Some themes in politics repeat themselves after one, maybe two election cycles. Right now Nikki Haley has been compared to both Bernie Sanders and Ted Cruz, intriguingly. That’s a pair of opposites to be compared to, certainly. How do those matchups occur? Haley earns the Sanders comparison because she doesn’t want to give up the race to the frontrunner, Donald Trump, as Sanders didn’t want to back in 2016. Sanders, however, had a stunning margin of victory in the New Hampshire primary, you may recall, 22 points. Haley took a trouncing there and also in Iowa, this election cycle. So the Sanders comparison doesn’t hold much water or for very long.
Then there’s the Ted Cruz comparison and this makes a little more sense. Ted Cruz was very much like Ron DeSantis — except that he actually won Iowa. DeSantis merely dreamt of it, got the governor to endorse him and spent a king’s ransom on everything from private jets to custom made leather jackets and still lost. Where the comparison to Cruz holds is that Cruz decided that somehow, magically, the GOP would come to its senses and not endorse Trump. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. So Cruz was poised in the wings as the understudy, ready to take the lead and the opportunity never came. With some hard, cold facts, here is the Lincoln Project throwing in two cents worth.
Keep going until Super Tuesday, Nikki. Republicans are going to find themselves needing a candidate. Plus it annoys Mr. grab `em by the …
— Dare_L (@dare_l) February 4, 2024
That’s pretty much the game plan. Haley is hoping, like DeSantis hoped, that something will happen to incapacitate Trump and she will inherit the mantle, right there on the spot and be crowned Miss GOP. Now here’s the real world aspect of all this: let’s just suppose that Trump gets convicted of something and sentenced. In other words, he goes down in flames. And he very well might. Then the GOP scrambles to put some body, just a warm body with a pulse and an R behind their name, on the ballot and so it falls to Nikki Haley. Is that the greatest set up for a presidential campaign? To literally be the candidate that nobody wanted, who couldn’t get arrested in her own home state, but now she’s going to beat an incumbent president with a booming track record, particularly on the economy? She’s thought, so far, to be a distraction and a drain on resources.
B.J. Hopper, an 81-year-old self-described “Never Trumper, is doubtful that Haley will catch Trump, but she attended Thursday’s stop in South Carolina’s capital city because she’s trying to be hopeful.
“It’d be a miracle,” Hopper said of a Haley victory in the state’s upcoming primary.
As much of the attention shifts to South Carolina, Haley’s campaign insists her goal there isn’t to win, but simply to show growth compared to New Hampshire. She’s building campaign infrastructure in next-up Michigan and several states that host primary contests on March 5, also known as “Super Tuesday.”
The Haley campaign has already rolled out leadership teams and “Women for Nikki” chapters in all 15 Super Tuesday states. A pro-Haley super PAC is also coordinating get-out-the-vote efforts in South Carolina, Michigan and multiple super Tuesday states. That’s in addition to the Koch-backed conservative group, Americans for Prosperity, which has devoted its army of grassroots activists on the ground in several key states to helping Haley.
Specifically, the group is knocking on doors, sending pro-Haley mail and running online ads in Tennessee, North Carolina, Arkansas and Virginia.
But the Koch network will not continue to support her if it determines there is no path to victory, according to conversations between Koch officials and donors at a private retreat last week in California, where Haley discussed the state of her presidential campaign during a short video call.
During a separate session with top donors, AFP Action senior advisers Emily Seidel and Michael Palmer reaffirmed the group’s decision to endorse Haley given that she is the last Trump alternative standing, according to an official with direct knowledge of the conversations who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss strategy.
Seidel and Palmer also made clear to donors that the group would not make future investments to any campaign if there is no opportunity to win, the official said, pointing to the Kochs’ longstanding business-like approach to politics.
Meanwhile, other Republican operatives believe Haley’s continued candidacy creates unnecessary risks for the notoriously undisciplined Trump.
“The longer she hangs around and the more Trump focuses on her, the greater likelihood you get unforced errors,” said Republican pollster Neil Newhouse. “She’s giving ammunition to Biden’s campaign.”
So far she is giving ammunition to the Biden campaign. I don’t think MAGA would rally to her with Trump out of the picture. I’m not sure what the anti-Trumpers would do. I suppose that they could rally to Haley, but if the big donors think that it’s throwing good money after bad, they might just fold up the checkbooks and say, “Screw it. There’s always 2028.” That could well be the case.
First things first, let’s see how well Haley does in South Carolina. Then let’s see what happens in March on Super Tuesday. Then let’s really pay close attention to what happens in the hush money trial on March 25. Bottom line: the way things are stacking up, Trump may go down in flames but way too late to help Haley. That would leave Haley with literally a scenario of her name on the ballot as opposed to nobody because Trump will be out of the picture, and that’s not a winning posture.
Now get ready for a real curve ball: Will Trump choose a VP before the convention? Because if he does and if the VP is considered by one and all to be okay, then maybe that person would be on the ballot and not Haley. So Haley is truly spinning her wheels.
And so who might seriously end up on the GOP ballot? Elise Stefanik for president? J.D. Vance? Tim Scott seems to be angling for the VP slot, but he didn’t do so well in the GOP primary, so that wouldn’t seem to bode well for him.
Point being, 2024 with Trump on the ticket is a guaranteed circus. 2024 with somebody, anybody, pick a GOP name out of the hat on the ticket, is going to be a wild show that we’ve never even seen before.
I don’t even know what an extravaganza like that would be called. But we may find out. We very well may find out.
Meanwhile, consider this statement of wisdom.
Narcissists hate aging, partially because it shows they're like everyone else, and also because they fear being "invisible", which is something that happens as people age into their 50's and 60's.
— The Intellectualist (@highbrow_nobrow) January 16, 2024
And for the moment, ladies and gentlemen, this is the best that the GOP has to offer, the Face of Sin with an inch of orange makeup and eight ounces of hairspray. At least until we get to the name drawn from a hat segment of our show. Aye aye aye aye aye.
Think of it as the Mike Johnson election to Speaker on steroids. That could conceivably happen at the GOP convention this summer. Incredible, but entirely possible.
I’m reminded of the saying about how history doesn’t repeat itself (although sometimes it actually does) but “sometimes it rhymes.” What we’ve been witnessing with Trump doesn’t “rhyme” with anything. He has been the political equivalent of suspending Newton’s Laws of Physics. Trump and the phenomena he’s created is unique. By definition unique means one of a kind. Something can’t be “very”, or “extremely” unique. It’s either one of a kind or it isn’t. Trump the politician is unique and comparing him to any other candidate or his campaigns to any other campaign is a waste of time. All one can do, or try to do is measure how strong his support will be when it comes time for people to cast votes whether in a primary or in a general election campaign. Even THAT is a nearly impossible task. Because, as I just said said he and is campaign is unique. Professional pollsters have unprecedented difficulties getting a true representative sample on which to base their results/conclusions and it get’s more difficult every year. Even if they sometimes DO get such a sample they still ask the same traditional questions! Since the laws of political physics haven’t applied to Trump attempts to measure him via the traditional standards makes predicting what will happen with Trump a “WAG.” Wild Assed Guess. Some cycles with some candidates pollsters and pundits (ones that actually know shit) are reduced to making a “SWAG.” A “Scientific” WAG. I believe it’s safe to say that’s impossible with Trump. With the regular “laws, norms, standards etc. not applying to Trump all bets are off.
Not that people including me won’t continue to try and predict what will happen. But the logical part of me says we’re just going to have to wait and see what happens when it matters – when people actually vote whether it’s in a primary, at the convention or in the general election if as we expect (and fear) Trump is the GOP candidate.
I forgot to mention Haley in my comment. (another example of Trump sucking up the oxygen!) Of COURSE she knows she’s helping Biden. At least for now. I wouldn’t dismiss her out of hand as a Presidential candidate however. I believe she’d be formidable with major Party backing than most want to accept. I said back in 2020 and said about this year my biggest fear was Ohio’s John Kasich deciding to “unretire” and get back into the mix. He’s terrifying because his views, combined with his political skills and knowledge of the system would be our worst nightmare. BUT he comes across as SO normal and reasonable. People look at him and listen to him talk in general political platitudes and can’t bring themselves to believe he’s a bad guy, or that he would actually do the things his records tells us he WOULD do. I fear the same thing could be true of Haley. She’s no Kasich but at least in the ballpark and whether something crazy happens this year and she’s the surprise nominee, or come 2028 she’s someone to worry about and in more ways than one.
For those who think MAGAs will never forgive her I say this. Imagine her launching a 2028 campaign starting a year or so after a second Biden administration begins, especially if he has a Democratic House and Senate. After a year or so to let the MAGA butt-hurt over Trump going down in flames subsided some she could begin a stealth “this is exactly why some of us said it was time for Trump to hand off the ball to a younger leader who believes what you do.” So think about that folks before you write Haley’s political obituary.
Oh, I think she knows perfectly well what she is doing, especially that she is sucking up a good bit of Trump’s oxygen. Anything that takes away from the attention he craves is always going to have repercussions. And this couples in my mind with the hilarious piece Dino wrote and which I think most of us here would contend is that laughing at the gaslighting monster upsets him no end too.
That picture with the horrible makeup? Hadn’t seen this one–is it touched up? Or is this real? If real, it is time to start padding the walls and getting the orange 8-foot-sleeved jumpsuit ready.
Given she doesn’t admit what caused the Civil War,(which I’m sure is in their state recorded documents leading up to their secession), and which is self evident, and her support of Texas’ secession, she is as evil as Trump. She just looks better in makeup. Her history of serving word salad when confronted with her evil just makes her harder to pin down whereas Trump doubles down. They’re both lying nazis as is the christo-fascist running the House.
Would the Republicans really elect a brown-skinned WOMAN ?
Where does that leave their misogyny and racism?
Would they really elect someone with the ‘worst’ points of Hilary AND Obama?
If she knew she was helping the President, she’d drop out of the race immediately. Last thing she wants anyone thinking is that she’d help the country by way of helping the President.