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Patrick Healy
Deputy Opinion Editor, 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.
Who has the reason? And from here, where does the fight for the Republican presidential nomination go? It’s clear: For the first time this campaign, Haley now has some control over the race, as her resolve to stay or leave will determine her trajectory. And the mere concept of Haley in pole position seemed to bother Trump last night. He came across as angry at times in her victory speech in Nashua, continually calling her a loser and calling her “delusional” on social media.
But it’s also clear: Haley has no path to nomination at this point, at least not in the classic way. Those who win in Iowa and New Hampshire classically advance to the nomination, and the number one schedule and delegate regulations will do so. complicated for her.
Instead, I see Haley going in this direction if she stays: seeking to attract as many moderates and independents as imaginable in South Carolina’s number one election on Feb. 24 and then on Super Tuesday on March 5, deciding on more delegates and letting the bucket turn. on Trump’s legal issues. (The Supreme Court’s arguments will come in two weeks on whether he can be on election 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 delivered a discordant political message today in the New Hampshire primary, winning a far from impressive victory over Patrick J. Buchanan, the conservative commentator. ” And what was the margin when the Times published those words?George H. W. Bush beat Buchanan by 18 points, 58% 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 reprise Buchanan’s role and remain in a desperate race, competing number one after number one, but if he remains in contention, he could be expected to get a percentage of the total vote well above Buchanan’s 23 percent, and that percentage is a harbinger of Bush’s defeat in the general election.
New Hampshire tells us the G.O.P. is still Trump’s party, but it also tells us that Trump’s party is fractured, and fractured parties struggle to win the White House, especially when an incumbent is under fire. Just ask Gerald Ford in 1976, Jimmy Carter in 1980 and Bush in 1992. Each incumbent confronted a credible primary challenger, and each incumbent lost.
No, the analogy isn’t perfect, but the warning is still clear. Barring Supreme Court intervention, Trump is virtually certain to be the G.O.P. nominee, but he’s like a British battle cruiser in World War I: The imposing facade can conceal fatal vulnerabilities.
Trump is strong enough to win the G.O.P. primary contest, but his weaknesses are real, and each Haley voter has done the party the favor of demonstrating that Trump’s bluster outpaces his popularity. His victory comes with a warning sign: There is diminished demand for Donald Trump.
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Julie Ho
Assistant Opinion Writer, Reporter from Concord, N. H.
The scant Nikki Haley backers at her postprimary party tonight were well aware they were surrounded by political tourists taking selfies and murmuring among themselves. Haley came in second, and it’s tough to generate a lot of cheers in those circumstances. But her supporters still managed to rev up some intermittent “Nikki, Nikki” chants as the numbers rolled in.
“I’m hopeful, I think?” said Kate, 27, who asked me not to use her latest call and perhaps Haley’s most ardent supporter in the thinly packed ballroom of the Concord Hotel, just minutes before the Associated Press announced the race for Donald Trump. “It would be an unhappy scenario if I lost. “
But she lost. Now, if it’s a rematch between Trump and Biden, Kate has said she plans to write on Haley’s behalf unless Haley makes a decision to Trump. Although Kate’s expectations were lowered when she arrived to await the results, she was determined in her decision. She described her diagnosis of America’s disorders and why she thought Haley was the right user to give the country 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 also had cautious hope, anxiously staring at the big screen to see if the numbers would change in Haley’s favor, which never happened.
In her speech, Haley promised that “we are just getting started.” Did they find her words invigorating after a second-place finish? The friends said it was satisfying just to hear Haley excited enough to keep going.
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
Deputy Opinion Editor, reporting from Manchester, N.H.
What if? Imagine this Haley-Trump race exchange course, boosted tonight in New Hampshire by an outcome that Donald Trump wanted.
What if Kim Reynolds had remained impartial in the Iowa caucuses, as Iowa governors do, instead endorsing Ron DeSantis in November, which provided 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 endorse Nikki Haley, the only woman in the race?
What if Chris Christie had ended his G.O.P. nomination bid in December, rather than January, and thrown his lot in with Haley as the best-positioned Stop Trump candidate?
What if Haley had discovered her voice in Iowa in the final weeks leading up to caucuses (as presidential candidates are said to do there) and focused more on portraying Trump as an agent of chaos and a figure of the past, not the future?
And speaking of localizing her voice, what if Haley hadn’t made gaffes about how New Hampshire is “correcting” Iowa’s selection in the presidential race and the reasons for the Civil War by mentioning slavery, and used the most recent Iowa debate to hit Trump harder?What DeSantis?
What if a DeSantis without Reynolds had come third in the Iowa, Trump and Haley caucuses, instead of coming in second, and dropped out the next day instead of waiting two days before the New Hampshire primary?
What would have happened if Haley had arrived in New Hampshire last Tuesday and spent an entire week in a race of two people opposed to Trump, using that momentum to argue to Republicans, independents and Democrats that New Hampshire was number one at the time America started?From Trump?
What if his occasions were filled with crowds and power, such a far-fetched perception, given that New Hampshire is proving to be more competitive than some of Trump’s primary polls suggest?
And then, on Tuesday night, what if a surging Haley edged out Trump for the win?
What if all that had happened? What would happen on Wednesday?
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Andres Trounsky
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 retiree organization was showing symptoms urging voters to write in Biden’s name.
“I was a federal employee for 50 years,” said Brenda Murray, 84. She retired in 2019. Unlike many who said they’re voting for Biden because he is not Trump, Murray said the president has done a good job. She added that she loathed Trump for how he treated federal employees.
Sitting next to Murray was George Wilson, 86, a retired real estate agent and a Republican. He voted for Trump in 2016 but chose Haley this time, he said, since “she has a chance of beating Trump.”
Wilson said he may never vote for Biden, who is too liberal for him. Why, then, is he holding a sign that reads “Write to Biden”?”I have a lot of friends who need me to do this, and what’s the harm in that?
I went in when my hands went numb and talked to the best students in the school and the school. Some said they would vote for Marianne Williamson. One of them 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.
Amid the voters scurrying in and out, one stood to the side, holding up a sign urging voters to protest everyone. “I think the candidates that are currently running, especially Trump, Biden and Haley, are terrible candidates,” said Chase Poirier-McClain, 17. “I agree with them on pretty much nothing, and they’re all just running as alternatives to each other.” He’ll turn 18 before November, and I asked if he’ll vote at all.
“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 embracing Trump’s nihilistic and conspiratorial fury.
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 hopes Trump “breaks the system.” He actually wants Trump to pull the country apart, even though he believes Trump’s next term will be “a miserable four years for everybody.” He calls Jan. 6 “Patriots’ Day,” but he also says the Jan. 6 riot was “staged” by 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 same 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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