Thus the Haley buzz right now. Hurd’s support won’t do much for Haley on its own—if he had many followers, he wouldn’t be dropping out—but it bespeaks the concern of anti-Trump Republicans that they must consolidate to defeat Trump, and that DeSantis is simply not capable of doing that.
But although it’s true that DeSantis looks like a terrible candidate, his ultimate problem was not that he’s a terrible candidate but rather that GOP primary voters don’t want someone other than Trump. The premise of the Haley boomlet, insofar as it exists, is that Republicans would choose another candidate if only the right one presented him- or herself. But Trump is consistently polling above 50 percent among GOP voters nationally. This isn’t a replay of 2016, where he managed to squeak past a splintered field but never achieved more than plurality support until he’d clinched the nomination.
Trump-chilly Republican elites still haven’t accepted the reality that rank-and-file Republican voters have a different ideology than they do. What’s surprising is that even after failing to stop Trump in 2016 and seven years of eulogies for the Republican establishment, party elites still don’t get that. Speaking to a conference of his former donors yesterday, Mitt Romney said, “I want to put responsibility on your shoulders as the people who are financing campaigns to have some say as to when it’s time for the person you support to say, ‘Okay, I’m getting behind someone else.’”
The donors, who presumably didn’t come into their piles of money by being bad at math, can run the numbers easily enough and see the flaws in this argument: Even if every Republican candidate except Trump dropped out and backed Haley, she’d still be trailing Trump. (That’s obviously not going to happen, especially given how bad the vibes are between Haley and Ramaswamy.) This makes Haley’s rise intellectually interesting, but it also means it will likely just be a footnote to Trump’s renomination.
Desanctimonius had some appeal to thr MAGA base, Birdbrain does not so she is probably less od a threat. That being said, she’s more likable overall than Desanctus...
And here we go. The Anti DeSantis Trumpers here about to shift their spamming to Anti Haley.
I’m kinda glad actually. At least it’s someone different.
Ron DeSantis, but without the charisma
Would anyone have expected anything but this diatribe from the Atlantic?
She’s very good (or at least her campaign, or is the trad-RINOs?) at sending multiple campaign postcards, repeating the same China threat stuff. We get 2-3 per week for the last 2 months. Got another today, in fact.
Someone’s spending tons of campaign money on her.
I find feminized cluster B “leadership” unpalatable in comparison to solid representation.
Pretty sure she is the Old Nikki Haley rather than the new Ron.
Dead-on-arrival. She has no chance of being nominated and even less chance of being elected President.
No one remembers who wins silver medals. In the case of Meatball and ‘lil Nikki it is just best to forget them forever. Neither should be elected to national office, EVER.
AT LEAST DeSantis is ELIGIBLE.
NIKKI HALEY IS NOT
Nominating her is the only way to make me not vote against Biden.
If she were the nominee, I would sit it out - like I did in 2012 when Romney was the nominee.
Nick Knack Paddywhack Give a Uke a Bomb is more like a Lia Thomas. An imposter as a conservative.
Still not voting for him, not voting for her.