By Nick Catoggio
Monday, December 18, 2023
Not
since spring have we had a poll of the Republican presidential primary that
passes for interesting.
On
Sunday, a month out from the start of voting, we finally got one.
A CBS
News survey of New Hampshire has Donald Trump under 50 percent in the
state, and Nikki Haley within 15 points of the frontrunner. She leads Trump on
likability among Republican primary voters by nearly 20 points. The same poll
has Chris Christie at 10 percent overall; if he were to exit the race before
Election Day and his anti-Trump base moved to Haley, we’d have a true toss-up
in a state that’s picked the eventual GOP nominee in every cycle for the past
20 years.
Note
that I said this “passes for interesting,” not that it is interesting.
For
starters, the margin of error of the poll is a hefty 5.5 percent, meaning
Haley’s true level of support could be as low as 23.5 percent. (Or, I guess, as
high as 34.5.) It’s also an outlier, as no other survey
of New Hampshire has had Haley higher than 20 percent. And the data
fails to account for any momentum Trump might gain in New Hampshire if he
crushes the field in Iowa, where CBS News has
him leading the caucus by 36 points. Haley is a distant third there at
13 percent.
In
fact, according to the RealClearPolitics average,
the frontrunner now enjoys his largest lead of the campaign in national
polling. He’s at 63 percent today, more than—deep breath—50 points ahead of his
nearest competitor.
Nikki
Haley isn’t going to beat Trump for the nomination.
But
CBS News’ New Hampshire poll remains interesting-ish, for two reasons.
One is that it might convince her and her team that they have a real shot at
the upset. They’ve invested gobs of time, energy, emotion, and money in this
longshot effort, believing against all evidence that stubborn Republican voters
might choose a traditional conservative like her over the cult leader if only
Team Nikki put in the work. Now they have a tantalizing piece of statistical
evidence, however small, that seems to validate their theory. It’s
working. It’s gonna happen.
The
more she thinks she can win, the more her strategy over the next two months
might evolve. For the first time, she might begin attacking Trump aggressively.
Might.
The
other reason is related. The better Haley performs in the early states, the
more compelling the case becomes for Trump to add her to the ticket as his vice
presidential nominee. The GOP is a party divided between populists and
conservatives, as regular
readers of this newsletter might
remember. Populists dominate, but they can’t win without bringing along the
20 percent or so of old-school Republicans who might be getting itchy
about what
a second Trump term portends.
Having
the ultimate next-gen normie Republican in the number two slot could calm those
voters’ nerves. It might even earn some
crossover votes for Trump in the general election. Really now, would a
would-be “dictator” name Nikki Haley, of all people, to be his number two?
The
vice presidency has loomed over Haley’s candidacy since the day she launched
her campaign, but the subject has grown more urgent as she’s crept up on Ron
DeSantis in the polls.
In
fact, everyone seems to be chattering about it lately.
***
There
aren’t many political topics left with the power to annoy hardcore MAGA fans,
DeSantis devotees, and Never Trumpers to roughly equal
degrees, but “Trump-Haley 2024” is one.
One
of DeSantis’ most loyal spin doctors on The Platform Formerly Known as Twitter
now warns about it regularly.
The governor
himself has raised the matter in appearances on the trail, as has
his campaign
manager in interviews.
Trump’s
biggest toadies also sound increasingly alarmed.
Shared
disdain for Haley among different camps of populists has led to an amusing
dynamic in which Trump enthusiasts loudly
denounce her while DeSantis enthusiasts parse those denunciations for
proof that a secret
alliance is afoot. When stalwart MAGA Rep. Anna Paulina Luna declared recently
that “Nikki Haley would be a terrible VP pick,” Team Ron influencer Pedro
Gonzalez took it as confirmation that
Trump must be quietly considering the former governor of South Carolina for the
ticket. Otherwise, why would Luna feel compelled to lobby against the idea
publicly?
Some
Trumpers, being Trumpers, have colorful theories of their own about a potential
Trump-Haley union.
On
the other side of the party, one of the few Republicans to have ruled out
supporting Trump next year also looks dimly on the prospect of Haley joining
forces with him in the general election. “I’m the only one in the race who is
working on defeating Donald Trump,” Chris Christie said
Sunday when asked about Haley. “When she hasn’t ruled out being his
vice president, I don’t think you can take her as a serious contender against
him. … That’s why she’s not saying strong things against Donald Trump. Why
she’s saying he’s fit to be president of the United States.”
Whether
a guy who famously endorsed Trump in 2016, sought a job in his cabinet, and
advised him informally for years has any right to scold
Haley for being a Trump “sycophant” is, of course, a separate
question. But when Christie’s right, he’s right.
Taking
all of this in, you’re left to wonder: Would a Trump-Haley ticket, supposedly
designed to unite the party, actually end up alienating everyone?
Both
wings hate the idea for opposite reasons. Never Trumpers would resent Haley for
stooping to partner with a post-liberal authoritarian like Trump; post-liberal
populists would resent Trump for
stooping to partner with a “globalist” RINO neocon like Haley. Christie and
DeSantis are plainly trying to leverage those prejudices for their own
respective electoral reasons. The former hopes to convince anti-Trumpers in New
Hampshire that there’s only one earnest Trump alternative on the ballot, and it
ain’t Nikki Haley. The latter hopes to convince populists in Iowa that there’s
only one earnest populist on the ballot, and it ain’t Donald Trump.
In
fact, Team Ron’s recent obsession with Trump-Haley is an attempt to kill two
birds with one stone. The more DeSantis succeeds in persuading Republican
voters that his rival for second place is an avatar of pre-Trump
establishmentarianism the more the chatter about putting Haley on the ticket
becomes a liability for Trump himself among the sort of populists to whom
DeSantis has spent the past three years desperately pandering.
Trump’s
voters have their own compelling reason to treat Haley as political anathema.
Because there’s a slight (really slight) chance of her upsetting
him in New Hampshire and South Carolina, they’re warning the rest of the party
not to risk their votes in the general election by choosing her over their guy.
It’s the now familiar populist “hostage crisis” playing out in proxy form via
the VP question: If they’re reluctant to vote for a ticket with Trump at the
top that contains Haley, imagine how reluctant they’d be to support a ticket
that contains Haley but not Trump.
She’s
a nonstarter for them. Undecided Republican voters who are mulling whether to
support her in the primary anyway should consider the implications of that for
next November.
What
about Haley herself, though? Now that she has a slight (reeeeally slight)
chance at an upset, is it time to take off the gloves against Trump? Or should
she continue to play nice knowing that doing so will improve her vice
presidential chances?
The
time for choosing has arrived.
***
Actually,
for Nikki Haley, the time for choosing arrived six years ago.
And
with one exception, every time she’s been asked to re-confirm her choice, she
has.
Haley’s
choice was to play ball with Trump, first and officially as his ambassador to
the United Nations, but always as a loyal Republican who criticizes him
gingerly, sparingly, and reluctantly. The exception came shortly after January
6, when she calculated that he was finished politically and felt confident
enough about it to say so. The title of the Politico piece in
which she made those remarks was titled, er, “Nikki
Haley’s Time for Choosing.”
At
last, she had chosen to ditch Trump. Weeks later, realizing that the Republican
base would not make the same choice and that her political viability was
suddenly in doubt, she thought better of it and reverted
to playing ball with him again. Never since has she repeated her mistake.
Even as Trump’s opponent for the Republican nomination, she’s taken care not to
cross any red lines of disloyalty: She won’t say he’s unfit for office, won’t
hold his criminal indictments against him, won’t even frankly accuse him of
being an agent of chaos. The most she’ll allow is that, ahem, “chaos
follows him.”
As
if “chaos” were some malevolent spiritual entity, a poltergeist unfairly
tormenting poor Donald Trump.
To
listen to her in interviews, in fact, Nikki Haley is the only person left in a
country of 330 million people who doesn’t have a strong opinion about Trump one
way or the other.
On
Sunday, ABC News’ Jonathan Karl chatted with her and
mentioned you-know-who, an understandable enough subject given that she’s
trailing him by more than 50 points in national polls. “You guys are
exhausting! You’re exhausting in your obsession with him!” she complained,
as if it’s the media rather than the voters of her own party who are driving
that obsession. When Karl pressed her anyway, she replied meekly:
“Anti-Trumpers want me to hate him, pro-Trumpers want me to love him, but this
is where I stand. There are things I agree with the president on. … There are
things I don’t agree [with].”
After
six years of trying to choose between supporting Trump and opposing him, Nikki
Haley has decided she’s … not going to choose, never mind that he’s been her
direct competitor for the office she’s seeking for the better part of a year.
She won’t even name him in her new ad, which urges
voters to “leave behind the chaos and drama of the past,” with Iowa less than a
month away.
Choosing
not to choose has been Haley’s M.O. with respect to other
unusually fraught political matters too. The lack of clarity is
maddening intellectually, but it’s hard to argue with results: As we approach
Christmas, she looks to be the only challenger left with even a hypothetical
chance of defeating Trump.
Isn’t
it likely, then, that she’ll stick to her successful strategy of choosing not
to choose to the bitter end instead of taking off the gloves once she has him
one-on-one?
Attacking
Trump aggressively would cost her more than it would benefit her. Even if she
upset him in New Hampshire and South Carolina, she’d remain an underdog on
Super Tuesday due to his enormous lead in national polling. If she attacked
harshly and failed to close the gap, she’d have squandered her
vice-presidential chances by angering him. If she attacked harshly and did close
the gap, she’d have infuriated Trump diehards whose support she’ll need to win
the general election.
The
realistic best-case scenario for Haley is that she’s competitive in the early
primaries, ends up as the last Trump alternative standing, and takes her
coast-to-coast beating after South Carolina with a smile and no ill words for
Mr. Trump. That should be enough to preserve her dream of becoming the
frontrunner in the 2028 cycle.
And
it might land her on the ticket this year, which remains by
far her clearest path to becoming president eventually.
So,
I suspect, she’ll continue to choose not to choose even if she surprises us in
New Hampshire and South Carolina. She might step up her criticism of
Trump at
the margins, to show her strongest supporters that she’s giving winning the
ol’ college try, but I highly doubt there will ever come a moment where Nikki
Haley declares Trump unfit for office. She’ll protect her stature as a
potential VP to him until he makes his choice.
But
she won’t be his choice in the end.
***
For
all the angst lately about a Trump-Haley ticket, what would Trump actually gain
by choosing her as vice president?
I
think he could choose her without alienating many populists,
notwithstanding their recent threats and grumbles. The sort of febrile
catastrophist who believes America is finished if Trump doesn’t get a second
term will inevitably talk himself into casting a vote for Vice President Haley
if that’s what’s required of him. Trump’s cultists aren’t boycotting the
general election.
Neither
are DeSantis supporters, who are at least as catastrophist as the MAGA
faithful—maybe more so, given that their big knock on Trump is that he isn’t
authoritarian enough to suit their tastes. They’ll turn out on Election Day
with smiles on their faces over the prospect of a populist autocracy, even if
it comes packaged with Nikki Haley as conservative window dressing.
If
Trump were trailing badly in general election polls, I think he’d look
seriously at choosing Haley on electability grounds. She leads Biden by
gaudy margins in some head-to-head polling and Trump can use all the
vicarious normie credibility he can get. But he isn’t trailing in general
election polls; on the contrary, he has good
reason at the moment to think he can win no matter whom he nominates
for vice president. So why not nominate the sort of fanatic populist loyalist
he craves instead of an ambitious relic from the pre-Trump Reaganite era of
Republican politics?
His
base would be pleased. And you know how he loves to please his base.
Arguably
the most compelling reason to nominate Haley for VP is that she’s good on the
stump and would be useful to him as a surrogate next year. Imagine Nikki Haley,
the woman who yanked the Confederate battle flag off the statehouse grounds in
South Carolina, solemnly defending fascist dreck like this in candidate town
halls as Trump’s official number two:
More
so than any other prominent Republican, she can make the unreasonable parts of
Trump’s agenda sound reasonable to undecided voters.
But
why would Trump need to choose her as vice president to get her to do that for
him?
Granted,
the VP nominee is an especially exalted surrogate for the presidential nominee
during a campaign. Haley events would be better attended next year if she were
on the ticket than if she weren’t. But even as a regular ol’ surrogate, Team
Trump can arrange plenty of facetime for her with voters on the trail and
especially in national TV interviews—and she’ll be in no position to tell them
no. Again, if you assume that her long-term play at this point is positioning
herself for 2028, she has every incentive to do whatever Trump asks of her.
She’ll be desperate to improve her populist credibility before her next run for
president, and helping to reelect him next year is the most obvious way to do
it.
No
matter how you slice it, when the time for choosing comes, she’ll choose Trump.
No comments:
Post a Comment