Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley attends her New Hampshire presidential primary election night rally, in Concord, New Hampshire on Jan. 23.BRIAN SNYDER/Reuters
“What a great night!” crowed Nikki Haley in New Hampshire after her defeat in the primary there on Tuesday. “God is so good.”
Given how the ungodly Donald Trump beat her so handily, is that really the case?
Her campaign is, for all intents and purposes, kaput. She’s a dead woman walking. The next primary isn’t for a month in her home state of South Carolina, where she trails in the polls by a huge margin. Ms. Haley should spare herself the humiliation.
She might be more inclined to drop out had Mr. Trump, the criminally indicted loser of the 2020 election, shown a bit of grace following his win. He should have been pleased with his 11-percentage-point triumph. In short order, he has vanquished all his Republican opponents. Given his many millstones, that’s an extraordinary feat.
But the former president, who is prone to adolescent temper tantrums, was irate and vindictive. He was mad that in her own speech, Ms. Haley, his former United Nations representative, hadn’t kissed his ring. So he called her an “imposter,” adding, “I don’t get too angry, I get even.”
Opponents will find that out if he wins in November. He will seek to crush them, and he will use his Justice Department to bury the charges against him. He will go after foreign leaders as well, including Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who need be cautious in provoking the demagogue, even though he’s well justified in warning of the dangers Mr. Trump would present.
In New Hampshire, Ms. Haley ran up against a voting population where half of whom, according to exit polls, were deluded enough to believe Joe Biden wasn’t the legitimate winner of the 2020 election campaign. They still believe Mr. Trump’s poppycock that the election was stolen.
But New Hampshire has a lot of independent-minded voters who enabled Ms. Haley to make a decent showing. It was a danger signal for Mr. Trump, who will likely need those kinds of voters to win against Mr. Biden in the fall.
Ms. Haley finally got around to reciting all the losses Mr. Trump had inflicted on the party since 2016. Mr. Trump is “the only Republican in the country who Biden can defeat,” she said.
While running as a more traditional, moderate Republican, she lacked a galvanizing issue. In December, she stumbled over a question about the American Civil War, and didn’t state that slavery was a cause, which hurt her.
She couldn’t even win the support of her fellow South Carolinian, Senator Tim Scott. He climbed on board the Trump train, saying preposterously that he “will unite our country.” The caving earned him a spot directly behind Mr. Trump on his podium in New Hampshire. He stood there like a fawning hypocrite.
The biggest fear for Mr. Trump, now that he appears to have locked up the nomination, is the possibility of a conviction before the general election on one of his four pending criminal cases. The most dangerous one, according to legal experts, is the federal Justice Department’s case on election subversion. There’s a good probability he will stand trial in Washington before November and a reasonable chance of a guilty finding.
This would likely come after a Republican convention in the summer has nominated Mr. Trump. It would be too late to make a change. In that case, the Republican ticket could be headed by a convicted felon.
As a sign that the fall election campaign has officially begun, Joe Biden, along with Vice-President Kamala Harris, staged a campaign rally in Virginia the same day as the New Hampshire vote. “Let’s remember, it was Donald Trump and his Supreme Court who ripped away the rights and freedoms of women in America,” Mr. Biden told the gathering. His speech was marred several times by pro-Palestinian demonstrators shouting “Genocide Joe!” and “Free Palestine!”
Mr. Biden, whom Mr. Trump mocked in his speech as “someone who can’t put two sentences together,” wasn’t on the ballot in New Hampshire where the Democrats held an unofficial primary. But as a write-in candidate, he still trounced his competitors.
Ms. Harris left no doubt she was staying on the ticket. ”I love my job,” she told reporters. The problem is that Americans don’t like her in the job.
In an interesting forecast, Ms. Haley made mention of her. “A Trump nomination is a Biden win and a Kamala Harris presidency,” she warned. “The first party to retire its 80-year-old candidate is going to be the party that wins this election.”
But neither party, it’s now evident, is going to follow that line of thinking.