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The Republican zombie apocalypse is coming for Nikki Haley.
Now that she is the lone candidate left running as an alternative to former President Donald Trump in the GOP primaries, pressure is mounting on her to drop out. Making the risk Haley is facing starkly clear, Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene — the queen of the MAGA zombie horde — declared a day before the New Hampshire primary that, if Haley keeps running, she should be “eradicated” from the party.
To avoid such eradication, almost all the other failed GOP candidates who were in the race have endorsed Trump, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who was unrelentingly belittled by Trump for nearly a year. DeSantis follows the example set by Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz who, in 2016, competed with Trump and repeatedly insisted the reality TV star was unfit to be president — until they were beaten and chose to pledge their fealty to the Mar-a-Lago con man.
Joining DeSantis, Cruz and Rubio, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott has announced he is backing Trump, too, after his own candidacy went nowhere. Most of the Republican members of Congress are also rushing to endorse the twice-impeached, much indicted ex-president, pinning their withered political souls to his restoration.
The coarse insults Trump has aimed at Haley have gotten progressively more personal and racist, but they are not any worse than the vile disparagement of Ted Cruz’s wife and father that Trump engaged in eight years ago. Cruz swallowed his pride and shed his dignity. Will Haley do the same?
My guess is yes, she will. Once her campaign flounders following an expected primary loss in her home state, South Carolina, she will want to preserve her chance to run again in 2028. She cannot do that by following the examples of Liz Cheney and Chris Christie, who both told the truth about Trump and have become pariahs in their party. Instead, because she has demonstrated a political ambition that is much more central to her personality than the hard truths that she claims to tell (and never really does), it is a safe bet that she will capitulate, just like the rest of the GOP’s timorous souls.
Haley thought she might have success running as a rational Republican, but she has come up against one very hard truth: Her party has abandoned rationality and become a zombie cult entirely in thrall to Trump.
See more of David Horsey’s cartoons at: st.news/davidhorsey
View other syndicated cartoonists at: st.news/cartoons
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