“We aren’t going anywhere,” so writes Betsy Ankney, GOP presidential hopeful Nikki Haley’s campaign manager, in a New Hampshire presidential primary eve memo to the campaign staff.
Coming after a rather thorough shellacking in the Iowa caucuses and reiterating a very similar line from Ms. Haley’s concession speech that night, the phrase turns out to be somewhat prophetic.
And a recurring prophesy, given former President Donald Trump’s sound — as well as sweeping — win in New Hampshire besting Ms. Haley by over 11 percent.
Mr. Trump, facing three challengers, won Iowa with 51 percent of the votes cast. And of the 99 counties in Iowa, Mr. Trump carried 98 or them, losing the one by only one vote to Ms. Haley.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Ms. Haley, and Vivek Ramaswamy trailed with 21.2 percent, 19.1 percent, and 7.7 percent, respectively. Mr. DeSantis and Mr. Ramaswamy soon thereafter suspended their campaigns, endorsing Mr. Trump for the nomination.
Ms. Haley, for her part, went on to declare her intention to stay in the race and carry the fight to New Hampshire where her goal was to do better than she did in Iowa. One would hope such a bar, as low as it was after coming in third, could be easily breached.
The establishment political class — and Ms. Haley — did their best to diminish the Iowa results. After all, they screeched, the turnout was lower than the last caucus night (they never mentioned that the temperatures were historically low) and only a small percentage of the Iowa voters attended and voted in the caucuses. Therefore, they conclude, Mr. Trump’s 56,000 votes really didn’t mean much.
They extrapolated their argument further by asserting that 56,000 voters don’t “choose a president” in response to calls that she suspend her campaign. Perhaps she believes that the 21,000 Iowans who voted for her should be allowed to “choose a president.”
The sophistry of this argument is laughable. This view undermines the entire point of the primary process, a process where voters professing to be aligned with a particular party vote to select their candidates for a general election. It is axiomatic that those so participating don’t represent the general electorate, they’re not supposed to. Were that the case, there would be no point for a general election.
The tone changed going into New Hampshire. And it changed because in New Hampshire undeclared/independent voters as well as Democrats can participate in the GOP presidential preference primary. Should Ms. Haley come close to Mr. Trump, then it would mean that she should be the GOP nominee and, therefore, continue to fight on.
That would mean, you see, that only she could attract the necessary general election votes to topple President Biden in November. Well, that didn’t happen.
What did happen is Ms. Haley changed her message. She stopped talking about her internationalist approach to foreign policy and putting fiscal issues over the immigration crisis, the economy, and a chaotic world stage since conservatives weren’t buying it.
Instead, Ms. Haley took a page out of the Ethics and Public Policy Center’s handbook and took the advice of Henry Olsen, one of its senior fellows (or “fella’s” as Ms. Haley might say).
Mr. Olsen suggests that “[S]he needs to focus laserlike on…Trump’s age, his penchant for causing chaos, [and] his disturbing attraction to dictators…” This, Mr. Olsen asserts, is how to attract moderates.
And notice how Ms. Haley has started the “chaos follows him around” and insinuating Mr. Trump is as feeble minded as Mr. Biden. The only chaos that followed then President Trump around was the GOP establishment and the neo-Marxist cabal, including their cohorts in the national media. Attempting to malign Mr. Trump’s mental acuity doesn’t even deserve a response.
Bottom line: if Ms. Haley cannot win on policy, and she can’t, then ad hominem attacks are all she’s got. Just like Mr. Biden.
Mr. Trump’s stunning win in New Hampshire demonstrated the vacuity of Ms. Haley’s new campaign strategy.
Ms. Haley sounded the charge in her New Hampshire concession speech that “We’re off the South Carolina!” That is her home state and perhaps she should consider staying home. Her quixotic quest does nothing to enhance the primary process, the GOP, or the nation.
After all, this campaign isn’t going anywhere.