Is Nikki Haley a middle-of-the-road Republican? The kind they used to make before Donald Trump hijacked the GOP and obliterated the traditional conservative order?

In messaging and demeanor, maybe, but not in policies. She’s a hardliner on the use of military force and no softie when it comes to government aid. She refused recently to support an emerging bipartisan effort in Congress to expand the child tax credit for low income families, and as U.S. ambassador to the U.N., she wanted to defund the U.N. agency providing critical aid to the Palestinians, even after touring a refugee camp and seeing the need.

As a presidential appointee, she excelled at getting around White House gatekeepers to secure facetime with President Trump. Then-Chief of Staff John Kelly had to scramble to bring then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to an Oval Office meeting with the president—in an effort to rebut Haley’s push to yank funding.

On the campaign trail, Haley vows to defund as much of the U.N. as possible, stopping just short of saying she would have the United States withdraw from the international body. She supports aid to Ukraine but on most other issues, foreign and domestic, she lines up with the hardliners in her party.

She hasn’t really challenged Trump on any of his policies, and says he was the right president for the moment, but that moment has passed, therefore it’s time for someone who’s not 80 to lead the country, a criticism pointed more at President Joe Biden.

But by getting “almost half of the vote” in New Hampshire—her characterization of the 44 percent she........

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