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‘So you’re telling me there’s a chance?’
A s 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.