Let the Primaries Continue

Nikki Haley is right. New Hampshire is supposed to be the first primary on the presidential year calendar, not the last. Even before Tuesday’s decisive victory by Donald Trump, the incessant calls among party regulars and the press for the also-rans to quit (sometimes even before the first votes were counted) seem discordant to the point of being un-American. Don’t we root for underdogs? Is it over when the fat lady does her warmup exercises? Aren’t comeback stories to be celebrated?

What the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary established – and what Haley keeps repeating to Trump’s intense chagrin – is that she is the last candidate standing other than the former president. That should make it a two-person race. And the general election is not until November. Also, the United States is a vast and diverse country, while Iowa and New Hampshire are small and overwhelmingly white. This is spin, yes, but also factual. Here are more facts: Quitting the campaign now means ceding the nomination to someone under criminal indictment in four jurisdictions, a man who has yet to participate in a single debate in this election cycle, a man who will be 78 years old by the time Republicans hold their nominating convention in Milwaukee next summer.

In her fiery speech last night in which Haley conceded New Hampshire, but nothing else, she alluded to Trump’s “senior moment” when the former president confused Haley with Nancy Pelosi.

“The other day Donald Trump accused me of not providing security at the Capitol on January 6,^” Haley said. “Now, I’ve long called for mental competency tests for politicians over the age of 75. Trump claims he’d do better than me on one of those tests. Maybe he would, maybe he wouldn’t. But if he thinks that, then he should have no problem standing on a debate stage with me.”

And with that, former Gov. Haley laid down the gauntlet. “This race is far from over,” she said. “There are dozens of states left to go, and the next one is my sweet state of South Carolina.”

Politics as practiced in South Carolina is actually the opposite of sweet. It’s mean and nasty, and when she lived there Haley had the whole kitchen sink thrown at her: the sexist rumors and racist whispers along with the run-of-the-mill dirty tricks that epitomize campaigns there. Yet she won twice as governor, bucking the GOP establishment to do so. In office, she staked out conservative positions on social issues, cut taxes (despite Ron DeSantis’ claims to the contrary), rid the state of its Confederate flag, and filled a vacant Senate seat with a black Republican before accepting a cabinet-level position in the Trump administration.

In sum, Haley was well-regarded among South Carolina voters when she left office and was also one of the few Republicans who managed to emerge from service in the Trump administration with her reputation intact. And yes, she was at 2% in the polls when she joined a crowded 2024 field and is the now last woman standing against the presumptive favorite. So she has a case to make.

But the man who beat her by double digits in New Hampshire has a much stronger case.

Donald Trump won more than 50% of the Iowa caucus votes in a four-person field. He also got more than 50% of the vote Tuesday in New Hampshire, a state that allows independents to vote in Republican (or Democratic) primaries. Among registered Republicans, exit polls showed Trump besting Haley by a margin of 3-1. This is nothing new. In 2016, Trump came out of nowhere – it was unclear he was a Republican when the campaign started – to win 36 out of 48 GOP primaries. He amassed 1,447 convention delegates that year to 551 for Ted Cruz, 167 for Marco Rubio, and 161 for John Kasich.

As the incumbent president in 2020, Trump was unchallenged for the nomination. To most rank-and-file Republican voters, Trump is the de facto incumbent in 2024. Most Republican officeholders understand this. The evidence is everywhere. Marco Rubio endorsed Trump, not DeSantis, the governor of his own state. That black South Carolina senator appointed by Haley? That’s Tim Scott, of course. Scott not only endorsed Trump after dropping out himself, he was standing behind Trump Tuesday night when Trump spent most of his victory speech excoriating Haley for having the temerity to stay in the race.

It was a bizarre performance even by Trump’s standards. In his patented stream-of-consciousness oratorical style, Trump not only used a vulgarity, which is common for him in this campaign, but he sounded more angry than ebullient. The source of that ire was Haley’s own upbeat speech moments before. Trump said so himself. “This is not your typical victory speech,” he said. “But let’s not have somebody take a victory [lap] when she had a very bad night.”

Happy warrior, Trump is not. It doesn’t seem to matter. Sen. Scott, who is definitely a happy warrior, was invited on stage by Trump to disparage Haley. It was a telling moment. “You must really hate her,” Trump said. Scott, who is not a hater, stepped to the microphone, looked at Trump, and said, “I just love you.”

Eight years into the Trump era, Democrats, “Never-Trump” Republicans, and most of the media still can’t get their minds around this appeal. Apparently, it’s easier to compare Trump to Hitler – Joe Scarborough did that as recently as Tuesday morning – than examine the rhetoric and the policies of the political establishment that created the appetite for this man. The surprise in 2015 and 2016 was genuine. The continued bafflement is more like denial.

When Trump burst on the political scene eight years ago, Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer and political writer Jon Meacham, a liberal Republican, remarked that seeing Trump win primaries was like being aboard a hijacked airplane and half the passengers “are rooting for the hijackers.” It was a funny line, and sincere, but it was imprecise. Trump’s hostile takeover of the Republican Party wasn’t done by force. He did it by winning primary elections, just as he’s doing this year.

Trump filled a vacuum in American politics. And when his critics, including the current president, smear Trump’s voters with the slur du jour – “racist” or “white supremacists” or “fascists” or “Christian nationalists” or what-have-you – it convinces his voters, most of whom are none of those things, to stick with him.

Trump’s crudeness, exaggerations, lies, egomania, and insults are part of the package. And though these aren’t the traits his supporters necessarily cherish the most, they are disinclined to heed the warnings of the Democrats or journalists they believe are gaslighting them on every issue they care about: the economy, the border, race relations, crime, the educational system.

Nikki Haley hasn’t done any gaslighting. For that matter, neither has Ron DeSantis, Tim Scott, Chris Christie, or the other GOP candidates. So why can’t Trump voters turn the page from Trump? Why won’t they vote for a person who espouses Trump’s policies and even uses some of his rhetoric, but has none of his extensive baggage? That was DeSantis’ pitch, and he didn’t make it to the starting gate in New Hampshire.

Two answers come to mind. The first is that, as Liz Cheney asserts, the attraction for an unplugged candidate willing to say what others won’t long ago morphed into something much less healthy: the emotional attachment to an angry demagogue. Cheney calls it a “cult of personality.”

The other explanation is that the election returns in Iowa and New Hampshire – coupled with polls showing Trump running even with President Biden while doing better with minority voters – show that Trump has done more than take over the Republican Party. He has ushered in an overdue political realignment. Trump is helping reshape the GOP into a populist party that attracts working-class voters of all ethnicities.

In other words, Donald Trump is more than the de facto Republican incumbent. He’s the unlikely leader of a political movement that is not confined to the United States, but is sweeping the world. It’s a reaction against elites. And the fact that Trump is a billionaire whose success in life was guaranteed by inherited money matters less to his supporters than the big chip he carries on his shoulder.

Trump didn’t want to have to wait that long, but he will take that sense of grievance with him down South. And if his unbending belligerence is a better fit for “sweet” South Carolina than favorite daughter candidate Nikki Haley’s pluck and perseverance, then the 2024 GOP nomination will be over one month from today.

This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.