Nikki Haley fights to prove her conservative credentials as anti-Trump moderates rally to her side

MANCHESTER, N.H. — Hoping to pull off a major upset in New Hampshire, Nikki Haley has spent the last week of her campaign fending off an onslaught of attacks from former President Donald Trump claiming that the former tea party governor isn’t really a Republican.

At Granite State rallies, Trump has repeatedly claimed that Haley would be weak on immigration policy, called her a “globalist fool,” suggested “she’s like a Democrat,” described her supporters as “pro-Biden” and said a vote for Haley “is a vote for Joe Biden.” He’s suggested that Haley is seeking to have Democrats vote on her behalf Tuesday, though only registered Republicans and undeclared voters can cast ballots in New Hampshire's GOP primary.

Trump’s attacks have been bolstered by a wave of television advertising painting Haley as weak on immigration and opposed to his agenda, while his allies have slammed the former South Carolina governor (and Trump’s hand-picked ambassador to the United Nations), too. Responding to an NBC News question Friday, Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., said that “when it came to standing up for election integrity, Nikki Haley was disloyal to President Trump.”

Attacking your opponent as a “Republican in Name Only” or “RINO” has been standard fare in GOP politics for more than a decade now, though the tactic was supercharged by Trump. For Haley, she is faced with the task of overcoming the attacks while running in a party in which conservative bona fides are not just determined by one’s record but, for many GOP voters, also defined by the former president and the loyalty tests he and his allies put forth.

Complicating the problem further for Haley, who was elected governor as a tea party-aligned Republican in 2010, is that a big chunk