Haley’s campaign a giant step for GOP women, but bigger still for Trump

Sometimes in spite of herself, Haley led a campaign that exposed the GOP’s sexism and Trump’s enduring hold on the US party. Haley, on the other hand, has staked out a middle ground, portraying herself as a would-be “accountant” in the White House, and consequently a calming alternative to Trump’s four years of “chaos”. For instance, Dittmar said that Haley has, in many ways, leaned into her role as the rare woman in a Republican presidential race, but she has not necessarily portrayed gender as a “point of merit”, underscoring the conservative “idea that somehow hearing about gender and racial identity is anti-meritocratic … and don’t play into identity politics.” “If you go back to Hillary Clinton in 2016, she used to say, ‘I’m not asking you to vote for me because I’m a woman, I’m asking you to vote for me on the merits. “In the modern context, she will have gotten farther than any other Republican woman, and I do think that that’s something worth pointing out, regardless of what happens.” Electoral vulnerabilities While a resounding defeat in South Carolina seems likely, Haley’s race has, if nothing else, taken the temperature of the modern Republican Party and the existential crisis represented by Trump’s enduring hold, according to politics watchers. In sum, Haley’s run has shown the Republican Party “is still a cult of personality” – for Trump.