Why Haley lost: Republicans aren’t in the mood for civility

No, Haley came up short in state after state not for trying and failing to capture the profane dynamism of the 45th president but for striving, and succeeding all too well, at emulating an entirely different, and discredited, species of Republican presidential aspirant. 

Let us call him the Friendly Fella Candidate: the sort of politician whose temperance, mildness, and friendliness would make him an ideal neighbor, a favorite camp counselor, and maybe even the likable mayor of a small town but whose very qualities of niceness and apparent moderation make him singularly unsuited for contending with the deep state, Big Tech, and the woke regime that presently dominate seemingly all of our institutions. 

In word, deed, and affect, Haley emerged as a variant of this type: an upbeat problem-solver who embodied unity, youth, and vigor. She claimed to be a tough-minded realist about foreign policy, but in her presentation, she seemed to belong more to the Kumbaya school of governing. The problem was not that Haley was not like Trump but that she was too much like Jon Huntsman, Jeb Bush, and John Kasich. If those earlier Friendly Fella Candidates sometimes called to mind the Little League coach next door, Haley had the manner of the soccer mom who was always first in line to offer to carpool the kids. Both types are necessary for our social fabric. Neither has the grit, stamina, or brute instincts to do battle with the enemies of America, within and outside.

Like her milquetoast forebears, Haley was seduced by one of the most curiously enduring myths in Republican politics — curious because it has, election after election, been disproved: that the path to victory runs straight down the middle. For well over half a century, a small but loud segment of American conservatism has proven vulnerable to this assertion. Remember that famous four-minute campaign ad from 1964, “Confessions of a Republican”? Therein, a fey, halting, glasses-wearing young man insisted on his Republican bona fides before lashing out at the alleged radicalism of Barry Goldwater, that year’s Republican presidential nominee. “When we come to Sen. Goldwater, now it seems to me we’re up against a very different kind of a man,” he said. “This man scares me.” 

Despite the fact that Goldwater is widely acknowledged as creating the environment in which Ronald Reagan won the White House in 1980 and that neither Goldwater nor Reagan turned out to be scary, this brand of puritanical fearmongering has proven resilient. For decades, it has manifested itself in third-party presidential campaigns operating under the delusion that a majority of voters lack strong convictions, or at least strong convictions in any one direction. In 1980, this was the position staked out by independent candidate John B. Anderson, who, in adopting a hash of right and left positions, ended up just where you might expect: in third place, with about 5.7 million votes and nary a state carried, behind Reagan and Jimmy Carter.

Though long forgotten by the time of his death in 2017, Anderson’s wishy-washy approach to national politics arguably informed the various “centrist” or “bipartisan” political organizations that emerged just before and during the Obama years, including Unity08, Americans Elect, and No Labels. However well intended, these groups’ leaders failed to grasp that most voters would rather be right than united and, in fact, prefer labels to apathy. The voter persuaded of the criminality of border crossings, the wrongness of abortion, or the immorality of rampant recreational drug use is not seeking compromise with the other side. Strongly held convictions are not bargaining chips to be traded by parties or candidates seeking an imagined consensus. Like those radical gender identity adherents who claim to be “nonbinary,” ideology-free politics is a flight from reality: Just as we are either male or female, we either support the police or support defunding it. There is no middle way.  

It’s easy enough to dismiss woebegone outfits such as Americans Elect and the like, but at some point, middle-of-the-road, go-along-to-get-along candidates began infiltrating Republican presidential primaries. In 2012, Huntsman cast himself as the reasonable choice beside, who? That noted radical Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT)? The rest is history: Huntsman advanced no further than third place in New Hampshire, while Romney turned out to be a slightly more hale and hearty version of Huntsman — conservative, decent, good on policy, utterly feeble.

Then Trump, through his sheer force of ungovernable personality, ironically breathed new life into the argument for courtesy and civility in our politics. Numerous candidates sought the position of the candidate possessing the soundest mind and kindest heart next to the brash billionaire. Bush gravely predicted chaos, and Kasich proceeded as though the hugging of strangers was the answer to what ails us. The same actor who expressed fear in Goldwater in ’64 came back to warn us about Trump, this time in the form of a campaign ad for Hillary Clinton! (“But Donald Trump, he’s a different kind of man. This man scares me.”) Incidentally, the likes of Bush and Kasich, as well as the anti-Goldwater actor, do the work of the Left for it: They make candidates whose policy positions are perfectly rational and eminently sensible, including both Romney and Trump, appear unhinged, unsafe, slightly deranged. With friends like these…

In 2016, Republican voters were too smart to fall for such shameless virtue signaling, even when it came with a conservative imprimatur. They saw, in Trump, a rough, shrewd dude who shared their interests, if not their good Republican manners. They rewarded him with the presidency.

Sadly, the candidate Haley most resembles is Kasich: Both were Republicans in good standing who could boast successful governorships in important states, but when they came to bat with the presidential nomination on the line, they gave into the temptation to present themselves as the kinder, more normal candidate when contrasted to the Big, Bad Trump. Left unexplained is how kindness or normalcy, in and of themselves, are equal to the threats posed by an open border, crime in big cities, or the mutilating horrors of transgender ideology. Kasich’s hugs and Haley’s talk of unity just won’t cut it.

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Of course, who wouldn’t wish to live in the aspirational world of Haley? It sounds so nice. That’s why the idea of a truly bipartisan, consensus-building candidate will probably keep rearing its head. Mike Bloomberg perceived the opportunity, briefly, in 2020, and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) did, equally briefly, last year. But Haley, like Huntsman and Kasich before her, put the proposition to a test — and, though the legacy media can count her votes in the states she lost, the fact remains that she won exactly as many contests on Super Tuesday as heretofore unknown Democratic candidate Jason Palmer: one.

In defeat in their respective parties, perhaps Haley and Palmer can form a unity ticket. Maybe they can co-author a book. Haley will certainly find a seat on CNN. (Palmer will simply be forgotten.) But Republican voters have again shown their preference for brawling, not bedtime stories, and action, not words. In the end, you fight fire with fire, not fire with sugar and spice and everything nice.

Peter Tonguette is a contributing writer to the Washington Examiner magazine.