton before bizarrely withdrawing from the race for two full months. Even after Perot’s truly strange behavior, he secured 19% of the vote once he stumbled back into the race.

No Labels says it wants a “unity ticket,” but the definition of “unity” is a bit vague. There seems no absolute requirement for its ticket to include both a Republican and a Democrat. A Republican and an independent or a decidedly centrist Republican, if both are in large agreement with the No Labels platform, could conceivably earn support. With Haley at the top of the ticket, perhaps Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) might reconsider and agree to run for vice president. Another Democrat, less well known but with the centrist outlook and attractive resume, could be Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME). A superb Republican running mate could be former Texas Rep. Will Hurd, who served in key roles for the CIA. Vermont Gov. Phil Scott is a Republican but perhaps even a tick left of center, and he helped carry Haley to victory in his state’s March 5 primary.

The biggest obstacle to Haley joining No Labels is something called “sore loser” laws that might keep her off the ballot in numerous states if she already ran in those states’ Republican primaries. If that obstacle proves insurmountable, perhaps it would not bar her from the second spot on the ticket, or from supporting the ticket enthusiastically.

In the latter situation, Cheney would be the most obvious No Labels choice, and some wise people think she would be the best option of all. A ticket of Cheney and, say, former Virginia Democratic Rep. Elaine Luria, a pro-defense, pro-border security, pro-Israel Navy veteran, might make some waves.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

One way or another, the public deserves a better choice than the two major parties seem poised to give them. Biden, whose radical regulatory regime and feckless foreign policy are awful for the nation’s future, is so doddering that he is becoming an embarrassment. His obvious replacement, Kamala Harris, is an incompetent extremist who would lead the U.S. to ruin. Trump, meanwhile, not only failed at all his major objectives as president but, in his increasing embrace of dictators and outlandish insistence that he is above the law and not bound to support the Constitution, would be a grave menace to the U.S. republican (small “r”) system of government if he reinhabited the White House.

No Labels needs to work soon to fill the gap. Nikki Haley should help the group do so.