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Patrick Healy
Associate Opinion Writer, reporting from Manchester, N. H.
“This race is over!” Donald Trump’s crusade announced in an email at 8:17 p. m. on Tuesday, shortly after winning the New Hampshire primary.
“This race is over,” Nikki Haley said around the same time, addressing supporters in Concord, New Hampshire.
And where is the fight for the Republican presidential nomination now?It’s clear: For the first time this season, Haley now has some control over the race, as her decision to stay or quit will determine her trajectory. Haley’s idea of pole position seemed to bother Trump last night. He rarely gave the impression of being angry in his victory speech in Nashua, continually calling her a loser and calling her “delusional” on social media.
But this much is also clear: Haley doesn’t have a path to the nomination right now, at least not any traditional kind. Those who win both Iowa and New Hampshire historically go on to the nomination, and the primary calendar and delegate rules will get hard for her.
Instead, I see Haley going in this direction if she stays: looking to attract as many moderates and independents as imaginable in South Carolina’s No. 1 election on February 24 and then on Super Tuesday on March 5, deciding on more delegates and letting the cube spin. on Trump’s legal issues. (Supreme Court arguments will come in two weeks on whether he can be on the ballot in Colorado, not to mention his other cases. )
It’s a path, but also a plan B: an election for the party if the unforeseen happens with Trump. And where will Trump go from here?Back in court, presumably, with the E trial. Jean Carroll still in progress.
But his team would do well to follow what my colleague David French pointed out last night in The Point: “New Hampshire tells us that the Republican Party is still the party of Trump, but it also tells us that the party of Trump is fractured and that fractured parties are fighting to win the White House, especially when the sitting president is under fire. “
David’s right. Trump is running as a virtual incumbent, but so far he’s only winning 50-55 percent of the vote from his own party. Could there be a ceiling on Trump’s vote in the November general election, one that’s too low to win? That’s the question I’m leaving New Hampshire with.
French David
Opinion Columnist
When I saw the numbers come in from New Hampshire on Tuesday night, I had flashbacks to a very different time. Here’s the first line of a Times article about New Hampshire’s number one Republican in 1992:
“President Bush received a jarring political message in the New Hampshire primary today, scoring a less-than-impressive victory over Patrick J. Buchanan, the conservative commentator.” And what was the margin when the Times published those words? George H.W. Bush was beating Buchanan by 18 points, 58 percent to 40.
As I write this, Donald Trump is beating Nikki Haley by a much smaller margin. So does this result constitute a “shocking political message” for Trump, in the same way it is for Bush? Even though Trump is not the sitting president, he is the incumbent and running an edition of the classic sitting president’s campaign. However, he won only 51% of the vote in Iowa and, as of this writing, he has 54% in New Hampshire.
It’s a large enough figure to show he has a strong grip on the GOP, but it’s also small enough to reveal significant Republican discontent. Trump’s team will frame the result as a mandate and try to bully Haley out of the race. And she can just leave.
He is unlikely to repeat Buchanan’s role and remain in a desperate race, fighting number one after number one, but if he remains in contention he can be expected to garner a much larger percentage of the overall vote than Buchanan’s 23 percent. and that percentage is a harbinger of Bush’s defeat in the general election.
New Hampshire tells us that the Republican Party is still Trump’s party, but it also tells us that Trump’s party is fractured and that fractured parties are fighting to win the White House, especially when the incumbent president is under fire. Just ask Gerald Ford in 1976, Jimmy Carter in 1980, and Bush in 1992. Each sitting president faced a credible number one challenger and the incumbent president lost.
No, the analogy is perfect, but the caution is clear. Barring the intervention of the Supreme Court, it is virtually certain that Trump will be the Republican. But he looks like a British battlecruiser from the First World War: the imposing façade can hide fatal vulnerabilities.
Trump is strong enough to win the GOP, but his weaknesses are real, and each and every Haley voter has returned the favor by proving that Trump’s bluster outweighs his popularity. His victory comes with a wake-up call: There is less demand for Donald Trump.
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Julie Ho
Assistant Opinion Editor, Concord, N. H. Reporter
The few Nikki Haley supporters at her primary after-party tonight knew they were surrounded by political tourists taking selfies and whispering to each other. Haley came here at one point, and it’s hard to get much applause under those circumstances. But her followers still controlled to revive some intermittent chants of “Nikki, Nikki” as the numbers rolled in.
“I’m hopeful, I think?” said Kate, 27, who asked me not to use her last call and who may be Haley’s biggest supporter in the thinly packed ballroom of the Concord Hotel, just minutes before The Associated Press called the race Donald Trump. “It would be an unhappy scenario if she lost. “
But she did lose. Now if it comes down to a Trump versus Biden rematch, Kate said she plans to write in Haley’s name, unless Haley decides to endorse Trump. Though Kate’s expectations were muted by the time she arrived to await the results, she was resolute in her diagnosis of what ailed America and why she believed Haley was the right person to give the nation a fresh start.
“The country is focusing too much on social issues, both left and right, and not enough on the things that matter, like housing and the economy,” Kate said. “Nikki can bring the country to the center. “
She was standing at the front of the room with two friends, Sheena and Bri, who were also cautiously hopeful, staring anxiously at the big screen for the numbers to flip in Haley’s favor, which never happened.
In her speech, Haley promised that “we’re just getting started. “Did you find his words stimulating after a second finish of position?Friends said it was satisfying to hear Haley excited enough to continue.
The few dozen players on the field managed to hold slightly jubilant applause around us. If it turns out that 2024 isn’t Haley’s year, they’ll wait until 2028 to see her again.
“Obviously, it would have been if she had won,” Kate said.
Patrick Healy
Associate Opinion Writer, reporting from Manchester, N. H.
What if? Imagine this alternative unfolding of the Haley-Trump race, prompted by a tighter outcome in New Hampshire tonight than Donald Trump wanted.
What if Kim Reynolds had remained nonpartisan in the Iowa caucuses, as Iowa governors do, instead of endorsing Ron DeSantis in November, providing much-needed validation for her waning campaign?
What if Liz Cheney had stormed Iowa in December and January to denounce Donald Trump as a risk to the values of conservative Americans (both Midwesterners and Westerners) and perhaps even endorsed Nikki Haley, the only woman in the race?
What would have happened if Chris Christie had ended his Republican candidacy in December, instead of January, and teamed up with Haley as Stop Trump’s best-placed candidate?
What if Haley had found her voice in Iowa in the closing weeks before the caucuses — as presidential candidates are often said to do there — and leaned harder into framing Trump as an agent of chaos and a figure of the past, not the future?
And speaking of finding her voice, what if Haley had not made gaffes about how New Hampshire “corrects” Iowa’s choice in the presidential race and about the causes of the Civil War without mentioning slavery — and had used the last Iowa debate to hit Trump more than DeSantis?
What if a Reynolds-less DeSantis had come in third in the Iowa caucuses behind Trump and Haley, rather than in second place, and dropped out the next day rather than waiting until two days before the New Hampshire primary?
What if Haley had sailed through New Hampshire last Tuesday and spent an entire week in a back-and-forth race against Trump, using that momentum to argue to Republicans, independents and Democrats that New Hampshire was number one at the time America began to move forward?. Triumph?
What if his occasions were packed with crowds and power, such a far-fetched perception, given that New Hampshire is proving to be more competitive than some of the big polls conducted through Trump suggest?
And then, on Tuesday night, what if a surging Haley edged out Trump for the win?
What if all this had been the case? What would happen on Wednesday?
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Andrew Trunsky
Editorial Assistant, reporting from Durham, N. H.
If the electorate at Oyster River High School in Durham, New Hampshire, was excited to vote, it wasn’t because of the applicants on their ballots. Take Caroline Dishaw, a student at the nearby University of New Hampshire, who wrote on behalf of President Biden. .
“I think it’s terrible,” Dishaw, 20, told me when I asked him about the most likely rematch between the two 80-year-olds. “The fact that they are the most productive we can muster does not paint a smart picture of the long-term of the country. “
Dishaw’s friend Ella DeCesare, 19, said she voted for Nikki Haley in part because she’s running against Donald Trump. How does she feel about Trump versus Biden? “Sad.”
Outside, a group of retirees waved signs urging voters to write in Biden’s name.
“I’ve been a federal worker for 50 years,” said Brenda Murray, 84. Unlike many who said they voted for Biden because he wasn’t Trump, Murray said the president did a smart job. He added that he hated Trump for the way he treated federal workers.
Sitting next to Murray George Wilson, 86, a retired real estate agent and Republican. He voted for Trump in 2016, but this time he chose Haley, he said, because “she has a chance to beat Trump. “
Wilson said he could never vote for Biden, who’s too liberal for him. Why, then, was he holding a “Write-in Biden” sign? “I have a lot of friends that want me to do that, and what’s it hurting?”
I headed inside when my hands began to numb, and I spoke to high school seniors and university students. A few said they’re voting for Marianne Williamson. One said Dean Phillips.
Jennie Maher, 44, said she supports Haley in hopes that things can be done without the Trump drama. How do you see a rematch between Biden and Trump?” It’s disappointing. Just two applicants who have somehow followed their curriculum.
As the electorate poured in and out, one stepped aside, holding a sign urging the electorate to protest against everyone. “I think the candidates that are running lately, especially Trump, Biden and Haley, are terrible candidates,” said Chase Poirier-McClain, 17. “I don’t agree with them on almost anything and they all just present themselves as an option to the opposition. others. ” He will turn 18 before November and I asked him if he would vote.
“I’ll most likely end up voting for Biden,” he said. “Reluctantly. “
French David
Opinion Columnist
Earlier this month, I wrote an article arguing that Trumpism’s greatest risk lies not in its policies (as harmful as many of them might be), but rather in the effect it has on its own supporters. “Eight years of bitter experience,” I wrote, “have taught us that supporting Trump degrades the character of his core supporters. The more I live in MAGA country (I’m in Tennessee), the more I see Americans embrace Trump’s nihilistic, conspiratorial wrath.
Yesterday, Michael Kruse, senior editor at Politico, posted a desirable profile of a Trump supporter that illustrates precisely why I’m so alarmed. Kruse wrote about a retired Army officer named Ted Johnson. In the profile, Kruse writes that Johnson endorses Nikki Haley. , however, he has returned to Trump’s bandwagon.
He expects Trump to “break the system. ” He needs Trump to divide the country, though he believes Trump’s next term will be “four depressing years for everybody. “He calls Jan. 6 “Patinsurrection Day,” but also claims that the Jan. 6 insurrection was “staged” through the Democratic Party and Nancy Pelosi.
This sentiment doesn’t come from an unemployed steelworker facing career collapse. Instead, it comes from a retired Army officer working out of his comfortable New Hampshire home. Like so many other MAGA people I know, he lives a life of prosperity, freedom, and self-sufficiency that would be the envy of most countries around the world. Indeed, his open and fearless reflections on the civil war testify to his enormous privilege. He lives in a country that even protects his right to defend the government’s demolition.
That is the nature of the movement facing the United States. The same other people who have benefited immensely from American strength and freedom are now determined to break the very formula that has given them so much.
But it’s not because they’re oppressed. No one can credibly call Ted Johnson oppressed. Rather, they are motivated by a shocking degree of rage and malice. This is the nature of the movement, and that nature – perhaps more than any other MAGA policy proposal – puts America at risk.
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