No Labels no longer: It’s time for a Nikki Haley write-in campaign

When the history of the 2024 presidential campaign is written, many individuals and organizations will be found to have contributed to the political disaster that the Joe Biden-Donald Trump rematch now forebodes for the country. Each side predicts the end of American democracy if it loses.

The first to be held accountable for the nation’s likely plight should be the two ego-driven men who have placed their personal ambitions above the interests and welfare of the American people.

Given their obvious deficiencies and general unfitness for the office held by some of the greatest men in the nation’s history, Biden and Trump should have been honored and humbled to have occupied the seat for four years. Instead, feeling entitled, they seek more power, more vindication, more retribution.

Second in accountability are the Republican and Democratic Parties, which have gone along with the deeply flawed heads of their parties and lacked the courage and sense of higher loyalty to withhold their support and insist on turning the page to new political leadership.  

Some Republican leaders did challenge the Trump takeover of the party up to a point, but only under the condition that they be the replacement power. Notably, former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and former Gov. Chris Christie (R-N.J.) issued clarion calls about the Trump threat. But they refused to rally around or even endorse former Ambassador Nikki Haley, the one Republican who could stop Trump’s nomination. 

To his credit, former Gov. Asa Hutcheson (R-Ark.) ran a principled conservative campaign. And when it was over for him, he endorsed Haley against the looming Trump takeover.

For their part, Biden and Democratic leaders around the country carried political cynicism to new depths with some questionable legal prosecutions. That roused and rallied Trump’s base and enabled his return to national prominence and domination of the Republican Party. Their “lawfare” willingly risked the fate of American democracy as long as they would ultimately benefit by prevailing against the sullied opponent. Yet, with Democrats eligible to vote in open GOP primaries, their leaders refused to “help Haley stop Trump,” and some may even have voted for him. 

The U.S. media were complicit in the process that brought a Biden-Trump re-run back before the American people. Much of it was in clear ideological sympathy with the Democrats’ goal of building up Trump for the nomination then destroying him in the election. In addition, they had business motives for generating Trump-related news that has filled corporate coffers since he burst upon the political stage in 2015.

To make matters worse, the media joined with the political establishment in disparaging and diminishing the potential of the No Labels movement to bring a vestige of rationality, compromise, decency and normality back to American politics – qualities that are not deemed newsworthy or exciting for the news business. 

No Labels meant no fireworks. For many partisans, good government issues like moderation and bipartisanship lacked the sex appeal of scandal, political violence and charges of fascism and socialism. 

None of the plethora of other third-party candidates enjoy the broad-based appeal No Labels might have engendered had it been able to sign up Haley.

About two-thirds of voters still say they don’t want a Biden-Trump choice. Fed-up with the diet of vitriol the 2024 election offers, they might prefer to carry out a peaceful political revolution by rejecting the parties’ choices altogether and writing in the name of their own preferred candidate.

To be effective and not scatter their numbers among multiple choices, however, there would have to be general agreement to rally around a single write-in candidate. That is where No Labels could still play an important coalescing role.

Nikki Haley would be the logical choice as the last opponent standing against Trump. She garnered 35-45 percent of the Republican primary vote, and she won 20 percent in some primaries even after suspending her campaign. Haley polled better against Biden than did Trump. She was feared by both men, as well as by America’s foreign enemies, who had reason to respect the non-nonsense foreign policy and national security policies she advocated. Haley is in sync with No Labels’s concerns about foreign tyrants taking advantage of U.S. political divisions.

For a write-in candidacy to work, Haley might have to indicate before August her acceptance of such an effort on her behalf because fewer than a dozen states will count write-in votes without prior formal registration. Her suspended campaign may already qualify. In effect, Haley would be consenting to the possibility of being drafted for president. She needs to confirm that her suspended campaign already qualifies. Her supporters need to have their votes counted and not lumped in with a collection of also-rans under “other.” She may need to do nothing more than serve if elected.

Haley has earned a respite from campaigning. But if she believes, as she has so often stated, that “we have a country to save,” she should be receptive to a No Labels proposal that she accept a write-in campaign on her behalf.

Joseph Bosco served as China country director for the secretary of Defense from 2005 to 2006 and as Asia-Pacific director of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief from 2009 to 2010. He is a nonresident fellow at the Institute for Corean-American Studies and a member of the advisory board of the Global Taiwan Institute. Follow him on X @BoscoJosephA.