Nikki Haley Is Losing the Presidential Nomination, but Winning the I-Told-You-So Primary
One way or another, Trump will crash and burn. And an unlikely candidate is the only one positioning herself to pick up the pieces.
With Donald Trump’s nomination a foregone conclusion and the Koch network withdrawing their financial support of his sole remaining challenger, the grifter set is bolstering their calls on Nikki Haley to drop out with performative outrage and puzzlement as to why she hasn’t done so already.
To hear some tell it, she’s either simply delusional or an attention hog. Others speculate she wants to keep herself in contention just in case Trump gets convicted of something that forces him to withdraw or otherwise opens the door to a delegate revolt at the convention. Still more, like The Fake One Mark Levin, suggest she’s trying to sabotage Trump’s general election odds as part of some sinister “RINO” plot (as if Trump somehow isn’t a “RINO” himself or joined at the hip with them).
Haley might be holding out hope for some convention miracle. But there’s a more likely explanation that none of the grifters’ theorizing can allow, because they can only operate from the premise that Trump is more or less the good guy whose return to the White House will get America back on track.
As we’ve spilled a lot of digital ink discussing, that premise is a crock. One way or another, nominating Trump will end in disaster. He may well win the election, but even if he does, the criminal cases facing him will fuel a huge mess over whether we can have a potential (or possibly eventually convicted) felon as President of the United States, including quite possibly a third impeachment, all creating the distinct possibility that Trump might only be president for a few months before whatever hideous sycophant he selects as his running mate has to be sworn in—which, given that it’s far from certain the Supreme Court would agree that a president can pardon himself, might be in Trump’s best interests anyway.
If Trump survives all of that and goes on to actually serve out a presidential term, election forecasts currently suggest he may be doing it with a narrow Senate majority and a Democrat House—and that’s assuming the MAGA clowns he saddles down-ballot races with don’t blow enough winnable elections to give Dems both chambers. Given how little he accomplished legislatively with a united Congress behind him, his willingness to go along with hideous left-wing legislation he’s duped into thinking will get him “bipartisan” brownie points, and all the compromises he’s been teasing for the past year, putting Trump with a divided Congress is a recipe for sellouts like we’ve never seen before.
Admittedly, the preceding two points involve a degree of speculation. We don’t know how Trump’s legal cases will end, if the Senate will have the votes to impeach, or how the down-ballot races will go. But what’s not speculative in the slightest is Trump himself. He’ll still be staggeringly incompetent, pathologically narcissistic, and fundamentally unconservative. He’ll still run his mouth like a deranged child. He’s been demonstrating for the past year that he’s learned absolutely nothing from his blunders, and will again be staffing his administration with fools, incompetents, and scumbags—probably to an even greater extent than his first term. There will be scandals, screw-ups, embarrassments, and chaos—the only question is how bad.
Contrary to what most of us (myself included) would have predicted a year ago, Nikki Haley—who initially ran such a milquetoast campaign that it invited speculation she was angling for another job with Trump—has now made driving that home her central message, more clearly than any Republican of recent memory other than Chris Christie.
"You've got Joe Biden, where the special counsel said he was diminished, and he's not the Joe Biden he was two years ago," Haley said. "You've got a Donald Trump who's unhinged, and he's more unhinged than he ever was. And why are we settling for that when the country is in disarray and the world is on fire?”
In politics, the herd mentality is enormously strong. A lot of Republican politicians have surrendered to it. The pressure on them was way too much. They didn’t want to be left out of the club. Of course, many of the same politicians who now publicly embrace Trump privately dread him. They know what a disaster he’s been and will continue to be for our party. They’re just too afraid to say it out loud. Well, I’m not afraid to say the hard truths out loud. I feel no need to kiss the ring. I have no fear of Trump’s retribution. I’m not looking for anything from him, my own political future is of zero concern.
All true, except the notion that her current approach is sacrificing her political future.
Whether or not it’s what she intended, Haley is doing a pretty solid job of making sure that when (not if) Trump crashes and burns, she is the one people most clearly remember saying I told you so. What the grifters are writing off as sour grapes and self-immolation is actually the smart play for the future (a play for ground that Ron DeSantis unfortunately stunted his own ability to capture by prematurely endorsing Trump).
Now, we just need to hope that by the time Trump’s done working his magic, the Republican party has enough of a future to a candidate to do something with.