Nikki Haley is officially running for president. Which is more a ripple than a wave in the field.

Haley is part of a bucket of candidates I call "Trump Adjacent." They all accept that Trump has fundamentally re-oriented the Reublican Party. They also all, in small ways and big, owe their current status to Trump. The challenge for Haley (and the rest of the Trump Adjacent candidates) is how to find distance from Trump, and overcome the fact that he has a big (and steady) support base within the party. The race ultimately comes down to Trump and whoever emerges from the Trump Adjacent camp. DeSantis is the most likely today right now.

 

Trump has the largest and most dependable base of support within the party, although that base is clearly smaller than it was when he was president. He will run the same way he ran in 2016 and 2020 — as an outsider who doesn’t take orders or direction from anyone. He will attack anyone in any way. There are no rules fort Trump.

TRUMP ADJACENT: This is likely to be the largest group of candidates in the field. It includes Haley as well as DeSantis. And Vice President Mike Pence. And South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott. And former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. And Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin.

All of these candidates will run with the acknowledgement that Trump has fundamentally reshaped the Republican party and that there is no going back. They will simultaneously try to run on their connections to him (Pence, Haley and Pompeo all worked in the Trump administration) while also looking for ways to distance themselves from some of his worst instincts.

This group will talk about Trump the least of the three as they attempt to forge a separate political identity from him — even while acknowledging that he is the axis on which the party turned (and turns).

DeSantis will channel Trump’s tough talk against PC culture albeit in a less controversial package. Pence will seek to take credit for things like the Trump tax cuts and the movement of the courts to the ideological right while avoiding talk of his break with Trump over January 6, 2021. Haley will seek to use the profile she gained as a member of the Trump administration to argue that it’s time for new, younger leaders. And so on and so forth.

ANTI-TRUMP: This bucket is filled with those candidates who will run expressly against the Trumpist movement within the Republican party, suggesting that it represents an abandonment of the first principles on which the Republican party was formed and has come to rely.

This group includes former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, and former Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger.

You’ll notice there are a lot of former elected officials in this bucket, a sign that, to date, there’s been very little political gain in publicly opposing Trump and the way he has changed the Republican party.

Christie is probably the best known of the anti-Trumps but may well struggle to sell himself as truly opposed to the former president given his lackey status during much of the 2016 campaign.

Cheney is also a well-ish known name nationally but she has largely disappeared since losing her primary fight — badly — last summer.

The big takeaway from the three buckets (Trump, Trump Adjacent, Anti-Trump)? The race will, again, center on Trump. He is the prime mover. He will act and other candidates will react. Every other candidate in the field, including DeSantis, will have to figure out how to define themselves vis a vis Trump." style="padding-bottom: 100%;">

If history is any guide, the race is very likely to come down to Trump (given his steady support from roughly a third of the electorate) and one of the candidates from the Trump Adjacent bucket. DeSantis looks the most likely now but that bucket is the one with the most volatility in it. There will be movement among and within those candidates as they jockey to be a Trump alternative without entirely alienating the base of the party that is for him.

(Unless something drastic changes, I don’t see anyone in the anti Trump bucket having a real chance at winning the nomination. There are pockets of Republicans who believe that Trumpism needs to be burned to the ground - Gotham-like - in order to save the Republican party. I just don’t think it’s a big enough group to matter in a primary setting.)

Haley’s bet is that she can emerge from the Trump Adjacent bucket. It’s not an awful idea as she does have natural charisma and stands out as the only woman in that space.

The question for her — and all of the people in the Trump Adjacent bucket — is how, ultimately, the deal with the former president. All of them have praised him at one time or another. Many of them — DeSantis, I am looking at you — have Trump to thank for their careers.

How, given those ties, do you make an effective case against Trump? That’s the challenge before Haley and the rest of her companions in the Trump Adjacent bucket.