Nikki Haley exits race with a message Trump may not want to hear: ANALYSIS

She outlasted the "fellas." The money behind the mission never dried up. In the end, she won a pair of contests -- in Washington, D.C., and Vermont.

Nikki Haley still came nowhere near the Republican nomination. She couldn't prevent Super Tuesday from becoming a blowout, with former President Donald Trump cleaning up in red states (Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Alabama), blue states (California, Massachusetts, Colorado) and historic and potentially emerging or reemerging battlegrounds (Virginia, North Carolina, Minnesota).

In exiting the race on Wednesday morning, Haley issued a broad call for Republicans to rediscover what the party has previously stood for. She also called on Trump himself to reach out to voters who are not yet convinced that he's the right choice for their party or for the country.

"It is now up to Donald Trump to earn the votes of those in our party and those beyond it to support him," Haley said in brief remarks in her home state of South Carolina. "I hope he does that."

Pretty much at the same time she was speaking, Trump invited Haley supporters to join his campaign. But that was almost an afterthought in a social-media post that also declared that Haley "got TROUNCED last night, in record setting fashion" and alleged that she was secretly funded by "Radical Left Democrats."

Contrast that with the statement President Joe Biden released Wednesday morning, praising Haley for the "courage" to run for president and try to defeat Trump.

"Donald Trump made it clear he doesn't want Nikki Haley's supporters. I want to be clear: There is a place for them in my campaign," the president said in a campaign statement.

Words aside, Haley's campaign served to highlight potential limitations in Trump's electoral coalition. While he romped across the primary states and even won every single county in giant states like California and Texas, Haley wound up -- to use Trump's choice word -- trouncing him in the suburbs and exurbs of Denver, Boston and northern Virginia, outside Washington. Those results closely mirrored prior geographic outcomes in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

Many of those Haley voters have been adamant about what their votes mean. Across the GOP primary states with exit polls, 79% of Haley voters said they would dissatisfied with Trump as the nominee and a similar 79% said Trump would be unfit for office if he is convicted of a crime. (He denies all wrongdoing.)

Evan as Trump continues to spread false claims about the 2020 election, 83% of Haley voters in exit polls said Biden legitimately won the presidency. Those voters appear more moderate across a range of other issues, including immigration and abortion, that are likely to be central to the fall campaign.

Haley said repeatedly on the trail not just that Trump should not win but that he cannot win. She even said that the nation "can't survive" another four years of the "chaos" that surrounds him.

Haley, of all people -- having served as one of Trump's ambassadors -- knows better than to expect a new version of him, much less one who changes course because of nudges from an erstwhile ally. Her shifting reactions to prior versions of Trump are head-spinning, even considering the immensely complicated relationship between Trump and their shared party.

Haley campaigned for a rival Republican in 2016; made amends to serve as Trump's U.N. ambassador; pronounced herself "disgusted" by Trump's actions after Jan. 6; came back into the fold to say she wouldn't challenge him if he ran again; then ran anyway and was the last of a dozen-plus rivals standing in the Republican race.

Even as the campaign grew sharper, as Trump mocked her intelligence, mangled her given name and elevated baseless questions about her eligibility for office, Haley never quite ruled out supporting him in the end -- or even potentially serving as his running mate.

In recent days, as the end of the road came into view, Haley cast her campaign as a mission to bring the Republican Party back to its fiscal-discipline and stand-by-our-allies roots. Last Friday, speaking with a group of reporters and columnists in Washington, she rejected the label of "anti-Trump."

"In all the narratives, everybody pretty much assumes that this is an anti-Trump movement. And it's actually not. This is a movement where people want to be heard," Haley said. "I get why Democrats are leaving the Democrat Party, because of how far left they've gone. And I get why Republicans are leaving the Republican Party, because we were just always about small government and freedom -- economic freedom and personal freedom."

Shortly after Jan. 6, 2021, in what became an infamous interview, she gave the sharpest critique she ever offered of Trump.

Notably, she also laid some responsibility on Republicans who essentially enabled him by echoing his false rhetoric about the 2020 election.

"He went down a path he shouldn't have, and we shouldn't have followed him, and we shouldn't have listened to him. And we can't let that ever happen again," Haley told the journalist Tim Alberta.

In getting out of the race now, Haley sought to put the onus on Trump to listen to Republican voters, particularly those who are hesitating before backing Trump again. But responsibility for action may fall on those same voters -- and on prominent party members like Haley -- if Trump chooses to hear different messages.