Editorial: Trump’s derisive nickname for Nikki Haley is an insult to a strong, qualified GOP woman

Donald Trump apparently thinks a disparaging nickname is key to his political success because he seems to work hard at coming up with one for any rival he considers a threat. Ted Cruz was “Lyin’ Ted.” Ron DeSantis was “Ron DeSanctimonious.” Marco Rubio was “Little Marco.” Joe Biden first was “Sleepy Joe Biden” and now is “Crooked Joe Biden.” “Crooked Hillary” Clinton, redux.

And Nikki Haley is “Birdbrain.”

The political media largely treats Trump’s schoolyard taunts as a quasi-entertaining sideshow. At the risk of spoiling the “fun,” we think of it as beneath the office he seeks — really, beneath any sort of acceptable adult behavior in a public setting. We’ve refrained to date from weighing in on this buffoonery because there are other bigger issues to address when it comes to Trump, whom we long have considered unfit for presidential office for much bigger reasons than his trashing of rivals.

We draw the line, though, at “birdbrain.” That’s what Trump calls the only GOP presidential candidate still in the race and the last hope for giving Republicans who aren’t down with the Trump circus a standard-bearer they can feel good about supporting.

This is a woman who served ably as governor of South Carolina and then navigated the Trump-induced chaos as well as anyone else could have as his United Nations ambassador. But, even aside from her credentials, anyone who sees her on a debate stage can tell that she’s anything but a birdbrain.

Nikki Haley is a highly intelligent, accomplished woman. She’s in the ring now with a bully and is taking him on directly. “My style is different” than Trump’s, she said recently in New Hampshire. “No vendettas, no trauma, no vengeance. It’s about results.”

The irony of Trump’s idiotic nickname for Haley, of course, is that he has refused to debate her. What kind of person labels his political foe a birdbrain but won’t say that to her face on a debate stage? Or, for that matter, demonstrate his supreme intelligence to voters in the presence of his supposed intellectual inferior? A bully — one who takes his fellow Americans for fools.

Speaking of the results Haley references, Republicans (as she points out) have lost virtually every election since the American people showed Trump the door in 2020. They lost in 2022, to the surprise of pundits who told us the incumbent president’s party always gets thumped in the midterms. They lost virtually every special election that’s been held since then.

One of the keys to those repeated defeats is suburban women who’ve been thoroughly turned off, both by the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe vs. Wade, which Trump boasts that he’s responsible for, and by the bluster and anti-intellectualism that characterize MAGA politics.

Taunting Haley, the only woman running for president in this cycle, surely is an affront to many of those voters as well. For those old enough to remember, it hearkens to “All in the Family,” the classic show created by the recently deceased Norman Lear, in which the bigoted, bullying “man” of the house, Archie Bunker, habitually referred to his wife, Edith, as “dingbat.”

Trump as Archie Bunker? Kind of seems that way, doesn’t it?

Haley’s the last opponent standing, topping a throng of male candidates who’ve fallen by the wayside and dutifully kissed the Donald’s ring on their way out. She’s gotten her one-on-one match.

As unlikely as the political news corps makes it out to be, it’s our hope that GOP voters opt to give the Trump Show the unceremonious ending it deserves. Haley is an intelligent and, yes, tough candidate who firmly backs conservative principles but understands, too, that our polity needs a civility reset.

In other words, she’s anything but a birdbrain. We could think of a few choice nicknames for Trump. But that would be playing his toxic game.

Join the discussion on Twitter @chitribopinions and on Facebook.

Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@chicagotribune.com.