Haley has a good case to make when it comes to electability.
Most Americans are unenthusiastic about the prospect of a rematch between the former president and the current one. Several polls have her doing better than Trump in a hypothetical head-to-head matchup with Biden. And in New Hampshire, where voters unaffiliated with either party constituted 44 percent of those who cast ballots in the Republican primary, exit polling showed the former South Carolina governor beat Trump by 19 percentage points among those voters — signaling her appeal among crucial independents who could determine the outcome of the election this fall.
“You can’t keep doing the same thing and think you will get a different result,” Haley told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Thursday. “Donald Trump will lose the election for us.”
If this were the Republican Party of a decade ago, one in which donors and establishment elders still called the shots, this kind of pragmatism might carry the day. In 2008, John McCain’s popularity with swing voters vaulted him over his more ideological rivals to become the Republican nominee; the same thing happened four years later, when Mitt Romney was deemed to be the GOP’s surest general election winner.
Neither had ever been liked or trusted by the staunchest conservatives. And when neither managed to actually deliver that promised victory in November, the restive Republican base grew more disillusioned and alienated. As University of Chicago political scientist William Howell put it: “These are folks who are disaffected with politics and who feel like they’ve been sold a bill of goods election after election.”
Then came Trump, who in 2016 upended just about every assumption about electability and still managed to pull out a win — at least, in the electoral college. (It can’t be noted often enough that in the past eight presidential elections, only one Republican, George W. Bush in 2004, has managed to carry the popular vote.)
Trump’s hold on the party has only gotten tighter, despite the fact that Republicans lost control of both the House and Senate while he was president, and despite Trump’s own loss to Biden in 2020. Indeed, poll after poll has shown that a majority of Republicans accept Trump’s lie that Biden became president by fraud, which makes them further resistant to rational arguments against the former president’s electability. Nor are his supporters unsettled by the fact that he will be campaigning while facing four indictments and 91 criminal charges, or the fact that more than $55 million of the campaign contributions they made last year was spent on his legal bills.
Against all of this, Haley struggles to generate any real energy within the Republican base — not even in her home state, which twice elected her governor and which will hold its GOP primary on Feb. 24. In the latest Washington Post-Monmouth University poll of likely South Carolina primary voters, slightly more than half said they would be enthusiastic or satisfied to have her as the party’s nominee; nearly 7 out of 10 said they felt that way about having Trump as their standard-bearer.
South Carolina Republican primary voters also appear unfazed by Haley’s warning that having Trump at the top of the ticket is a death wish for the party in 2024. About 7 in 10 say the former president would probably beat the current one; 63 percent believe that Haley would prevail in a one-on-one matchup with Biden.
These assumptions no doubt are bolstered by the fact that Trump is leading Biden in many swing-state polls, but they might not hold up in the months ahead, as the country endures the longest — and potentially grimmest — general election campaign in memory.
In 2020, it was Democrats who placed their bet on pragmatism, choosing the more electable Biden over Sens. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), who stirred the passions of their progressive base. Now, they face their own challenges. They are struggling to hold together the party’s uneasy coalition as divisions grow over issues such as the war in Gaza, and to reignite the enthusiasm of disillusioned young people and non-White voters, who are key to their hopes of winning in November.
Meanwhile, Trump continues his all-but-certain march to the nomination. Haley is right that Republicans could be blowing their best opportunity for victory in 2024. And therein could lie her slogan for 2028: I told you so.
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