The Education Department was incorporated by an act of Congress. She did not have the discretion to shut it down.

In 2016, the consultants all assumed Trump was a vanity candidate and ignored him until it was too late. The pros expected the abundance of niche candidates to drop out one by one as they each passed their base constituency’s primaries, leaving an establishment squish (Jeb) as the last man standing.

Now, the pros are expecting Desantis to be the last man standing and the never-Trump consensus candidate. But the country-club ladies who have been running GOP events since Bush the Elder don’t talk to their plumbers or electricians about politics, so they have no idea how deeply the base is alienated by the party elite’s betrayal of working Americans. Haley (or anyone else touting globalism, offshoring, and foreign wars) is faking all her concern for Trump’s voters, and they know it.

I don’t think DeSantis is in that mode. If he goes for it, it will be for real and right now.

OTOH, I respect and admire Tulsi Gabbard, at least in her more recent incarnation; but once again I’m not sure if she has the qualifications or the experience—though she’s shown she’s tough and doesn’t back away from confronting rogues—she certainly is courageous. She’s also smart and speaks well.
Though who knows if she’ll throw her hat into the ring…

“The big problem with Nikki Haley for the Republicans is the same as the big problem with Kamala Harris for the Democrats. They are both over-ambitious mediocrities who believe in nothing except the fierce urgency of their own advancement. And the bases of both parties know it. Kamala is, astonishingly, less popular than her senile superior. Nikki Haley is polling at about 2%, and those 2% are drunk. No one wants either one of them to be president – they are both hoping to make up for their unpopularity with the sheer intensity of their wanting it for themselves.

Policy is secondary for both, really. Like liberalism was for Kamala, conservatism is the fake hobby horse Nikki hopes to use to ride into DC and a gig as veep before taking the big step into the Oval Office down the road. But there’s no evidence she actually believes in conservatism as we understand it in 2023. It’s a consultant-driven act resurrected from 2003. She wilted in front of the SJWs when she could have told them to pound sand. She’s awkwardly hawkish in a simulacrum of what she thinks Republicans should be. She has shown none of the contempt for the establishment that Trump has, nor has she built a track record of owning the libs as Ron DeSantis has. But policy is really beside the point for her. She just wants to be president someday, like her double Kamala. And we need to stop them both.”

https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2023/02/16/no-to-nikki-harris-n2619596

“Contempt for the establishment” is a required qualification for this job. A proven track record of translating that contempt into effective policy is a big plus.

2) “I like having a government job, and I don’t have one at the moment, so if my name gets mentioned a lot I’ll probably be able to get one from whomever wins the 2024 election.”

Haley is, at best, a third tier candidate; I will offer, however, that she will probably get more primary votes in South Carolina than Lindsey Graham.

Which ain’t sayin’ much…..

Haley would make a good cabinet-level secretary (which may actually be her ultimate goal), especially of a federal agency that desperately needs to be shut down. Which is almost all of them, but that’s a separate issue and a different discussion. Betsy DeVos should have spent her four years shutting DoE down and salting the earth where the building stood instead of trying to make it run more efficiently; I’d vote for giving Haley that task.