Nikki Haley doesn’t get it. The majority of Republicans love former President Donald Trump. My own time this last week at the annual CPAC gathering made it crystal clear that the thousands of conservatives in attendance were not just supporting...
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Nikki Haley doesn’t get it.
The majority of Republicans love former President Donald Trump.
My own time this last week at the annual CPAC gathering made it crystal clear that the thousands of conservatives in attendance were not just supporting Trump — they were enthusiastically supporting Trump.
And that was before the South Carolina primary, where Haley, former governor of the state, was soundly defeated by Trump in her own backyard. Not to mention that Trump has won every primary he has entered — and she has lost every primary she has entered.
Then there were the humiliating results out of Nevada, as reported in Politico:
Worse than you can imagine: Haley loses to ‘none of these candidates’ in Nevada
The defeat, while symbolic, was a major embarrassment for the former South Carolina governor.
One would think that a rational, observant person would realize her campaign is going nowhere and gracefully withdraw and support the winner. That was exactly what Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis did, and one can be sure that in four years he will be able to try again. Which, one suspects, is exactly what he has in mind.
But not Haley.
Worse for her still, Haley has made crystal clear that her primary goal in running is to appease the failing old Washington Establishment.
As Haley repeatedly says of Trump, as recently in Michigan:
The problem is chaos literally follows him. We can’t be a country in disarray, in a world on fire, and go through four more years of chaos, we won’t survive.
Which is shorthand for her devotion to the same old, same old.
The very last thing Washington needs is a president who goes out of his or her way to appease the denizens of the Swamp with the mantra that things have always been done this way and that to bring serious change is “chaos.” Which is exactly what Haley is doing.
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It is exactly Trump’s view that Washington must be seriously reworked. There is, to cite but one example, no excuse for a massive federal bureaucracy where the employees, once in, have a lifetime job. They need to be term limited, with real and constant turnover to bring in new blood and fresh thinking to run the government.
Only if one thinks like the Swamp — which is precisely the way Haley thinks — would rethinking how the government operates and doing something about it be seen as “chaos.”
And right there is exactly the reason Haley’s campaign has been a “no sale” with Republican voters. The voters want serious change; Haley campaigns on a promise of more of the same.
She has also gone after Trump for demanding that America’s NATO allies pay their NATO bills. Haley is apparently clueless that one of the founding fathers of NATO — Gen. and later President Dwight Eisenhower — had exactly the same view of NATO allies as does Trump.
As previously noted in this space, Eisenhower biographer historian Stephen Ambrose reported this in his two-volume Eisenhower biography:
When [Gen.] Gruenther passed along some more European criticism, Eisenhower began to lose his temper. “I get weary of the European habit of taking our money,” the President wrote, “resenting any slight hint as to what they should do, and then assuming, in addition, full right to criticize us as bitterly as they may desire. In fact, it sometimes appears that their indulgence in this kind of criticism varies in direct ratio to the amount of help we give them.” In fact, the whole thing made him mad as hell, and “makes me wonder whether the Europeans are as grown up and mature as they try to make it appear.”
Apparently Nikki Haley would have disagreed with not only President Trump but President Eisenhower as well. Telling.
The long ago 1960s Speaker of the California Legislature, then-Gov. Ronald Reagan’s opposite number and boss of the California Democratic Party, Jesse Unruh, famously observed that “money is the mother’s milk of politics.” Indeed, it is. This week’s news brings this headline:
Conservative megadonors Koch not funding Haley anymore as she continues longshot bid
Which is to say that Haley’s “mother’s milk” is starting to evaporate.
Taken altogether, it is now crystal clear that Nikki Haley and her campaign are fading into irrelevance.
One of the very first tasks of a successful presidential campaign is to prove the candidate’s viability. And every day that Haley continues her campaign the realization that she simply is not viable increases. A realization underlined by her 20-point rejection in her own home state.
The best thing she could do now? Follow the DeSantis model — gracefully withdraw and endorse President Donald Trump.
Will she do it?
One suspects not. Instead, she is choosing to campaign against the millions of Trump-supporting conservatives who make up the GOP electorate. Indeed, she appears to want to go out of her way to irritate or anger them.
Which, in turn, is winding up as the self-immolation of a once-promising political career as Nikki Haley fades to irrelevance.
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