'Ambitious as Lucifer' but not Titan enough to slay the Trump Dragon... TOM LEONARD reveals why Nikki Haley was destined for Super Tuesday humiliation - but asks: can she rise again for a 2028 return?

In the end she just couldn't do it.

Nikki Haley fought on and clung desperately to fading hope – but, as political historians will no doubt record, she couldn't provide the alternative to Donald Trump that America so sorely needed.

Back in January, when DailyMail.com revealed new details about allegations that she'd had two extramarital affairs before she became Governor of South Carolina in 2010, she could have simply denied them.

After all, Trump does that all the time and the scandal inevitably goes away.

Instead, Haley threw a hissy fit and not only kicked DailyMail.com reporters off her campaign but also did the same to any other journalist who dared mention the story.

For critics, it was surely evidence of a candidate who really wasn't strong enough to rise to the challenge of running for President.

In the end she just couldn't do it. Nikki Haley fought on and clung desperately to fading hope.

But, as political historians will no doubt record, she couldn't provide the alternative to Donald Trump that America so sorely needed.

Perhaps the booming ex-New Jersey governor Chris Christie, another contender who trusted too much in the anti-Trump appetite, had a point when he questioned whether Haley had the right stuff for the 2024 race.

'She is going to get smoked, she's not up to this,' he was overhead saying in a notorious hot-mic moment two months ago.

Well, she has now been smoked although, for Trump fans, that charred smell is surely coming from her proverbial boats, burning offshore as she accepts she can never now go home, back to a Republican Party that has changed out of all recognition to the one she championed in her campaign.

And of course, the same can be said of the people who bankrolled and backed her.

Trump's thrashing of Haley on Super Tuesday was a rejection not only of her but of the Party Establishment – the billionaire donors such as the Koch brothers and hedge-fund manager Ken Griffin – who are repelled by The Donald and feel their beloved party has been hijacked by nut jobs.

Haley's refusal to endorse Trump during her concession speech will please supporters who urged her to 'go down swinging' – although she probably had little to lose as a Party that increasingly idolizes the ex-president she repeatedly attacked is not going to have her back any time soon.

In the circumstances, a Titan was needed to slay the Trump dragon and Haley rarely gave any indication that she was Conan the Barbarian.

Her emergence as the biggest threat to Trump in the nomination battle came too late and too little in a campaign during which she was criticized for holding back – both from attacking the former president and from tearing apart her lesser rivals in the televised debates.

But the woman who once opposed Donald Trump, then embraced him (when he made her US Ambassador to the United Nations) and then once again opposed him, was always going to have problems navigating a complicated history with her former boss.

And yet, as the last hope of moderate Republicans, she certainly ticked many boxes for both them and independents who may well decide the election outcome in November.

For a start, she certainly addressed the age issue that polls show seriously bothers voters on both sides.

Aged only 52, she is decades younger than both Trump and Biden, and was able to call for mental competency tests for candidates aged over 75.

'America is not past our prime, it's just that our politicians are past theirs,' was a particularly effective Haley campaign refrain.

Her other qualifications were also reassuring to those who feared that even if the next president doesn't accidentally push the nuclear button after having a senior moment, he might instead do it in a fit of pique.

But the woman who once opposed Donald Trump, then embraced him (when he made her US Ambassador to the United Nations) and then once again opposed him, was always going to have problems navigating a complicated history with her former boss. (Pictured: together in DC in 2017).

And yet, as the last hope of moderate Republicans, she certainly ticked many boxes for both them and independents who may well decide the election outcome in November. (Pictured: together in Oval Office in 2018).

The child of Sikh immigrants who encountered but overcame racism in South Carolina, she once encouraged comparisons with Britain's 'Iron Lady' Margaret Thatcher – whom she quoted in her concession speech – and certainly was far better qualified to be president than her main rivals.

She'd come up as a spirited outsider to win her state governorship in 2010.

In office, she proved sufficiently effective – tackling anything from immigration and economic growth to South Carolina's flying of the Confederate flag – that in 2012, Mitt Romney considered her as his vice-presidential running mate.

Time magazine named her as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2016, the same year she was asked to deliver the official Republican response to President Obama's State of the Union Address.

Her star continued to rise during the Trump administration which she belatedly embraced after having first supported other candidates for the Party nomination.

As Trump's US Ambassador to the UN, from 2017 to 2018 she looked like one of the few rocks of sanity and competency in the sea of chaos and incompetence of his White House.

Crucially, she was tough on sanctions for Russia (and its ally Syria) when many Trump critics insisted that her boss was a Kremlin stooge. She was similarly steady on Iran and North Korea.

And that image as a safe pair of hands crossed into her nomination campaign last year, as she reassured those worried that the Republicans are going soft on foreign policy in an increasingly dangerous world.

Unashamedly pro-Ukraine and NATO, while anti-Russia and China, she knew who America's friends and enemies are – and wasn't afraid to say it.

On the debate stage, she was mostly strong – the stiletto-heeled, sure-headed counterpart to the wild conspiracy theories of Vivek Ramaswamy or the robotic delivery of Ron DeSantis, programmed to endlessly fight his war on wokeness.

She proved that Trump's preposterous claim that she was a 'liberal' didn't hold up against her hard stances on immigration, the free market and policing Silicon Valley.

As a result, insiders say funding her campaign was never a problem, even though the decision late last month by Americans for Prosperity Action – the network backed by billionaire Charles Koch – to halt funding after her string of early primary defeats, clearly showed that the Haley bandwagon wasn't going to run on forever.

And yet it ran on long enough to show that Trump was vulnerable, especially in states such as New Hampshire (where she won 43 percent of the vote) and Vermont (which she won on Tuesday night).

Certainly, there were occasions when the Haley campaign mis-stepped – for instance, her demand to end anonymity on social media didn't chime well with the 1st Amendment.

There were also occasional wobbles of a more personal nature, such as when she let Ramaswamy's needling get to her.

'You're just scum,' she snarled at him in November, in a rare display of temper trumping old Southern charm when Ramaswamy brought up her daughter on the debate stage.

The child of Sikh immigrants who encountered but overcame racism in South Carolina, she once encouraged comparisons with Britain's 'Iron Lady' Margaret Thatcher. (Pictured: Nikki, bottom left. Clockwise from her are older sister Simran, big brother Mitti and, bottom middle, little brother Simmi. With her parents, Ajit and Raj).

She'd come up as a spirited outsider to win her state governorship in 2010. In office, she proved sufficiently effective that in 2012, Mitt Romney considered her as his vice-presidential running mate (pictured).

Time magazine named her as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2016, the same year she was asked to deliver the official Republican response to President Obama's State of the Union Address. (Pictured: With husband Michael and their two children in 2010).

As Trump's US Ambassador to the UN, from 2017 to 2018 she looked like one of the few rocks of sanity and competency in the sea of chaos and incompetence of his White House. (Pictured: with husband Michael in 2015).

Even before her Super Tuesday annihilation, the writing was on the wall for her campaign.

Losing to Trump in her home state of South Carolina was actually less humiliating than coming a distant second to the option labelled 'none of these' in Nevada.

So, what's next for a canny politician who one colleague told White House chronicler Michael Wolff was as 'ambitious as Lucifer'?

In the short term, she could serve as an effective surrogate for moderate Republicans running for Congress in November.

Looking further ahead, she's surely coming back in 2028 when – who knows – her party may have tired of Trump, or at least forgotten all the cruel words she's said about him.

Will she be stronger then than she proved in the past few months? Many Americans will surely sincerely hope so.