Trump Is Forming a Club, Not a Coalition

By Judson Berger

Friday, January 26, 2024

 

In due time, this note will turn back to something other than the 2024 election, but it is the gigantic, glowing, magnetically charged orb that’s been impossible to ignore. And so, the question of the week: Are we done here? Nikki Haley’s defeat in the state that represented her best and probably only chance to shake up the race looks to all but hand the nomination to Donald Trump, barring acts of arteries, juries, or the Supreme Court (a.k.a. the “strange things happen” scenario).

 

Much of the rest of the Republican Party had answered in the affirmative well before Tuesday’s New Hampshire vote. Tim Scott, Doug Burgum, Vivek Ramaswamy, ultimately Ron DeSantis — they and others all closed ranks behind the presumptive-presumptive nominee, and with the alacrity of someone who just learned his search history was in the hands of that person. So pronounced was the consolidation that Haley tried to use the endorsements to flip the script on Trump-camp claims that she represents the establishment, as Audrey Fahlberg reported. (Audrey also provides a tidy rundown of those politicians whom Haley once endorsed or appointed and who snubbed her to stay in Trump’s good graces.)

 

It was all for naught. Haley says she’s pressing on to South Carolina (Phil Klein explains here why Nevada doesn’t really matter this year), but, as Jeff Blehar concluded on our liveblog earlier this week: “It’s Biden versus Trump. Again. Set the controls for the heart of the sun.” Yet those uniting behind the former president are endorsing not just him but quite likely an electoral doom-bringing. For Trump is already abandoning the necessary task of rebuilding a coalition; “uncut Trumpism” has no time for that. If I may steal Jeff Blehar’s headline, in his haste to end the primary, Trump is losing the general.

 

New Hampshire bears the warning signs. As Phil noted on the liveblog, CNN’s exit polling indicates that nearly four in ten Haley voters — many of them, yes, independents — showed up, essentially, out of Trump spite; a detail that should be treated as a “five alarm fire inside the RNC headquarters,” as it speaks to Democrats’ turnout strategy.

 

Trump is winning, now, and there can be no doubt or debate about it. He has executed an astonishing political comeback and act of historic defiance against the relentless artillery fire of criminal indictments, while engineering a mass memory-holing by the Republican establishment of his role in turning a violent mob on its members. How history will chronicle these episodes is a question worth pondering. For purposes of this election cycle, however, we can mark the moment Trump reestablished absolute party dominance as 9:38 on Tuesday night, when Senator Tim Scott interpreted an awkward remark about his opinion of Haley as a prompt to approach Trump — and profess his “love.”

Record scratch: Primaries are not real life. The WWE-style spectacle that thrills Trump’s base wears on a sizable minority of Republicans and on independent voters. If a general-election campaign is indeed starting early, expect those voters to be courted aggressively, by President Biden and by any third-party campaigns that form to break the binary. As NR’s editorial cautions, the mobilization of independents against Trump in New Hampshire signals precisely how he could lose the middle in November. Here’s Noah Rothman:

 

Trump’s problems are not limited to the number of independent voters who just can’t pull the lever for him (63 percent of independents in this year’s New Hampshire primary said they would not vote for Trump in November). The former president also has to worry about Republicans who still identify as Republicans but are nonetheless hostile to Trump.

 

“Republican voters could have avoided giving Democrats what they wanted,” our editorial states, “but instead are putting all their chips on their riskiest electoral bet.” Andy McCarthy predicts this is a losing bet, as Trump shows no interest in attracting voters who don’t already adore him. Biden faces his own enthusiasm gap, to be sure, but, as Andy writes, he’ll “pretend to be a centrist” and take other steps to bring voters home: “He won’t be very effective, but a little will be enough because he’ll be the only one trying.”

 

What’s more, Trump will do his level best to repel voters, as seen in his latest warning that Haley donors “will be permanently barred from the MAGA camp” going forward. This is not a political movement, it’s a club. With its own online platforms, cant, and expectations for conduct. Trump, of course, has familiarity with this format. He even has a clubhouse where dues-paying members can hang after Biden wins.