TROY, Michigan — Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley was adamant before Michigan Republicans that she is the GOP presidential candidate who can win the 2024 general election against President Joe Biden, despite former President Donald Trump‘s 20 percentage point win this weekend in South Carolina.
“You can’t have a candidate who’s going to win a primary who can’t win a general,” Haley told a crowd Sunday in Troy, Michigan, one day after she was soundly defeated in her home state.
“You look at those first early states. They can say Donald Trump won. I give him that. But he, as a Republican incumbent, didn’t get 40% of the vote of the primary,” she said. “So the issue at hand is he’s not going to get the 40% if he’s going and calling out my supporters and saying they’re barred permanently from MAGA. He’s not gonna get the 40% by calling them names. He’s not going to get to 40% by trying to take over the [Republican National Committee], so it pays all his legal fees. He’s not going to get the 40% if he is not willing to change and do something that acknowledges the 40%. And why should the 40% have to cave to him?”
The former South Carolina governor made a similar argument Saturday night in Charleston after Trump won 60% to her 39.5%, clinching 47 delegates to her three. Since her loss, Haley said she raised roughly $1 million in 24 hours, but Americans for Prosperity announced it was no longer spending money on her.
“I’m a woman of my word,” Haley said at her election night party in South Carolina. “I’m not giving up this fight when a majority of Americans disapprove of both Donald Trump and Joe Biden.”
“South Carolina has spoken,” she added. “We’re the fourth state to do so. In the next ten days, another 21 states and territories will speak. They have the right to a real choice, not a Soviet-style election with only one candidate. And I have a duty to give them that choice.”
Tinkering with her stump speech in Michigan, home of the Big Three, the three largest car manufacturers in North America of General Motors, Stellantis (formerly Chrysler), and the Ford Motor Company, Haley criticized Biden for his support of electric vehicles, reflecting community concerns about the economic consequences.
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“Think about what he did. He fed all of this corporate welfare to companies to tell all of us that we have to drive electric cars by 2033,” she said. “What about the fact that maybe we don’t want to drive an electric car? Have you seen how expensive they are? We should have the freedom to decide what we want to buy, but more than that, you just did this when 70% of the batteries in electric cars are made by China. So you just took all of our taxpayer money, and you’re sending it to China? Think about what that says.”
Michigan’s Republican presidential delegates will be decided through a primary on Tuesday and competing conventions on Saturday. Haley has one more stop in the Great Lakes State on Monday, this time in Grand Rapids, before heading to the March 5 Super Tuesday states of Colorado, Minnesota, and Utah.
