HALEY WON’T QUIT — AT LEAST FOR 10 DAYS. Nikki Haley gives the impression that she is in the Republican presidential race for the long run. “I’m not going anywhere,” she declared this week in the run-up to the South Carolina primary. But listen to Haley when it comes to specifics, and she is only pledging to stay in the race until Super Tuesday — which happens all of 10 days after South Carolina.
“She told the Associated Press that she’s not going anywhere until at least after Super Tuesday,” the AP reported this week. “Ten days after South Carolina, another 20 states vote,” she said. “I mean, this isn’t Russia. We don’t want someone to go in and just get 99% of the vote. What is the rush? Why is everybody so panicked about me having to get out of this race?”
Indeed, Super Tuesday is huge, with Republican primaries or caucuses in Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, and American Samoa. In those contests, a total of 874 delegates will be at stake. That is more than one-third of the entire Republican delegate total in the presidential race.
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Haley is not predicting she will win any of them. When the Associated Press asked her where she might prevail, she gave a prickly response: “Instead of asking me what states I’m gonna win, why don’t we ask how [Trump] is going to win a general election after spending a full year in a courtroom?” she said.
Here’s the thing. To stay in a presidential race for a long time, a candidate needs to win something. On Wednesday, this newsletter looked at the 2016 Republican primary race, which was, of course, won by Donald Trump. He did not win it right away. Opponents stayed in the race through January, February, March, and April of 2016, with the last opponents — Ted Cruz and John Kasich — dropping out after primaries on May 3, 2016. But by the time they dropped out, Trump’s adversaries — a group that also included Marco Rubio — had won at least once somewhere. Staying in a race a long time without a victory makes one a nuisance candidate, and that is not a role Haley has ever envisioned for herself.
It’s been widely noted that Haley has turned up her attacks on Trump. When she began her candidacy, she didn’t do it much. Now, she does it a lot. It’s not just that “chaos follows him,” in her formulation. Trump is now “unstable” and “unhinged” and “getting meaner and more offensive by the day.” She often brings up the indictments brought against Trump by elected Democratic prosecutors in New York and Georgia, and by the Biden Justice Department, to say that Trump cannot be an effective candidate. A pro-Haley super PAC is running an ad in South Carolina that asks whether Trump is “sick or clueless.”
Does Haley think that will win her votes beyond the relatively small group of Republicans who agree with her about Trump? Talking to supporters at Haley rallies, some have come to believe not that she will win the GOP nomination but that she is staying in in the event that Trump’s legal problems, or some other calamity, forces him out of the race. If that happens, the Republican Party will need a candidate, and there will stand Haley, the challenger who won the most votes in the most states.
The problem with that strategy, if it is a strategy, is that it won’t work. “It is said that they are staying in so that if a ‘black swan’ event should occur, and Trump not be able to proceed, they then would have already won some delegates and have a leg up on any competition for the nomination,” noted a Republican strategist who is not involved in the race. “It is hard for me to believe that. Staying in the race and ratcheting up the attacks on Trump makes it a certainty that if Trump disappeared, Haley would not be chosen. Surely they understand that. I spoke with a big Republican donor who asked me if I think Nikki can pull this out and beat Trump. I responded by asking him if he thinks the 49ers can come back and win the Super Bowl 10 days ago.”
If Trump were for some reason to leave the race, his supporters, a majority of Republican voters, would be very unhappy. They would likely blame the Democrats who have waged lawfare against Trump for years. To the degree that they would associate Haley’s attacks with those people, they would likely include Haley among those blamed. And given the degree to which Haley has ratcheted up her attacks on Trump, they would certainly be unhappy with her.
And then, would they support making Haley the Republican nominee? The strategist’s conclusion is likely correct: The more Haley attacks Trump, the less likely it is that she would be Trump’s replacement were he to leave the race.
For now, Haley pledges to keep on. But she has carefully worded her pledges to keep her in the race only until Super Tuesday. She appears to have the money to do that, even if she loses big in South Carolina. Indeed, Haley has already announced post-South Carolina rallies in Michigan, Minnesota, and Colorado. Maybe she’ll do that. But given her current stance, the benefits of staying in are not clear.
For a deeper dive into many of the topics covered in the Daily Memo, please listen to my podcast, The Byron York Show — available on Radio America and the Ricochet Audio Network and everywhere else podcasts can be found.
