By Christian Schneider
Thursday,
January 18, 2024
As Yogi
Berra might say, it’s getting late early in the Republican presidential
primary.
Only
one state has voted and the race is down to two viable candidates (more on this
below). One of them is driving an 18-wheeler and the other is riding a bicycle,
but Donald Trump and Nikki Haley are what we’ve got.
Despite
her third-place finish in Iowa — where Trump trounced the field — Haley still
has a narrow path forward. Of course, “path forward” may simply mean “able to
stay in the race until Super Tuesday,” given that most Republicans now treat
traditional conservatives as if they are Anthony Fauci’s underpants.
Haley’s
viability runs through quirky New Hampshire, where several polls suggest she is
surging. She was within single digits of Trump even before Chris
Christie dropped out last week, so picking up his votes could make the race
close. (A poll released on Wednesday has her trailing Trump by 16
percentage points, 50 to 34, so . . . there is still work to be done.)
Will
any of this matter? Probably not. But as Bluto Blutarsky reminded us in Animal
House, it wasn’t over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor. And it ain’t
over now.
If
Haley loses New Hampshire, that’s a wrap on the primaries. Only God or Brett
Kavanaugh can save the GOP at that point. But in order for her to win next
week, it would be helpful if she began, y’know, running for president.
Holding
on to the chance Haley can still upend Trump may be Lloyd
Christmas–style wishcasting, but her strategy has actually worked about as
well as it could so far. The ultimate goal was to get in a one-on-one race
against Trump, then unload on him without having to worry about losing voters
to Ron DeSantis and slumping to the field. (As a wise man once counseled, you
never go full Chris Christie.)
Now
she has that one-on-one chance. In New Hampshire, she can say what she really
thinks about Trump; if you can’t explain to voters why you should be president
over a potential multiple felon who spent the day after the Iowa caucuses in a
court that has already found he sexually assaulted a woman, you simply don’t
belong in the race anymore.
Of
course, Ron DeSantis backers would object to the notion that he is no longer in
the race, given he narrowly beat Haley in Iowa. But DeSantis needed to
overperform expectations on Monday, and after going all-in on Iowa, he didn’t.
His poll numbers remain in single digits in New Hampshire and South Carolina,
as voters continue to reject his Diet Trump persona.
Thus,
while the DeSantis campaign is technically alive, it is currently in hospice
care. Unless some illegal immigrants can trick the governor into getting on a
plane back to Tallahassee, all the campaign can do is get comfortable, waiting
for the inevitable end.
Other
Never Trumpers have turned their ire on Haley, criticizing her for failing to
attack Trump all along. They scoff at the idea that Haley would be sitting at 3
percent in the national polls like Christie if she had simply made a marginal
effort to point out Trump’s most glaring transgressions.
It
is true, Haley has made plenty of missteps during the campaign, saying a
number of things no human believes to be true. But her oftentimes
cringeworthy strategy has made her the last one standing; she had to wink to
the anybody-but-Trumpers but not hug the hand grenade of outright attacking
him.
We
have seen what happened to the candidates who did so, both on the presidential
and congressional level — and other than Mitt Romney’s 2018 Senate win, where
is the evidence that GOP voters were ready to hear the truth about Trump?
Unbelievably, the GOP race is all about the Republican paradox: The more you
point out that Donald Trump is unfit to be president, the more likely Donald
Trump is to become president.
And
if you’re a pundit who thinks none of the other Republican candidates have been
tough enough with Trump, what purpose does it serve to rain down calumnies upon
the one person with a small shot of still stopping him? This only helps Trump
on his eventual way to the nomination. Such pundits might as well hang a “Never
Trumpers for Trump” flag on their front porch.
But
the purists are, in a sense, now correct. Despite being mocked by pundits who
should know better, Haley is right — the race is down to two. And now that she
has the matchup she wanted, it is time for her to launch a full assault on a
man who has suggested she is not eligible to be president because
of her parents’ origins in India. (And who, on Tuesday, began his race-based attacks on her by calling her “Nimrada,” a
misspelling of her given Indian name “Nimarata.”)
Haley
has begun to swing at Trump in the Granite State, but she typically has been
doing so by tying Trump and Joe Biden together. They are both old, they both
added to the nation’s debt, etc.
But
that is not going to get it done. Haley could, for instance, hammer away at the
point that Donald Trump is effectively using this election to stay out of
prison — allowing him to raise money for his criminal-defense fund and
potentially allowing him to pardon himself of federal crimes if ultimately
found guilty. She could also lay out where this is all headed — how humiliating
it would be for both the party and the nation to have a president sent to
prison.
(One
early interaction hasn’t been encouraging: When asked on Tuesday about the
sexual assault/defamation suit brought against Trump by columnist E. Jean
Carroll, Haley pretended that she hadn’t been paying attention
to it, saying, “All I know is he’s innocent until proven guilty.” A judge in the case has said Trump did, in fact, commit
“rape.”)
Is
Haley a long shot? She sure is. Even if she wins New Hampshire, she then has to
lug that support down to her home state of South Carolina, where she’s
currently around 30 points behind Trump in the polls. Ideologically, South
Carolina looks a lot more like Iowa than like New Hampshire — and if she hasn’t
shored up support in a state in which she was once governor, one wonders how
she can change voters’ minds now. Turning a presidential race around is like
trying to free a supertanker stuck in a waterpark wave pool.
On
the other hand, once New Hampshire votes on January 23, Haley has a full month
to massage her home voters before it’s their turn on February 24. That is an
eternity in election season. So if she can prove she is a winner up north,
people in the south might start to believe Trump isn’t inevitable.
But
what is abundantly clear now is that a vote for DeSantis in New Hampshire or
South Carolina is a vote for Trump. Before Iowa stuck a fork in Meatball Ron, a
vote for DeSantis could be couched as a principled vote to oust Trump. But that
time is now over: Any vote cast in the primary that isn’t for Nikki Haley is a
vote for the status quo within the GOP, and will send the party careening
toward a constitutional crisis.
Further,
if Haley fails, America once again falls victim to the tyranny of the minority
— a small percentage of motivated voters giving America the election it doesn’t
want.
Yes,
Nikki Haley may not pass your purity test. She is not Liz Cheney. But you know
what she is?
Still
in the race.
For
now.
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