After the expected result in Iowa and New Hampshire, there isn’t much news in the 2024 Republican primary.
Yes, Nikki Haley is still running and still raking in large gobs of money from Democratic donors and anti-Trump establishment Republicans. Her 15-minute fame mark will be up soon, but she’s riding it as long as possible.
When will Haley’s comet crash?
The way Politico describes it, Haley has entered the “YOLO” phase (you only live once for those of you in Rio Linda) of the campaign:
The last of Donald Trump’s rivals in the GOP primary, Haley is unloading on the former president — proceeding without any real caution for the first time in her campaign.
She’s taking repeated, pointed, shots at an “ unhinged” Trump’s mental fitness and legal problems. She’s taunting him to debate her: “Show me what you got.” In recent days, her campaign responded to an 815-word memo from Trump’s advisers — a document arguing Haley is toast — with a “Why are you so obsessed with us?” meme from “Mean Girls.”
Then, Haley’s campaign said it was starting a new series of online ads called “Grumpy Old Men” — photoshopping the faces of Trump and President Joe Biden onto a movie poster from the 1993 film of the same name.
Few, if any, believe it will work. And Haley’s let-’er-rip approach comes with serious risk. Attacking Trump so frontally could create a long-term branding problem for her. Already, the MAGA-dominated GOP has accused her of treachery. Trump allies say she’s effectively burned her career in Republican politics.
But Haley seems to have concluded that freedom is just another word for trailing by 20-plus points.
“It’s very clear she’s got to differentiate. It’s deliberate,” said Vikram Mansharamani, who co-chaired Haley’s campaign in New Hampshire. “It’s sort of a requirement at this stage.”
Haley is making long-term enemies with MAGA voters and they won’t soon forget. Then again, if Trump were to make her a VP for some reason, all would be washed clean overnight. On the other hand, she’s on a kamikaze mission but the war is already over. She’s fighting battle to battle but a victory for Trump as the nominee is all but guaranteed.
What’s Haley’s end game here? What does she get out of bashing her party’s most popular figure?
In essence, Haley is suffering from John McCain syndrome. Let’s unpack.
Republicans are almost always on the losing end of media bias. It’s more than laziness in reporting, it’s a disdain for any politician who isn’t far-left in ideology and policy. Unless, of course, there are some Republicans the media hates more than others temporarily.
During the 2000 Republican presidential primary, for example, journalists fell in love with John McCain because he wasn’t George W. Bush. He was the “maverick” thumbing his party. That is Nikki Haley in 2024. Overnight she is the new McCain and the media loves it because it’s red-on-red violence from their perspective. Heck, Haley even got a cushy spot on the rarely-funny Saturday Night Live over the weekend brought in specifically to bash Donald Trump:
CRINGE: SNL brought on Nikki Haley to bash Donald Trump
Yeah — she’s totally a Republican and not just another Anti-Trump liberal..
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) February 4, 2024
If Trump suddenly dropped out and Haley was the next in line, she’d be vilified instantly by the same people writing love stories about her now as the anti-Trump savior.
Biden wins South Carolina (again)
In other news, President Joe Biden won the South Carolina Democratic primary on Saturday in a meaningless display of party loyalty:
As of 12:00 a.m. ET, Sunday, Biden had won 96.2% of ballots cast, with 97% of the total votes tallied.
The other two Democrats on the ballot, House Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn., and self-help author and 2020 Democratic candidate Marianne Williamson each won around 2% of ballots.
The win injects fresh momentum into Biden’s reelection campaign, and it offers a compelling rebuttal to the narrative that Democratic voters are ambivalent — or worse — about their party’s standard bearer.
It’s being called a landslide to give Biden some rosy headlines.
However, a “landslide” over two no-name candidates in a state that single-handily saved Biden’s campaign in 2020 is little more than a blip. There is no competitive primary on the Democratic side, it’s Biden and no one else.
The Democratic primary was rigged quite some time ago to remove Iowa and New Hampshire from the lead of the schedule and replace them with Biden’s preferred state of South Carolina. That was then and this is now. A primary which is little more than a boring beauty contest.
The next state on the calendar is Nevada this week with a primary on Tuesday and the GOP caucus on Thursday.
