TOM LEONARD: Will Donald Trump come to regret pushing America’s ‘Iron Lady’ Nikki Haley into the limelight?

With six inches of snow, wind gusts of up to 55 mph and temperatures as low as -20 degrees Celsius, conditions in Iowa this weekend were neatly summarized as “life-threatening” by the National Weather Service.

And yet one man celebrated the snowstorm.

Because ahead of today’s caucus in Iowa – where members of the Republican party will vote for their presidential candidate in the first presidential contest of 2024 – Donald Trump declared that his supporters are more likely than those of his rivals to brave the weather and vote .

“Our people are more involved than anyone else, so maybe it’s actually a good thing for us,” he said.

If the polls are to be believed, the former president has every reason to be positive.

The latest election poll, released on Saturday, predicted Trump would win with an impressive 48 percent of the vote.

The real story in Iowa is who comes in second.

Because what both Republicans and Democrats want to know is who has any hope — even a tiny bit — of beating Trump for the nomination and avoiding the bleak prospect of a November runoff between 81-year-old Joe Biden and a man facing 91 criminals. cost.

Until now, many viewed Florida Governor Ron DeSantis as the most likely challenger – a macho, anti-woke figure in the image of The Donald.

But recent polls show DeSantis coming in third with just 16 percent of the vote.

Instead, the number two in the Iowa caucus will be 51-year-old former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley.

Yet most people in Britain have never heard of ‘America’s Iron Lady’, a staunch conservative in six-inch heels.

If Haley gets her predicted 20 percent vote share and defeats DeSantis in a state as pro-Trump as Iowa, the mother of two — born in South Carolina to Sikh immigrant parents — will become the ex-president’s main rival . .

She has positioned herself as a traditional Republican who will restore political civility and competence, both for her party and for a deeply polarized America, after the chaos of the Trump years.

What exactly does she stand for? Domestically, she has softened her party’s opposition to abortion — a key area where Republicans are vulnerable to losing women’s votes.

She often disagrees equally with fellow right-wingers on foreign policy, supporting military commitments such as more aid to Ukraine.

She argues that the US should confront dictators like Vladimir Putin – not, as Trump seems to believe, give in to them. “We cannot have four years of chaos, revenge and drama,” she has said.

And while she may be conservative on social policy and spending, Haley is also a pragmatist — which might just convince wavering Democrats to jump ship and support her campaign instead of the increasingly unreliable Biden .

Polls have shown that Haley would defeat the incumbent president by as much as 10 points in a general election. No one would be more shocked by this than Trump himself.

It was he who put Haley in the spotlight and who now, like everyone who dares to cross him, feels betrayed.

Their relationship was bumpy, to say the least.

She initially supported other candidates for the 2016 Republican nomination, condemning Trump for his refusal to disavow the Ku Klux Klan and insisting she was “not a fan” of him before belatedly endorsing him.

Trump reportedly considered her to be his secretary of state, but she was not interested. Instead, she became US ambassador to the UN in 2017.

While others followed him slavishly, she did no harm to her political reputation by taking positions at odds with his.

In particular, she fought hard to impose new sanctions on Russia and the Assad regime in Syria.

Her hawkish approach certainly mirrors that of Lady Thatcher – and like her British predecessor, Haley is certainly self-made in a world of political dynasties.

Nimarata Nikki Randhawa grew up in rural South Carolina to Punjabi parents, where several racist landlords refused to rent them a house.

Haley has said that she and her family were “not white enough to be white, not black enough to be black.”

When the family’s fashion and home goods business took off, Haley – who earned an accounting degree – became the company’s Chief Financial Officer.

She converted to Christianity in 1997, a year after her marriage to Michael Haley, an officer in the South Carolina Army National Guard.

The couple has a daughter and a son: Rena, a 25-year-old nurse, and Nalin, a student at the University of Pennsylvania.

After winning a seat in the South Carolina House of Representatives on her first try in 2004 (the same year she became president of the National Association of Women Business Owners), she was elected in 2011 as the first female and first non- white governor of the state. 38 years old.

Haley credited Hillary Clinton’s call for more women in public life for inspiring her to run for office.

Moderate Republicans would appreciate the irony if, after all those years of virtue-signaling and criticism from Democrats about how Hillary Clinton was “robbed” of the presidency, the first woman in the White House came from their party instead.

After the Iowa caucus, the New Hampshire primary on January 23 will further reveal how close this race really is.

DeSantis told reporters last week that he would not go to New Hampshire at all, but would instead fly directly from Iowa to South Carolina — Haley’s home state — where the third contest is taking place and where Haley is still trailing Trump.

Even if the polls are correct and Haley defeats DeSantis in Iowa, there will be no let up from the Republican Right, which – between Trump and DeSantis – is determined to freeze this moderate upstart out of the picture.

Her supporters, meanwhile, are convinced that she will stick to her principles and fight to the end. The lady, it seems, is not into spinning.