The Lovely Mrs and I did our duty and voted in Tuesday’s primary. “Two for Joe,” as the kids might say. It was perfunctory and quiet in the Edina gym where we scanned our ballots … after inspecting them for threads of Chinese bamboo and tell tale signs of Italian satellite mischief.

A couple hours later, home and safe from rampant, hell-hole crime, out of control inflation and the toxic embers of this once great country of ours we noted the resounding defeats of Nikki Haley everywhere but Vermont. Then, the next morning to no one’s surprise, the former South Carolina governor called it quits … without endorsing You Know Who … yet.

Prior to this, whenever the topic of Haley came up I tried to make the point that while I’d never vote for her over any Democrat I can imagine, there was no doubt that a Nikki Haley presidency would be more or less Republican business as usual. Sane, experienced, corporate tax-cutting, regulation-gutting conservatives would occupy pretty much every cabinet level office and key spots in the federal bureaucracy. She would at least make a cri de coeur for supporting Ukraine. She would explain the financial and moral/reputational cost to the United States of appeasing Vladimir Putin. In other words, despondent liberals and the country would survive to fight another day.

The contrast to a deeply demented Trump 2.0 was and is stark.

But like a lot of people, I always regarded Haley as as craven as she was intensely ambitious. Following her career from a distance I couldn’t recall her ever taking a political risk in pursuit of a higher ethical standard. She was a parody of The Weathervane Politician. Everyone points to her “courageous” decision to … finally … take the Confederate flag down off the top of the goddam state capitol. But precious few point out that she only did that in the aftermath of a racist lunatic murdering nine people at a Bible study meeting in Charleston.

Now I grant you, yanking the Stars and Bars is more than Mitch McConnell or any Republican dared do after Sandy Hook. But still … good lord, what does it take to make a stand against … the Confederacy?

The pundit class I respect gives Haley credit for finally finding her voice in the past three months and at long, long last saying what is obvious to everyone outside the Trump cult. This is much the same way they credit hapless Mike Pence for doing one honorable thing, on January 6. It took Haley too damn long to get where she finally got, and she may yet spin another 180, but she finally did it and said it. Which is more than you can say for … well the list is hundreds of pages long.

One assumption is that she’s playing a long game, gambling that if Trump loses and takes the House and Senate down with him, she’ll be regarded in 2028 as the Prophet and the torch-bearer for the resurrection of a Reagan-Bush-style Republican party. A countervailing assumption is that Trumpism has so thoroughly captured and controlled the white, rural base Nikki Haley will be quickly forgotten as post-Trump the mob shifts towards, who knows, Tucker Carlson? Don Jr.? Josh Hawley? Jeanine Pirro?

The major irony in this, as I see it, is that I strongly suspect Nikki Haley, or any Republican capable of putting two coherent paragraphs of thought together AND courageous enough to say into a microphone that Donald Trump is exactly what we all see he is, namely, an incompetent vulgar fraud, would crush Joe Biden in November. There are that many people, women in particular, nigh on to desperate for anything new.

But the GOP is now so far gone with white rural grievance and delusional evangelicism that Haley or whoever is going to need a completely new party.

That said, I say she endorses Trump by Labor Day.