Nikki Haley quits
Haley has suspended her campaign.
It was merely a question of “when” rather than “if.” Also, I’m sure she would unsuspend it if somehow the anti-Trump lawfare – or anything else – were to put Trump out of commission. But for now, it’s just Trump, the last Republican standing.
Some reflections here from Byron York:
[Haley’s loss] tells us, as if we needed another reminder, that the GOP cannot return to the days of leaders like George W. Bush, John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Paul Ryan. …
Each Republican candidate running in 2024 had to reckon with Trump’s complicated legacy — and then with Trump himself. Some tried to be super Trumpy. Some tried to be anti-Trumps. Some tried to be old school. None succeeded.
All had to recognize one fact: For the GOP, there was no going back. …
But there are still those Republicans who are nostalgic for a more orderly GOP. And many of them looked to Haley as their final hope, at least for now, of making that happen. Haley spoke passionately about the “chaos” that surrounds Trump — and indeed, he is a man facing 91 felony counts and all the trouble that entails. She promised a return to a calmer and more disciplined Republican Party. Her problem was that there were not nearly enough Republicans who want that, too. Some love Trump, others don’t love him but like his results, and others think that for all his flaws he is what the GOP needs to fight a Democratic Party dominated by progressive activists. Some would even like to move on from Trump but don’t believe there is another Republican on the scene with the strength and talent to lead the party in a new direction. In any event, Haley has lost, and those supporters who want to change today’s Republican Party will have to wait for new circumstances to bring new leaders.
I agree with York that there’s no going back. But I think most of Haley’s support was not from never-Trumper Republicans at all, it was from right-leaning Independents and moderate Democrats. Also, in the list of things that draw Republicans to Trump, he left out a very important point, which is that a great many Republicans recognize that although the attacks on Trump are tailored to him, the left will attack any Republican who runs. Not necessarily during the primaries; then the left will shore up their preferred candidate. But once a nomination is secure, the left and the MSM invariably takes the proverbial gloves off and the GOP nominee is fair game, no matter how moderate. Look what they did to Romney.
The question is whether such attacks will stick, and to how many voters. Trump made that task easy with many voters, because he really is a difficult personality who rubs a lot of people the wrong way. But Trump is also a charismatic personality to a lot of people, and he has a track record as president that compares very favorably indeed with Biden’s. That’s what accounts for his popularity – that and the correct perception that the left has persecuted him in ways that really do threaten our republic.
[ADDENDUM: Senator Sinema of Arizona isn’t running for re-election. Does this help or hurt Lake, the Republican in the race? Perhaps it helps her, because her Democrat opponent is further to the left than Sinema was. But I don’t know; Lake’s track record isn’t good, and she is “Trumpy” enough (without his history of accomplishment) that she puts off a lot of people.]
And when a prominent Republican is no longer a player in the Presidential sweepstakes, such as Romney in 2016, the Demo narrative will be, “how much better the former Republican President/Presidential candidate is compared to the current Republican President/Presidential candidate,” such as Romney compared to Trump.
This is a game of long standing. Consider what Ciro Bustos, former Argentine guerrilla who spent the last 4 decades of his life in Sweden, had to say in his memoir, Che Wants to See You.
Argentine Ciro Bustos did the guerrilla thing in northern Argentina in the ’60s, was part of Che’s failed Revo in Bolivia, where he got imprisoned, and then spent some time in Allende’s Chile. After the coup he fled to Argentina, and with a coup in Argentina, ended up a refugee in Sweden.
If someone like Ciro Bustos, who has no direct experience in American politics, is aware of the “worst Republican is the current one” meme, it must a very obvious and long-standing one.
The Romney presidency which didn’t happen was the last gasp of the old GOP. Haley’s candidacy was an effort to resuscitate it, but the effort failed.
No comment on Haley
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I do wish there was someone in the Republican Party who could take the lead without being burdened by Trump’s baggage, so I’m disappointed so few people rallied behind deSantis.
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The Fredocon Donorist Party shouldn’t be missed. The worry is that the situation is too far gone for even the most capable and public-spirited officials to salvage.
The Romney presidency which didn’t happen was the last gasp of the old GOP. Haley’s candidacy was an effort to resuscitate it, but the effort failed.
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I think you’re jamming characters into a procrustean bed of your own manufacture. Romney is an accomplished man, but capable of astonishingly self-centered and clueless behavior. His problem all along may have been vacuity, i.e. he’s a smarter and more dignified version of George Bush the Elder. He likes a challenge but he hasn’t any clear preferences for the direction he’d like policy to take.
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Haley is younger than one of Romney’s children, first ran for a f/t political office in 2010 (the Tea Party year), never held any federal office prior to 2017, and has no history with the Capitol Hill / K Street nexus. I’m not seeing how she’s an exemplar of McConnellism.
Her connection to the old GOP was apparent in her campaign speeches. The only difference I could see was her (commendable) insistence that something needs to be done about the national debt — following Ryan, Romney’s VP candidate.
The Romney appeal was that better management was what was needed to solve our national problems. The new GOP wants to cut the government way down, not just manage it better. Trump didn’t do that as effectively as he could have; I hope he will the second time around. Biden surely won’t.
Is Haley trying to be to Trump like GHW Bush was to Reagan, and end up as a VP ready for 2028? Otherwise it doesn’t make sense to me.
I think on the whole Sinema would have split Democrat votes with Gallego and benefited Lake. True, Democrats vote as a bloc now and would have lined up with their party’s nominee, but some people only voted for Biden because they didn’t want Trump, and Sinema might have peeled them off. Lake isn’t the best candidate by any means. She doesn’t understand that to win in politics it really helps to think and talk like a politician, and not simply put on an entertaining show for the fans.
Haley does look like a survival from an earlier Republican Party, an establishment figure like Jeb Bush. That she wasn’t in Congress or physically in Washington DC doesn’t change the fact (or perception) that in the primaries she became the candidate of the Establishment or swamp or Deep State or DC blob.
And Paul Ryan: if he were a great deficit hawk wouldn’t he have done more to restrain Trump’s spending? I’m not convinced that he was that serious or sincere about the deficit (or about much else).
What is not good about Lake’s track record?
I noticed on much of the Super Tuesday post-mortem reporting that Haley’s brave feistiness would be sadly missed (like David and Goliath, or is it Godzilla), and that although Trump ‘won the majority of the contests’, many Haley voters would not ‘commit to voting for Trump if he were the candidate’. ‘The majority of the contests’, and they said it with a straight face.
Isn’t that interesting. Of course, all of these accounts failed to mention that quite a few of these were jungle primaries, and that quite a few of Haley’s voters were Democrats that would never vote for Trump in the first place; the reason they voted for Haley was that it was a free hit against Trump. And just as these accounts failed to mention the phenomenon of cross-party jungle primary voting, they also were incurious about what percentage of the Haley votes might have came from Democrats. So: No exit poling analysis there to clutter up the thinking.
Trump won’t have to wait for the dirty journalist tricks to commence, because they already have.
I’m sorry to see Sinema leave. It seems pretty clear that she’s a bigger and more interesting person than the typical office holder, even Senator, and the tone in the Senate will not be the same with her gone. I appreciated her independent resolve, even if I didn’t agree with it a lot of the time. We need more of that in the Senate and the House.
Gringo: I was going to highlight exactly that phrase in Neo’s post. It’s like the Republicans have total amnesia, that this happens EVERY SINGLE presidential election season. The leftist media’s darling is miraculously transformed into Hitler upon securing the Republican nomination. Well I for one remember. And I wouldn’t support Haley anyway, she is too much of a war-mongering swamp critter. I would have supported DeSantis, but alas he dropped out too soon (after a dreadful campaign).
Davemay – What’s wrong with Lake’s record? Well, I’m sure she was a fine newscaster. I have no problems with that.
As a politican, she kissed away a Governor’s seat in a purple-to-red state by less than 15k votes after she deliberately antagonized the voters of the state’s beloved six-term Republican Senator. Say whatever you will about McCain. She didn’t run against McCain’s legacy or his policy, she specifically told his VOTERS to “get out.” Running against McCain’s voters, as a Republican, in Arizona, is madness. And as a politican, that is Lake’s record.
Look – I’d vote for Lake if I lived in AZ, but I’m not bullish about her chances. Not at all.
The new GOP wants to cut the government way down, not just manage it better.
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Kate, I’ve been participating in boards like this for about 19 years now. Street-level Republicans have opinions, impressions, and reactions. The number who have a clear idea of what they’d like public policy and public administration to be and are willing to discuss that isn’t large.
Re: Sinema.
Yes, yes, and YES!!!
…Except that she folded…at precisely the time she should have held firm…
…and it’s a shame because up until then, she showed a whole lotta spine.
Yep, she (and Manchin—wouldn’t want to forget him, now, would one?) GAVE “Biden” a TREMENDOUS gift.
Alas….
(Oh well. Can’t win ’em all…)
Aggie and Barry,
Although I agree with you that I like what little I know of Sinema and it was refreshing to see a Senator who doesn’t seem to be beholden to Party or K Street, the point of the Senate is to be a sort-of House of Lords where each state’s Senator is mostly beholden to the elected leaders of his or her state.
When a state’s governor and legislature are in sync a Senator should typically function like a rubber stamp to their wishes. We don’t need more “independent” Senators, we need more Senators beholden to their states. Independent means you can get Senators more interested in lining their pockets or promoting their own image than serving their state’s interests.
Carilee @ 6:40am,
“It’s like the Republicans have total amnesia…”
It’s also like it’s all a game and the Democrats and Republicans are coordinated in serving the Swamp, the Military Industrial Complex, Big Pharma, China and whomever else lines their pockets.
One of the two.
I pointedly did not vote for mccain in the primary i did for guiliani i was reluctant to do so in the general till the huntress came along it is striking how much she was threatened defamed forced to bankruptcy for telling the truth about what obama would wreak upon the country
Even less of a fig leaf
https://thefederalist.com/2024/03/07/new-book-admits-fani-willis-get-trump-investigation-began-with-illegal-recording/
I’m gonna miss those hip boots.
I agree that Lake made a mistake with McCain fans but that election was so obviously manipulated that nobody can tell what the effect was.
no she didn’t they enabled this dumpsterfire, how do they like their sock puppet hoff now,