Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, on Tuesday defied calls to drop out of the race for the Republican nomination, vowing to fight on after a second straight defeat at the hands of former President Donald J. Trump.
In rousing remarks, Ms. Haley painted a picture of a country and a world in disarray, casting herself as the choice for voters dissatisfied with both President Biden and Mr. Trump. She set up an epic showdown with Mr. Trump in South Carolina, where she is lagging far behind Mr. Trump in polls despite a home-state advantage.
“New Hampshire is first in the nation — it is not the last in the nation,” she said as a loud wave of cheers and applause broke out across the room. She added that the race was “far from over.”
She added, “We’re going home to South Carolina.”
Borrowing signature lines from her stump speeches, Ms. Haley, a United Nations ambassador under Mr. Trump, noted how far she had come since the race opened, when she was polling at just over 2 percent. She congratulated Mr. Trump on what she described as a well-earned victory and declared that politics was “not personal” to her, but she also called herself “a fighter.”
“And I’m scrappy — and now we’re the last ones standing next to Donald Trump,” she added. Painting herself as an outsider, despite her insider résumé, she pledged to take on Mr. Trump and the political class behind him. She also took shots at the media, who she said saw his glide to the nomination as a foregone conclusion.
With the new urgency she has been flashing on the trail in the past week, Ms. Haley turned up the heat on the former president, the dominant front-runner in the Republican race, who is fighting 91 felony charges. Another Trump presidency would be just as bad for the country as another four years of Mr. Biden, she said.
She also took another dig at Mr. Trump’s mental fitness and his 77 years of age, reminding voters how he had confused her for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and accused her of not providing security at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Someone in her rambunctious audience, which occasionally shouted encouraging interruptions, yelled, “Geriatric!”
“With Donald Trump, you have one bout of chaos after another,” she said. “This court case, that controversy, this tweet, that senior moment. You can’t fix Joe Biden’s chaos with Republican chaos.”
In her final Granite State appearances before polls closed, Ms. Haley had rejected the suggestion that Republican voters had already solidly united behind the former president, and pledged not to end her bid no matter the result.
“I didn’t get here because of luck,” she said at a polling site in Hampton, N.H., while flanked by supporters, including Gov. Chris Sununu, her top surrogate in the state. “I got here because I outworked and outsmarted all the rest of those fellas. So I’m running against Donald Trump, and I’m not going to talk about an obituary.”
Mr. Trump, speaking to supporters at his victory party, mocked Ms. Haley for speaking “like she won.” But “she didn’t win — she lost,” he added.
On Wednesday morning, Ms. Haley is expected to speak during a Republican State Committee meeting in the Virgin Islands, which holds its contest on Feb. 8. She is then anticipated at a homecoming rally in Charleston, S.C., where her campaign has its headquarters.
A number of people close to Ms. Haley are encouraging her to keep going, many of whom are deeply opposed to Mr. Trump’s becoming the nominee again.
Betsy Ankney, her campaign manager, released a memo early Tuesday morning shooting down suggestions that Mr. Trump’s path to the nomination was inevitable. She pointed to the 11 of the 16 states that vote on Super Tuesday that have “open or…
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