National Review Online
Wednesday,
January 24, 2024
Donald
Trump didn’t romp in New Hampshire, but he still won handily.
It’s
unprecedented in the modern era for a Republican candidate in a contested
nomination battle to win both Iowa and New Hampshire. Republican primary voters
not only are on the Trump train, they’ve bought first-class tickets and expect
an on-time arrival.
Like
Ron DeSantis before her, Nikki Haley has now finished second in her most
promising state. She had the endorsement of the popular sitting governor, Chris
Sununu, who campaigned tirelessly for her, while New Hampshire’s relatively
moderate electorate, with a large bloc of independents routinely participating
in the GOP primary, made for ideal terrain for her. She won 60 percent of
independents and only 25 percent of Republicans. That was enough to get within
about eleven points of Trump in New Hampshire but not enough to win there; nor,
if the pattern holds, will it be enough to win anywhere else.
That
said, it is not an act of partisan treason, as some are suggesting, for Haley
to court and win independents. Trump won them in 2016, without any MAGA figures
suggesting that it was wrong of him to do so.
Haley
has pledged to fight on, but she is trailing badly in South Carolina and will
face an intense pressure campaign to drop out.
If
there were any doubt what Republicans are really signing up for with Trump, he
removed it with an unhinged victory speech where he couldn’t control his anger
at Nikki Haley for giving an upbeat speech earlier in the night pledging to
carry on. Trump kept obsessively coming back to her speech. And he mocked
Governor Sununu and described himself as bent on revenge — on a night when he
won New Hampshire with more than 50 percent.
As
if he hadn’t done enough to remind swing voters what they most dislike about
him, he claimed to have won New Hampshire in the 2020 general election. (To
make the spectacle more preposterous, veep hopefuls Vivek Ramaswamy and Tim
Scott were there on stage, happy to let Trump play them like puppets on a
string.)
The
Democrats want Trump as their opponent in the belief that they can salvage Joe
Biden’s prospects by making the race all about Trump, and last night showed,
once again, that they are making a sensible, if cynical, calculation. That
independents turned out in such large numbers to cast votes in the Republican
primary simply to protest Trump was an early indication of how he could lose
the middle in November.
Republican
voters could have avoided giving Democrats what they wanted, but instead are
putting all their chips on their riskiest electoral bet.
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