Nikki Haley makes her pitch to beat Trump

Nikki Haley shares her personal playlist with the small but growing crowds at her campaign stops in Iowa.

As supporters wait for her to appear they are treated to music from Queen, Abba and Pat Benatar.

Middle of the road, easy listening, the music sets the mood. Ms Haley is running a decidedly middle-of-the-road campaign, pitching herself as the moderate, traditional, mainstream conservative candidate.

There are just five weeks before the Iowa caucuses will provide the first real test of the electoral appeal of the various Republican candidates.

The Iowa caucuses are part of the primaries, in which each state decides on who they want as party nominee. The overall winner is officially crowned at the Republican National Convention (RNC) – a big political event in July 2024.

Iowa results can make or break campaigns. So Ms Haley – like all her Republican rivals – is crisscrossing the state speaking to as many as voters as possible.

Her policy platform includes tax cuts for small businesses and the middle class. She is promising to shrink the size of the federal government and reduce the deficit. And she is warning that it would endanger America’s national security to reduce support for either Israel or Ukraine.

It’s easy to see how this campaign could have won her the nomination in years gone by.

But can it succeed in a Republican Party that’s been transformed by Donald Trump? The people he has brought to the party detest the kind of establishment politics Haley is selling.

At an event billed as being about “Faith and Family” at Dordt University, she was joined on stage by her 23-year-old daughter Rena. Other candidates brought their spouses, but Ms Haley’s husband is on a year-long deployment to Africa with the National Guard.

Interviewed on stage by the local Republican congressman, Randy Feenstra, Ms Haley said: “We won’t defeat Democratic chaos with Republican chaos – and that’s what Donald Trump brings.”

The university auditorium was busy, if not packed, on a freezing cold Saturday morning. Iowa voters take their “first in the nation” responsibilities seriously and many like to see every candidate in the flesh before making up their minds

Most people I spoke to afterwards were impressed with Ms Haley’s experience as a former governor of South Carolina and her smooth professional demeanour.

Braeden Nydim told me he was torn between Ms Haley and Ron DeSantis. He said he sees Ms Haley as “much more composed and calm,” which builds a lot of confidence in her. His wife, Emma Nydim, thinks Ms Haley “does a good job of walking the middle ground and not being too party-versus-party”.

Stacey Harmelink voted for Mr Trump in 2016 and 2020, but after seeing Ms Haley at a local event she became a campaign volunteer. “I see her bringing people together and with Donald Trump, there’s a lot of divisiveness and I don’t think our country needs that right now.”

But those are the views of people who are actively looking for an alternative to Mr Trump. The few of his supporters who had turned up had not had their minds changed at all.

Doyle Turner said he sees Ms Haley as “already too much of a candidate of the establishment. I don’t agree with her views on Ukraine or the world environment at all. “

Ms Haley’s campaign has been significantly boosted by big influential donors who want to move on from Mr Trump. The political network, Americans for Prosperity Action – founded by Charles and David Koch – is giving her millions of dollars to try to cement her as the sole anti-Trump candidate.

Emily Seidel, a senior adviser to Americans for Prosperity Action, said that Ms Haley would win “the key independent and moderate voters that Trump has no chance to win,” and that the country “is being ripped apart by extremes on both sides”.

She added that “the moment we face requires a tested leader with the governing judgment and policy experience to pull our nation back from the brink. Nikki Haley is that leader.”

Other polls suggest that she would be more electable than Mr Trump next November. But when it comes to Republican voters choosing who they want as their presidential candidate, the the polls show the former president is miles ahead of Ms Haley and everyone else.

So as Ms Haley poses for selfies with excited supporters after a small town hall event in Clear Lake, Iowa, it looks as though she is performing remarkably well in a race for second place.

No matter how much the small girls getting their pictures taken with her want to believe she will become America’s first female president – and Sheryl Crow’s Don’t You Think it’s Time We Put a Woman in the White House is playing loudly as encouragement – it seems a very long shot.

But Mr Trump is facing so many criminal trials it is impossible to predict whether he can maintain his current levels of support. If he were to drop out of the race for any reason, Ms Haley would look well placed to step up and accept her party’s nomination.