DOES NIKKI HALEY GO THIRD PARTY?

 

1/24/24

 

The new Republican Party has decided it wants nothing to do with the likes of Nikki Haley, i.e., the Tea Party types who were espousing and practicing the principles of limited government, strong defense, low taxes, and defense of the unborn back when Donald Trump was writing checks to the Clintons’ campaigns.  Ms. Haley would be foolish to stick around until South Carolina for yet another humiliation at the hands of the man who wins a lion’s share of the self-proclaimed Christian vote while bellowing “I don’t get mad; I get even.”   While she may be a bit deluded, Ms. Haley is not foolish, and neither are those who will be expected to finance the continuation of her Quixotic journey, so yours truly expects Ms. Haley to pack it in before February 24, perhaps long before that august date.

 

So where does Ms. Haley go from here?   Her ideas clearly have no place in a Party that seems to think that plenty of government is just what the country needs at this juncture so long as the power of that government is used in the right way.   A noble person would retire from politics and do something useful, but noble people rarely go into politics; politics is the province of egotists, solipsists, and those seeking something that can’t be found in public office, and Ms. Haley is not all that much different from her fellow public servants in that regard.   She must have a government job to, in her case, crusade against the evils, or at least the misuse, of government.   As a shark must continually move in order to stay alive, a pol must continue to seek office to remain relevant in his or her mind.   Being a fan of Ms. Haley, yours truly hopes that she proves me wrong and shows that she really believes in the efficacy and virtue of the free market she so ardently espouses and hence would find doing real work in the private sector desirable, but I’m too old to be that naive. 

 

So might the man who continually called her “birdbrain” and last night stated that his quest was to “get even” with her make Ms. Haley his running mate?   As astounding as this sounds, her selection by Mr. Trump to take the job of continually inquiring after his health is not impossible; shame has no place in politics, and if Mr. Trump thinks he could improve his chances at the White House by selecting Ms. Haley, he will do so.   But with the likes of Vivek Ramaswamy and the previously respectable Tim Scott and Doug Burgum now assuming the roles of court bootlickers, Mr. Trump, whose ego is his most salient feature, will have a hard time denying one of those sycophants or his legions of lickspittles in the House.

 

So how about Nikki Haley on a 3^rd party ticket?   Yours truly thinks a third party run would be even more pointless than Ms. Haley’s quest to deny the New Republican Party its choice of standard-bearer has turned out to be; 3^rd parties, to put it mildly, don’t do well in this country.    However, one might argue that the last third party candidate to get any electoral votes, Alabama Governor George Wallace, did so in 1968, perhaps the worst year of a period of tumult in this country quite comparable to the troubles the Republic is currently experiencing.   So if one is going to throw caution and good sense to the wind and blow a lot of money and a lot of time on what will turn out to be a lark, this is probably as good a time as any as long as one can find enough dreamers, or opportunists, to finance such an ego excursion.  

 

Apparently, lots of people have come to this conclusion; witness The Third Way and the like.   The reasoning behind this year’s enthusiasm for a third party probably does not run as deep as yours truly’s thinking regarding Mr. Wallace’s comparative success in a time of division similar to ours; in fact, it goes no further than the idea that most people, if the polls are credible, do not want to see either Joe Biden or Donald Trump get re-elected.   Since this incipient third party fascination lacks a credible candidate, why not somebody like Ms. Haley?   While those of us who are familiar with her record and her background would argue that Ms. Haley is too conservative for the likes of The Third Way, such details could easily get lost, willingly or otherwise, in the media gloss that would accompany a third party effort.   So why not a, say, Haley/Manchin, or a Manchin/Haley, ticket?   This would make this year’s race even more interesting.

 

There are, of course, plenty of problems with such a possibility that transcend the hopelessness of third party efforts in this country.   One is that the heretofore best argument for a third party effort in 2024, i.e., the revulsion of perhaps most of the electorate to the thought of a Biden/Trump rematch, may soon become moot.   My increasingly firming conviction that the Democrats will dump Joe Biden (er, sorry, that Mr. Biden will choose not to run in order to spend “more time with his family”) has only grown now that Mr. Trump has the GOP nomination in the proverbial bag.

WHY THE GOP IS “IN A WHOLE HEAP OF TROUBLE”

 

1/18/24

Two days ago, I wrote an instantly seminal piece on the Iowa caucuses (WHAT IOWA HAS TAUGHT US:   MAYBE NOT ENOUGH…IN ANY NUMBER OF WAYS, 1/16/24), in which I expounded extensively on the magnitude, and, more importantly, the breadth of Donald Trump’s victory in my beloved Hawkeye state.  However, I concluded that piece cryptically by writing

“The GOP…is in a whole heap of trouble regardless of what happens in the next month or so.”

 

How could I conclude my ruminations on Mr. Trump’s victory with such an apparently contradictory statement?  How could the GOP be in such trouble in the wake of its apparent standard-bearer’s broad-based and impressive victory?

 

My conclusion goes beyond my long-held contention that Mr. Trump is highly unlikely to (I use the words “is highly unlikely to” rather than “can’t” only because of the topic discussed in the final, and most important, paragraphs of this missive.) win in a general election.  That contention still holds.   Despite his doing so well among members of such groups who participated in the Iowa caucuses, Mr. Trump won’t be carrying the moderate, suburban vote that any presidential candidate, and especially any Republican candidate, needs to win a general election.  These are the types of people, largely apolitical and very susceptible to media and other types of manipulation, who didn’t extensively participate in the caucuses but whose votes are as valid as those who did.  Maybe one has to live in a county that went from deep red to purplish blue to realize the impact Mr. Trump has had on the “traditional” GOP electorate, but Mr. Trump’s antics have been devastating to Republican organizations, Republican ground troops, and Republican voters in areas that the GOP needs to win. 

 Further, Mr. Trump is a proven loser, losing indirectly in 2018 and 2022 and directly in 2020, all of which were election years in which the GOP should have been strengthening its hold of Congress and in 2020, keeping its incumbent comfortably ensconced in the White House.   One could argue that the GOP’s 2022 failure to take the Senate or to get beyond token control of the House was due to abortion, not to Mr. Trump.   That argument ignores that the same hysteria the abortion rights crowd used against Republican Congressional, and state and local, candidates will be used against Mr. Trump, despite his trying to moderate his views on abortion; that crowd, like its counterparts on the other side of the abortion issue, doesn’t do well with subtlety.  Further, besides abortion, the most salient “issue” used against GOP candidates in 2022 was that they were “agents of Donald Trump,” “MAGA Republicans,” or other such charges, regardless of their bases in fact.   Again, subtleties are more difficult to act on than emotions.    Getting away from 2022, one could argue, with abundant legitimacy, that, in the wake of his defeat in 2020, Mr. Trump compounded the wreckage for the Republicans by losing the Senate for the GOP due to his petulance regarding his having lost Georgia in his presidential race.   The GOP should have figured out then that Mr. Trump cares not so much for the Party, or even the country, as he does for Donald Trump, but, in any case, it is about to nominate a candidate who cares little for the Party, yet another reason it is in a lot of trouble.

 Also bear in mind that Mr. Trump may be a convicted felon by election day.   While this is not the type of thing that will discourage his supporters, including some of his not so ardent supporters, from voting for him, it is not the type of distinction that will win Mr. Trump votes where he needs them, i.e., among largely, but not entirely, suburban voters who not only dislike the idea of having a convict as their leader on the world stage but who also do not relish the drama electing such person would entail.  

 

By the way, it looks to this observer, and doubtless to many others, that the indictments and other legal actions against Mr. Trump are working two-fold in the Democrats’ favor.   First, they are helping Mr. Trump secure the GOP nomination by inspiring those who think that such legal actions are the treacherous and duplicitous employment of the legal system as a political tool against Mr. Trump.   Second, such legal moves harm Mr. Trump’s chances in the general election.   Such an observation lends  credence to those aforementioned who argue that the indictments and such are nothing more than a political vendetta by a deeply politicized justice system against Mr. Trump.   But I digress.

 

I realize, from personal experience, that if one watches Fox News long enough (By long enough, I mean about a half hour or so.), one starts to think that 2024 is a slam dunk for Trump.   And if the general election vote were limited to Fox News watchers, or cruise ship vacationers (Perhaps more on that later if I get inspired to write another of my travelogues, long-time favorites among some of my more devoted readers, in the wake of the terrific cruise my wife and I recently enjoyed.  But I digress.), Mr. Trump would win with 99% of the vote.   And if the vote were limited to CNN and MSNBC watchers, Mr. Trump would be steamrolled with 1% of the vote.   However, the election is decided by voters from across the spectrum, and the wider the spectrum gets, the worse both Mr. Trump and the Democratic candidate do.

 

Why did yours truly write “the Democratic candidate” and not “President Biden”?   Therein lies another reason the GOP is in trouble.   One can reasonably argue that Mr. Biden is so eminently beatable that even Donald Trump could beat him, and the polls currently seem to indicate that.  Such an outcome is not as likely as it looks at this stage for the reasons outlined above.  More importantly, my conviction that one of the parties is going to dump its front-runner (See the seminal 2024 WILL NOT BE A BIDEN VS. TRUMP RACE, 11/18/23) grows by the day.   Rumblings among media types, and, more importantly, reported dissatisfaction of the Obamas with Mr. Biden’s chances of defeating Mr. Trump, make me more convinced that ever that the Democrats will somehow convince Mr. Biden to step aside and “secure his place in history,” enabling them to replace Mr. Biden with a candidate more palatable to the broad American public.  

How can the Democrats pull off such a maneuver?   It is apparent that, despite the irony embodied in its name, the Democratic party is the less democratic of the two parties.   The 2008, 2016, and 2020 nominations have all the earmarks of having been decided by a relative handful of party stalwarts rather than the general Democratic electorate.   Given that, it’s not at all hard to imagine a similar political engineering marvel in 2024.   Yes, there is the Kamala problem, but the people who run the Democratic Party are smart and Ms. Harris, to put it politely, isn’t.   They will figure out a way to get Vice-President Harris to take one for the home team.   Among other machinations, the promise of a Supreme Court seat, though rendered tentative by the likelihood of GOP control of the Senate after 2024, might work with Ms. Harris, who, again, is many things, but brilliant, or even sharp, isn’t one of them.  

While I would postulate that the Democrats will have a new standard-bearer before the summer, if things get complicated on the GOP side or something else delays their decision-making process, the Democrats convene in Chicago fully one month later than the Republicans convene up the road in Milwaukee.  Imagine the possibilities.

 

All that having been written, what if, by some miracle, Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, or some white knight yet to emerge from the GOP labyrinth, wins the GOP nomination?   Aren’t the GOP’s Trump problems thereby solved?   Ms. Haley, after all, makes much of the polls that show her demolishing Mr. Biden in the general election.  

The problems for a non-Trump GOP candidate are two-fold and transcend the unlikelihood of such an outcome of the GOP primary season.  First, while Ms. Haley, and probably even Mr. DeSantis, could beat Mr. Biden in a general election, the nomination of somebody other than Mr. Trump increases the likelihood of the Democrats’ dumping Mr. Biden to a virtual certainty.   Ms. Haley, or some other GOP nominee not named Donald J. Trump, would not fare nearly so well against a generic Democrat as s/he would against Mr. Biden, and, believe me, the Democratic replacement for Mr. Biden will be even more generic than the Dems successfully portrayed Mr. Biden in 2020.

Second, if somebody other than Mr. Trump gets the GOP nod, the Trump supporters will go absolutely ape and Mr. Trump will go full King Kong.   Mr. Trump will probably launch a write-in or third party effort and, even if he doesn’t, his most fervent supporters will not support Ms. Haley or anybody else they consider an agent of the RINO, corporatist, fellow-traveler, establishment, Trilateral Commission loving GOP.   What do they care if this means (at least) another four years of the left wing of the Democratic Party imposing its enlightenment on us benighted masses?  This will make the 2024 general election a cakewalk for whomever the Democrats nominate, even Joe Biden.

 

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, why did I write in my third paragraph that Mr. Trump is “highly unlikely to win” rather than that he “can’t win”?

Yours truly sees a potential parallel to the 2022 election, which I badly miscalled (FOUR SEAT PICKUP IN THE SENATE FOR THE GOP?, 10/27/22) to be an overall big win for the Republicans.   While most prognosticators did not share my intensity, they shared my overall assessment of the outcome.   But we were wrong; the Dems held the Senate and the miserly majority the GOP won in the House has proven to be more trouble than it was worth; can  you imagine how different things could be if the Republicans had picked up, say, twenty more seats, which was eminently doable?

How could so many observers, amateur and pro, be wrong on 2022?   Because we missed the intensity of the abortion issue.   As it turned out, the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade, for all its substantive merits, turned into the greatest political gift the conservative dominated Supreme Court could have given the Democrats.   The deft political maneuvering that the Democrats employed around the abortion issue overrode, or at least greatly mitigated, the largely negative feelings the electorate had about President Biden and the traditional loss of Congressional seats in the first off-year election after the election of a new president.   Most of us knew the abortion issue was important, but we had no idea how important.

So where is the parallel to 2024?   The parallel lies in what is broadly described as “the border.”   The crisis at the border is now affecting communities across the country.   People everywhere, and across the political spectrum, are demanding that the government do something about it.   They see the Biden border policy, such as it is, as an abject failure and are nearly desperately seeking an alternative.  According to polls in Iowa, and elsewhere, “the border” is the biggest issue of 2024, transcending the economy, foreign policy, traditionally the two biggest issues in any national election, and even abortion.   If “the border” becomes as big an issue as yours truly thinks it might, it could put Mr. Trump in the White House regardless of who his Democratic opponent might be.   If this is the case, and I’m not saying it is…yet, Mr. Trump would owe his unlikely victory to none other than Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who made traditionally blue bastions see the real consequences of their enthusiasm for largely open borders and holding themselves out as “sanctuary cities.”   

Should the border ultimately win the White House for Mr. Trump, would he thank Mr. Abbott?   C’mon; this is Donald Trump we’re talking about.   In Mr. Trump’s mind, his victory will be solely due to his brilliance and, in any case, thanking Mr. Abbott would be lending aid to a potential rival. 

Some of his supporters, and opponents, describe Mr. Trump’s policies as “America First.”   They are, however, wrong in this regard; with Mr. Trump, it is Trump first, last, and always.

WHAT IOWA HAS TAUGHT US: MAYBE NOT ENOUGH…IN ANY NUMBER OF WAYS

 

1/16/24

FAIR WARNING:

THOSE OF YOU SOLELY SEEKING SEARING AND REASONED INSIGHT MIGHT WANT TO SKIP THIS ESSAY’S FIRST TWO PARAGRAPHS, THEIR ACCOMPANYING BULLET POINTS, AND THE THIRD PARAGRAPH.   THOSE OF YOU WHO COMBINE A SENSE OF HUMOR WITH YOUR SEARCH FOR SEARING AND REASONED INSIGHT SHOULD DEFINITELY READ THOSE FIRST THREE PARAGRAPHS.

DISCLAIMER:

YOURS TRULY LOVES IOWA AND ITS PEOPLE AND HAS NUMEROUS PERSONAL CONNECTIONS TO THE HAWKEYE STATE.  

 

Yes, we are all aware of the shortcomings of the Iowa caucuses in selecting presidents or even presidential nominees.   In fact, if you followed the coverage of the caucuses on CNN, you were made painfully aware of the shortcomings of the caucuses, especially this year’s caucuses, and, from the perspective of those who inhabit CNN’s newsroom, of Iowa itself, to wit:

 

·         The caucuses are an archaic form of choosing a nominee in which actual people meet in actual rooms to discuss, debate, and consider their options and then, armed with information gleaned from listening to those with similar and differing opinions, cast their votes.

·         The caucuses require real commitment of time and effort, while those who inhabit the CNN newsroom would prefer a process that requires nothing more than filling out a simplified form and dropping it in the mail whenever one feels like filling it out and dropping it in the mail.  To demand more, in the estimation of those who inhabit the CNN newsroom, is to deny the indifferent their right to make an ill-informed choice regarding the leader of the free world.

·         This year’s caucuses were especially compromised by the frigid weather in Iowa, which, in CNN”s estimation, is somehow unusual in January.   Only those really committed to their candidates, and to the future of the Republic, would come out in such nasty conditions.  CNN and those to whom it caters considered this a truly reprehensible aspect of this year’s caucuses.

·         The only party that matters, due to its obvious heightened degree of enlightenment, and the only party denizens of the CNN newsroom would consider supporting, i.e., the Democratic Party, dropped Iowa from its nominating process, while the drooling, gap-toothed, knuckle dragging GOP still clings to this vile vestige of exclusion and vote suppression.  Case closed.

 

One did not have to read too far between some very widely spaced lines to conclude that underlying the criticism of the Iowa caucuses was a whole lot of derision for Iowa itself, to wit:

 

·         Iowa is a small, largely white state that fails the DEI tests imposed on our nation by the types of people who inhabit CNN’s newsroom, the latter especially on election nights.

·         Iowa is a rural state (though not as rural as those who inhabit CNN’s newsroom suppose) filled with unenlightened rubes and yokels, the type of place Oliver and Lisa retreated to when Oliver lost his senses and decided to abandon the obvious cultural, educational, and environmental superiority of (then, and, increasingly now) crime-infested, overcrowded, and dirty NYC. 

·         Iowa serves little purpose in our economy.   What role does manufacturing, which, surprisingly to those who can’t find anything farther west than Pittsburgh on a map, is huge in eastern Iowa, serve in an economy that is driven by high-tech entrepreneurs who constantly strive to come up with ways for people to waste their time on frivolous  and fatuous entertainment?   What role does agriculture play when those who inhabit the CNN newsroom fall into two camps in this regard:

o   Those who get their food from Whole Foods and can’t see what role farmers play in the process, and

o   The more agriculturally aware of the CNN types who know that their food comes from two-acre plots owned by rapidly aging hippies who insist on “organic,” “non-GMO,” and “farm to table” production of crops that serve to replenish the soil for their vastly more vital cannabis crop.

All in all, while watching CNN’s coverage of the caucuses, one could not escape the impression that the denizens of the CNN newsroom considered themselves anthropologists studying a primitive and largely unfathomable tribe of unenlightened natives desperate for the knowledge and sophistication that the CNN types would love to force upon them.  

 

The most salient criticism of the caucuses, and the one that CNN could not stop yammering about, i.e., the historic ineffectiveness of the Iowa caucuses in the selection process for presidential candidates and presidents, is not as clear cut as one would believe from watching, to be fair to CNN, any of the networks’ or other media organs’ coverage of the caucuses.

It’s hard to avoid getting lost in the numbers here, so I’ve included two (sort of) tables below to summarize this point.   Since 1976, when the Iowa caucuses became important in the nomination processes of the two parties, there have been 9 contested Democratic caucuses.   The eventual winner of the Democratic nomination won 6 of these, and two of those were elected president:

Since 1976                         

Dems

Contested                           9

 

Winner nominated          1980     Carter

                                                1984     Mondale

                                                2000     Gore

                                                2004     Kerry

                                                2008     Obama

                                                2016     Hillary Clinton

 

Winner elected                  1980     Carter

                                                2008     Obama

 

Despite, or, more likely, because of, the success of the caucuses in selecting the eventual Democratic nominee, the Dems dropped the Iowa caucuses this year.   The reasoning, as outlined above, was that Iowa is too white and too conservative, to be picking the Democratic nominee, as evidenced, one supposes, by the four caucus winners who won the nomination but failed to win the general election:  Mondale, Gore, Kerry, and Hillary Clinton.  

 

The logic of this argument is clearly specious; do the Dems really think that they would have won the elections of 1984, 2000, 2004, and 2016 if they had nominated a candidate to the left of the aforementioned losing nominees?   How did white, conservative Iowa caucus to select Barack Obama, both very liberal and very successful in both his general election contests, as recently as 2008?   Further, Iowa wasn’t always as conservative as it is today; when I was a student at the University of Iowa in the early 1980’s, John Culver, a liberal Democrat, was one of the Hawkeye State’s senators.   As recently as 2008, Tom Vilsack, admittedly a more moderate Democrat than Culver, was Iowa’s governor.   Could the condescending attitude that politicians and media types from the more enlightened  urban centers of our nation display toward Iowans have had anything to do with the increasing conservatism of Iowa?   “Certainly not,” these sophisticates will reply with their characteristic obtuseness.

 

The Iowa caucuses have not been as effective an indicator of success for the GOP fields of the last 48 years.   There have been 8 contested caucuses in that time period.   The eventual GOP nominee won three times (Come to think of it, 37.5% isn’t as bad as the political pros would have you believe, especially for the first race of the season, and I could make that calculation despite having received my Master’s Degree at the University of Iowa.   The latter must confound the denizens of the CNN newsroom and I digress on both the former and the latter.)   Two of those three went on to win the general election, which, despite the general harumphing of the big time political professionals, is not a bad percentage (66.7% for those in the CNN newsroom, who were highly unlikely to have attended a Midwest cow college.)

 

Since 1976

GOP                                       8

 

Winner nominated          1976     Ford

                                                1996     Dole

                                                2000     Bush

 

Winner elected                  1976     Ford

                                                2000     Bush

 

 

But what about the results of the 2024 caucuses and their implications?

 

The big story was not the size of Donald Trump’s victory (51% of the total was the last number I saw.), but the breadth of his victory.  He won in every demographic group.   He won all but one of Iowa’s 99 counties.  The county he lost is Johnson County, home of Iowa City and the University of Iowa, and his margin of victory there, according to the last number I saw, was not even a handful of votes; he lost Johnson County by ONE vote to Nikki Haley.   Several times when I have mentioned that I lived in Iowa for two  years, Iowans have corrected me by pointing out that I didn’t live in Iowa:  I lived in Iowa City.   Even back then, long before Iowa became the red state it is today, “normal” Iowans considered Iowa City and the University of Iowa, at least the half of the campus east of the Iowa River and hence separated from Kinnick Stadium, a den of iniquity, a hotbed of subversion, and a place to visit only on Fall Saturdays.   What astounded me was that Mr. Trump was even close in Johnson County.

 

Mr. Trump won among men.   He won among women.  He won among educated men and educated women.  He won among Evangelical Christians.  He won among Catholics.   He won among residents of rural counties.   He won among suburbanites.  He won among city dwellers.   (Yes, CNN, there are cities, with real urban problems, in Iowa.)  He won among  young people.  He won among old people.   Most importantly, he won among people who think that the preservation of our Republic is sufficiently important to take the time and make the effort necessary to participate in the Iowa caucuses.

 

Ron DeSantis, who spent a ton of money and time in Iowa, looks really weak right now, despite nosing out Nikki Haley for second place.   Despite her post-caucus speech, Ms. Haley did not come out smelling like a rose, either.   How could she win Johnson County, brimming with the highly educated, high income types who wear their loathing for Mr. Trump as a badge of honor and a ticket to the best get-togethers in town, by only ONE vote?   She should have carried it big.   She also should have done much better in the suburbs of Des Moines and Cedar Rapids.   She didn’t.   She’s in trouble.

 

Vivek Ramaswamy showed that acting like a boor will not win one many votes even in a party that is bound and determined to nominate a man whose most salient characteristic is his boorishness.   Thank you, Mr. Ramaswamy, for giving us all some hope…and for getting out of the race for president to pursue the race for vice-president.

 

Then again, this was “only” Iowa, as those with deep insight and boundless experience covering elections tell us.   But, as those lacking such sophistication, but overflowing with common sense, would point out, this was the only race that has been held thus far.    And, at this point at least, it doesn’t look good for anybody not named Donald J. Trump.   The GOP, as the denizens of the CNN newsroom suppose an Iowan would say, is in a whole heap of trouble regardless of what happens in the next month or so.