Will the first Female President Be a Republican?
Photographer: Win McNamee/Getty Images North America
With the 2024 election looming and only one female candidate running, the question of whether a woman will ever be the President of the United States is at the forefront of my mind. Nikki Haley, the only female contender in the Republican Party, began her candidacy at the beginning of this year. In a February speech, Haley said she doesn’t “believe” in “identity politics” or “glass ceilings.” (Garrity 2023) The New Yorker called her campaign video dialogue something that could have been said by Margaret Thatcher, referencing her classic “I’m-a-woman-but-I’m-tough school of political advertising.” (Glasser 2023) While it is highly unlikely that Haley will move past the primary, her candidacy begs the question: could the first female president be a Republican?
An interesting aspect of Haley’s campaign is that she is not one to politicize her gender on the debate floor. In fact, supporters of Haley seem to sidestep her womanhood when singing her praises. Although she is behind in the polls, Haley won the first-place award from the Times in both debates. In an analysis of the second GOP debate, Gail Collins referred to Haley as the “one candidate who talked about education in a smart, serious way.” (New York Times 2023) Out of ten commentators, only one of them mentions her gender. (Ibid.) Haley seems to have cracked something that many female candidates have not been able to in the past. She has learned how to toe the line—to lean into her status as a first-generation American woman of color—all while rejecting identity politics.
Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign did the opposite. Although Clinton was more qualified and eloquent than her rival, she was not able to garner the kind of unequivocal support that Donald Trump was able to. Even among many Democrats, Clinton was not the first choice. Why? Clinton frequently brought up feminism on the campaign trail, and prided herself on being a pro-choice candidate. But Bernie Sanders was the preferred choice for young people, garnering more youth votes in the primaries than Clinton and Trump combined. (CIRCLE 2016) In this context, it is not the fact that Clinton lost that is important—what is more astounding is that she faced such harsh criticism and dislike within her own party. While Haley does not seem to have a shot at winning, she does seem better-liked within her party. So what is the difference between Clinton and a candidate like Haley?
Ultimately, Haley’s rejection of identity politics makes her appeal to those who are against the feminist cause. Haley is not as much of a populist as her GOP counterparts, but her campaign ignores the complexities of intersectionality and opts for a simple view of herself and the country she wishes to represent. This message is twice as powerful coming from her than it is from a candidate like Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis. She is a woman of color, so voters can take what she is saying at face value. She is palatable. It is appealing, especially to Republican men, to hear someone like Haley reject the characteristics that others claim to define them.
Beyond her, the rise of conservative women is unignorable—Sarah Palin, Laura Ingraham, Kellyanne Conway, Amy Coney Barrett, and countless others. Barrett, a favorite among Christian conservatives, was able to present as a figure of neo-republican motherhood throughout her nomination and confirmation process to the Supreme Court. She leaned into tradition. Trump characterized her as a “profoundly devoted mother.” (Williams 2021, 36) Although she was underqualified (this point was exacerbated when she infamously could not list the five freedoms protected by the First Amendment), Barrett was able to secure her position. (Reinmann 2021) She did not rely on knowledge, but instead leaned on values of family and motherhood—which feels puzzling in the context of nominating a Justice. Even so, Barrett’s strategy proved more effective than that of the engaged, working, liberated picture that female politicians on the left often paint themselves as. In the end, who cares if she is unfit? Barrett is palatable, too.
It seems as though many Republican women have come to understand something that their equivalents on the left have not. While the idea of a female POTUS has been more commonly associated with Democrats and feminists, the discreet rise in popularity of Republican women indicates that one of them might get a shot at the White House first. As Andrea Dworkin wrote, “right-wing women have surveyed the world: they find it a dangerous place…They see that intelligence displayed in a woman is a flaw, that intelligence realized in a woman is a crime. They see the world they live in and they are not wrong.” (Dworkin 1988, 96)
References
CIRCLE staff. 2016. “Youth Voting in the 2016 Primaries.” Circle at Tufts, July 27, 2016. https://circle.tufts.edu/latest-research/youth-voting-2016-primaries.
Dworkin, Andrea. 1988. “The Politics of Intelligence.” In Right-Wing Women: The Politics of Domesticated Females. London: Women’s Press, 1988.
Garrity, Kelly. 2023. “Nikki Haley Calls for Competency Tests for Politicians over 75 during Campaign Launch.” POLITICO, February 15, 2023. https://www.politico.com/news/2023/02/15/nikki-haley-competency-tests-00083018.
Glasser, Susan B. 2023. “Is a Woman Ever Going to Win the White House?” The New Yorker, February 17, 2023. https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-bidens-washington/is-a-woman-ever-going-to-win-the-white-house.
New York Times Opinion. 2023. “‘Every Time I Hear You, I Feel a Little Bit Dumber’: Who Won and Lost the Second G.O.P. Debate.” The New York Times, September 28, 2023. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/09/28/opinion/republican-debate-winners-losers.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare.
Reimann, Nicholas. 2021. “Amy Coney Barrett Forgets Right to Protest Is a First Amendment Freedom.” Forbes, December 10, 2021. https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicholasreimann/2020/10/14/amy-coney-barrett-forgets-right-to-protest-is-a-first-amendment-freedom/?sh=720d5b4e12ed.
Williams, H. Howell. 2021. “Just Mothering: Amy Coney Barrett and the Racial Politics of American Motherhood” Laws 10, no. 2 (2021): 36. https://doi.org/10.3390/laws10020036.