Nikki Haley Is Acceptable to No Labels, But Joe Biden Isn’t?

What are these birds really up to? Photo: Jose Luis Magana/AP

By this time next year, we may have forgotten all about the shadowy self-styled centrist group No Labels and its alleged plan to force both parties into bipartisan “problem solving” by running its own presidential candidate without forming a third party. Or we may be looking down the barrel of a second Trump presidency that No Labels enabled by splitting the vote. Yes, the group once claimed it wouldn’t run a candidate unless its champion had a realistic chance of winning, and said that having a realistic chance of carrying a state or two and deadlocking the Electoral College might be the threshold. The group’s ultimate aims are about as clear as its secret donor list.

They’ve been credibly accused by a lot of Democrats — most notably the Democrat-centrist group Third Way — of a civic version of what in criminal law is known as reckless endangerment, following a pattern of behavior likely to help replace Joe Biden with Trump. No Labels will apparently make a decision on whether to run a presidential and vice-presidential candidate, and whom those candidates might be, behind closed doors at some point this spring or early summer. In the meantime, it is spending its ample treasury on gaining ballot access for a mystery ticket; it has succeeded in 14 states so far, including the battlegrounds of Arizona, Nevada, and North Carolina.

No Labels has now dropped a pretty big hint about its bottom-line considerations in 2024, as Politico reports:

No Labels national co-chair Joe Lieberman said on Thursday that the nonpartisan group would consider Nikki Haley to be part of their potential unity presidential ticket if she’s interested. …

He said that based on her record as governor of South Carolina and as ambassador to the United Nations, “Governor Haley would deserve serious consideration” to be part of their ticket if she were interested. “We have no idea whether she would be,” he added.

Team Haley predictably rebuffed the overture via text message to Politico: “Nikki has no interest in No Labels, she’s happy with the Republican label.” But dig this:

Two people familiar with the group’s thinking, who were granted anonymity to speak candidly, said that No Labels would prefer that Haley win the GOP nomination since she’s a mainstream Republican. If Haley won the nomination, the group would likely not run a No Labels ticket.

If the idea is that No Labels is considering a “unity ticket” because both parties are heading toward unacceptable nominations — the Biden-Trump rematch that the organization has repeatedly deplored — then the big-time green light for Haley would indicate she’s closer to the group’s model of an ideal president than Biden. If its only real goal is to stop Donald Trump, then Biden, the only politician to have defeated the man, would seem the obvious choice. The incumbent has even embraced a sizable number of No Labels policy positions, from common-sense gun control to comprehensive immigration reform to national service to all-of-the-above energy initiative to a foreign policy based on alliances. Biden has also pursued the bipartisan legislation No Labels values most with surprising success, against very high odds.

What has Nikki Haley done to deserve higher esteem than Biden from No Labels? Let’s see. She came out of and exemplified the extremist tea-party wing of the GOP in South Carolina and was elected governor as a protégé of Sarah Palin. In office, her top initiative was economic development, which meant keeping unions — private as well as public sector — out of the state and offering subsidies to corporations, but she also made nods toward the Christian right by backing unsuccessful (because they were unconstitutional) abortion bans. She was one of the first politicians to be tapped for a Cabinet-level job in the Trump administration and has famously praised his presidential accomplishments while promising to pardon him for any criminal convictions he might experience if she’s elected president.

As a presidential candidate, Haley has called for mass deportation of undocumented immigrants, an incredibly disruptive five-year “term limit” on federal employees, and expanded reliance on fossil fuels. She’s opposed anything resembling gun control and has also been a champion of reduced Social Security and Medicare benefits.

It’s very clear that Haley is best understood as a hard-core holdover from the pre-Trump “movement conservatives” who aren’t happy with the 45th president’s “America First” foreign policies, his protectionism, and his open defiance of the Constitution, but are very far from anything resembling the political “center.” It says a lot that No Labels would fold its tent if she’s on the ballot against Joe Biden but intends to stay the course if Biden is the alternative to Trump.