After a South Carolina Defeat, Haley Pitches Herself as the Normalcy Candidate
Happy Monday! We hope you embrace the highs and lows of the week with the same unfettered enthusiasm that Argentinian president Javier Milei showed Donald Trump at CPAC over the weekend. Throw in some Village People for good measure.
Up to Speed
- Donald Trump won the South Carolina primary Saturday with a hair under 60 percent of the vote, besting the stateโs former governor, Nikki Haley, by 20 points. Trump won all but three of South Carolinaโs 46 counties. Of the 50 delegates to the Republican National Convention up for grabs, Trump won 47โ29 for winning the state overall, plus three delegates from each of the six congressional districts he won. Haley earned three delegates for winning the 1st Congressional District, which includes parts of Charleston and Beaufort, two of the three counties she won.
- The second-ranking Republican in the Senate, John Thune of South Dakota, endorsed Trump for president on Sunday. โThe primary results in South Carolina make clear that Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee for president in this yearโs pivotal presidential election. The choice before the American people is crystal clear: Itโs Donald Trump or Joe Biden,โ Thune told Fox News. Thune had previously supported Sen. Tim Scott before the South Carolina Republican dropped out of the race.
- Haley, meanwhile, is getting mixed signals on the finance front about staying in the race. On the one hand, the political network associated with libertarian billionaire Charles Koch is โsuspendingโ its efforts to boost Haley financially through Americans for Prosperityโs PAC, Politico first reported. But as Fox News reported on Sunday, Haley is claiming to have raised $1 million online since her defiant concession speech Saturday night.
- Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Democratic majority leader, warned his caucus a government shutdown could begin at the end of this week following the failure of congressional leaders to craft a spending deal during talks this weekend. Schumerโs Sunday letter to his colleagues, obtained by Bloomberg, placed the blame on House Republicans for needing โmore time to sort themselves out.โ Without a spending deal or a temporary stopgap, funding could run out for several federal departments as early as March 2, with a total government shutdown starting on March 8.
- House Speaker Mike Johnson pushed back on Schumer, arguing in a statement that House Republicans were negotiating in โgood faithโ and blaming Democrats for mucking up discussions. While the speaker has said heโs willing to make a deal to avoid a shutdown, some of Johnsonโs most strident members have been pushing him to walk away if he cannot force deep spending cuts and tougher immigration provisions into a dealโelements that are almost certainly a nonstarter in the Democratic-controlled Senate.
- In its monthly tracking poll, Gallup found President Joe Bidenโs approval rating is now at 38 percent, just 1 point higher than his record low, recorded in April 2023. Thatโs a far cry from 50 percent, a target for any president hoping to get reelected, and an approval level the president hasnโt hit since July 2021. Biden gets low marks in particular for his handling of immigration (67 percent disapproval), the Israel-Palestinian conflict (62 percent), foreign affairs (62 percent), and the economy (61 percent).
- Republicans who want to be Trumpโs running mate are reaching out to an unlikely source for advice and guidance: former Vice President Mike Pence. โFollowing Trumpโs win in Iowa, intermediaries for Rep. Elise Stefanik, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, and Sen. Tim Scott have all sought out meetings with a former adviser to Pence this year, asking for intel on how to survive the gantlet of being vetted in a Trump veepstakes,โ Politico reports. Pence served Trump loyally for four years before earning his enmity after he was unwilling to stop Congress from counting electoral votes for the 2020 election.
- In a widely expected move, Ronna McDaniel announced Monday she would resign as chairwoman of the Republican National Committee to make way for the likely election of Trumpโs handpicked replacement at an upcoming RNC meeting in Houston. These upcoming changes at the RNC will put the likely GOP nominee in firm control of the committee. However, as The Dispatch reported Saturday, some party insiders are attempting to maintain some level of separation between the Trump campaign and the RNC, proposing resolutions to bar the committee from paying for the frontrunnerโs legal bills stemming from indictments in four criminal cases and ensure neutrality in the Republican primary until the former president secures the requisite 1,215 nominating delegates.
Nikki Haley Offers Voters Something Unusual: Normalcy
MOUNT PLEASANT, South CarolinaโNikki Haley is running on โnormal.โ
The former South Carolina governor and ex-U.S. ambassador to the United Nations is discussing a range of issues with voters at her campaign rallies as she continues her seemingly impossible bid for the Republican presidential nomination. Whether talking about the border crisis, national security, or the need for an economic revival, Haley hits all of the notes expected of a GOP White House hopeful taking aim at a Democratic incumbent.
But the Republican Partyโs calendar of caucuses and primaries now approaches March, with Haley still searching for weapons that might puncture the inevitability of a third consecutive nomination for the candidate standing between her and President Joe Biden: former President Donald Trump. The underdog contender has taken to pitching voters on a return to normalcy. Hardly a throwaway line, this message has emerged as a featured component of Haleyโs effort to woo grassroots conservatives, as well as the independents and Democrats allowed to participate in various GOP nominating contests.
Speaking to supporters who gathered at sunset Friday for a final South Carolina campaign rally at Patriots Point in Mount Pleasantโalongside the naval museum that houses the U.S.S. Yorktown, an aircraft carrier that saw battle in World War IIโHaley made an impassioned case against both partiesโ likely nominees. โJoe Biden calls anyone who doesnโt support him โfascist.โ And Donald Trump calls anyone who doesnโt support him, โvermin.โ Thatโs not normal,โ she said. โOur kids deserve normal; they deserve to know what normal feels like.โ
Haley, who proceeded to lose to Trump in Saturdayโs South Carolina primary, 59.8 percent to 39.5 percent, has vowed to stay in the race at least through the March 5 Super Tuesday primaries and is in the midst of a national campaign swing. She dashed to Michigan Sunday in advance of its Tuesday primary and has more events scheduled in several other states as this week unfolds.
Candidates running for high office, especially the presidency, tend to deliver the same stump speech over, and over, and over again. That repetitiveness and predictability can bore political reporters and strike some voters as inauthentic. Itโs why Trumpโs campaign rallies, with the former president just riffing extemporaneously for hours, are so appealing to so many of his supportersโheโs entertaining and appears unscripted. Still, thereโs also value in repetition.
Many voters who show up at a candidateโs campaign rally are there for the first time. To them, that same old stump speech is brand new. Meanwhile, those same old lines in that same old stump speech reveal something: A candidateโs priorities and, additionally, what he or she believes resonates with voters. In that way, Haleyโs emphasis on normalcy is instructive, as is the fact that the message was carried by the surrogates who introduced her at each rally.
Take a look at how top Haley supporter Scarlett Wilson, the Republican solicitor (district attorney) for Charleston and Berkeley counties, made the former governorโs case in Mount Pleasant as she revved up the crowd. โIโm Scarlett Wilson, with that โRโ behind my name,โ she said. โAnd that โRโ stands for Republican. And it also stands for rational, reasonable, respectable.โ
โThat โRโ stands for getting the right thing done,โ Wilson continued. โThat โRโ stands for results. And, you know what else that โRโ stands for? It stands for normal. And I know normal doesnโt start with โR,โ but it still stands for normal. Because thatโs what she can bring to us: normalcy.โ
We heard these and similar lines from Team Haleyโrepeatedlyโdown the stretch of the race for South Carolinaโs 50 delegates to the Republican nominating convention. And they always generated cheers from the audience.
Of course, as Haley is learning, โnormalโ isnโt high on the agenda for the majority of Republican primary voters. Trumpโs rise in 2016โand staying power since then, despite all of his setbacksโis evidence enough of that. So are his victories in all five states to have voted in the Republican primary thus far.
But neither does that mean the voters attracted to Haley, and the throwback era of โnormalโ politics sheโs attempting to channel, are a rump faction of the GOP that can be ignored.
Haley seemed to acknowledge as much during her concession speech on Saturday evening. โToday, in South Carolina, weโre getting around 40 percent of the vote,โ she said. โThatโs about what we got in New Hampshire too. Iโm an accountant. I know 40 percent is not 50 percent. But I also know 40 percent is not some tiny group. There are huge numbers of voters in our Republican primaries who are saying they want an alternative.โ
Trumpโs CPAC About-Face: From Revenge to Liberty
Our own John McCormack attended the Conservative Political Action Conference outside Washington on Saturday to cover Donald Trumpโs speech to the gathered activists. The annual event has become dominated by Trump and the MAGA movementโKellyanne Conway once referred to it as โTPACโโand the former presidentโs speeches to the group are as revelatory as they are instructive to Trump himself about what the base of the GOP wants to hear. Hereโs an excerpt from Johnโs report:
Revenge was an important theme in Trumpโs CPAC speech too, just as it was last year. In March 2023, the last time polling ever suggested that Trump faced a serious threat in the GOP primary, he made headlines at CPAC with the pledge: โI am your warrior; I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution. I am your retribution.โ Trump went on to explain how he would fulfill that pledge: โI will totally obliterate the deep state. I will fire the unelected bureaucrats and shadow forces who have weaponized our justice system.โ
But at CPAC 2024, with the GOP nomination in the bag, Trump modified his message in a notable way. โYour liberty will be our ultimate reward and the unprecedented success of the United States of America will be my ultimate and absolute revenge,โ he told the crowd on Saturday. His 2024 CPAC speech focused more on sealing the border, drilling for oil, and achieving peace through strength. On Saturday, the two-year anniversary of Russiaโs full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Trump claimed the invasion never would have happened if he were president: โRemember, they said Obama gave pillows and Trump gave Javelins.โ He claimed Israel would have never been attacked on October 7, 2023, because โIran was brokeโ due to sanctions and that while he would have gotten the United States out of Afghanistan he would have never given up Bagram Air Base because it is located near western China.
With that said, Trumpโs 2024 CPAC speech certainly indicated he thinks there is more to exacting revenge than enacting MAGA policies. While Election Day 2024 would be โliberation dayโ for hard-working Americans, Trump said, โfor the liars and cheaters and fraudsters and censors and imposters who have commandeered our government, it will be their judgment day.โ
Notable and Quotable
โGet out Joe, youโre fired.โ
โDonald Trump, speaking after winning the South Carolina primary, February 24, 2024