Victory
I listened to Nikki Haley’s New Hampshire “victory” speech last night. She’s got some smart speech writers. Haley got around 130,000 votes (91% of the total in as I write this), about 30,000 less than Donald Trump. In politics, that’s usually called “losing”, 43% to 54%. But in Nikki Haley’s world – this is what a “winner” looks like!!!
Talk about making lemons into lemonade. And when those numbers are broken down, Haley lost the Republican primary dramatically among Republican voters. That statement sounds pretty confusing, and it is. In New Hampshire voters can “declare” for the Republican Party, even if they really identify as independents or even as Democrats. And among those groups, Haley did extremely well. But among the actual “Party Members”, Trump won by huge percentages.
So if Haley lost with Republicans and lost the overall election – what did she declare victory about? Is this just another example of post-truth world, where whites are victims and minorities are advantaged, and the world spins from west to east?
Nikki Haley, the former Governor of South Carolina and Ambassador to the United Nations, did win one thing – the right to continue. And that was enough for her to “jump in” soon after the polls closed, congratulate the twice-impeached, four-time indicted former President on his win, then declare her own victory. She gave perhaps the best national speech of her career, sounding for all the world like New Hampshire was the first domino in a well thought out plan to win the nomination.
About the Dough
So what really happened? The reason most campaigns “suspend” (give up) is simple: they run out of money. The DeSantis campaign is the latest example of this: after burning through more than $100 million, after his Iowa showing, the money simply dried up. There was “no path forward”, because the DeSantis campaign couldn’t pay anymore bills.
But clearly, the “monied class”* has decided that the one remaining opponent to Trump needs to “soldier on”. So Nikki Haley can stand at the podium and say “…Let’s go back home to South Carolina” to contest the next primary with some confidence. The Republican money against Trump is coalesced behind the Haley campaign. She is the “last, best” hope to stop the Republican Party from what many see as the unmitigated disaster of another Presidency lost by Donald Trump.
Does that mean that Haley has a chance of beating Trump, particularly in those states with “closed” primaries where independents and rogue Democrats will have little impact? The answer by the MAGA Party is clear – a resounding NO!!! They didn’t want the substitutes for Trump (DeSantis or Ramaswamy), and they don’t want Haley: they want the real thing.
Rapture
So why go on? On MSNBC’s coverage last night, they coined the political use of the religious term, “the rapture”. In Christian theology, “the rapture” is the time when God’s Chosen literally disappear, called to Heaven. The good are there, and then they are gone. The MSNBC commentators applied that analogy to Trump. There are lots of ways where Trump might “disappear”. He’s an older man (ask Haley -she’ll be glad to list his cognitive gaffs), and maybe his health will fail. And, of course, he is facing ninety-one felony counts in four different courts; it could take just one guilty verdict for him to “politically” disappear.
And if that happens in June, after the primaries but before the nominating convention, someone needs to step in – and “the money” is anointing Nikki Haley.
No one expects a “miracle”, some blinding flash when MAGA-Republicans realize that Donald Trump won’t win against Joe Biden. But, he’s a 77 year-old man, who can’t remember if he ran against Obama or Biden, and confuses Haley with Nancy Pelosi. And then there’s those felony charges. So someone has to be “in the wings”, and Haley staying in the race makes her “the one”.
And as a Democrat, Haley does make me a little nervous. She is painting both Trump and President Biden as tired-old men, ready for the green pastures of retirement. Against Trump, that really isn’t an issue for Biden – Trump’s almost as old. But against Haley, the age issue is real, and quietly powerful.
Postscripts
*This whole “class” thing: the monied class, the political class, the elite-liberal-university class; what’s that all about? Sure, there are people with money, there are those who are professional politicians, and folks have complained about Harvard-Yale-Dartmouth arrogance for years. Why are they now all “a class”? Is that just a way to “cancel” them? If you are a “class”, then your different from me, and therefore I can “hate” you, is that the goal?
Hanging: A couple of Sunday’s ago I left you hanging on a “Sunday Story”. It’s now indoor track season and I’m officiating Sunday track meets for several more weeks in a row, so not much time to tell stories (just creating some more!!). But our group, Lost Pet Recovery, was helping to trap two young Pyrenees who were out for months in Western Ohio (Rube Goldberg). The short version is that, it took three days to finally get both dogs into the big panel trap. Jenn and Don spent two long evenings sitting in the truck in sub-zero wind chill waiting for the dogs to go in. But it was on the third night, with the local trapper in charge, that the pups finally went into the panel, and the “Rube Goldberg” mechanism remotely closed the door (IT WORKED – WOO-HOO!!!!).
That was only the first problem: next was how to get the dogs into smaller “traps” so they could be transported to a rescue. It was cold, and the dogs weren’t mean, but not cooperative either. Eventually the trapper and friends were able to get them in the traps, and soon out of the cold. Both dogs are now doing well in their new, and warm, home at the rescue.
