RNC speeches, for the record

Or, for the win... Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, and my personal favorite, Vivek Ramaswamy:

Not gonna happen

Nikki Haley as Trump's VP? Not a chance.

Not even close

This result speaks volumes, and is why Nikki Haley is going to bow out of the GOP primary race later this morning:

Former President Trump absolutely DOMINATED the Super Tuesday contests. As of this writing, he has won Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. In the night's only surprise, former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley won Vermont with 50.5% to Trump's 45.7% with 99% reporting.

The states where Trump won were blowouts—he garnered anywhere from 60.5% (Massachusetts) to 83.7% (Alabama).

We're still waiting on Utah and Alaska to report and will update when we have those results.

Update 2:56 a.m.: Trump has won Alaska. At publishing time he had a whopping 87.6% of the vote with 48% reporting. We are still waiting on Utah.

Super Tuesday was not even close (exactly as we all expected). 

Why the Nikki Haley win doesn't matter

Via Mark Dice:

SCOTUS could decide Trump ballot case today

After the dramatic Nikki Haley primary win in D.C. (sarcasm), Donald Trump could use some good news and the Supreme Court could deliver that today.  The question really is not if the court will decide in his favor, but rather when they will decide in his favor.

The video below focuses on Let's Go Brandon but the first minute discusses the SCOTUS ruling about to come down,

Wait, you didn't know Nikki Haley won something? Washington D.C. is a dumpster fire of Democrats and RINOs. It doesn't matter that the district has a closed primary, this 'win' is still a non-event.  Tomorrow is Super Tuesday. She's going to get smushed.

Nikki Haley as a third party candidate

The establishment strategy and tactics are going to change. Nikki Haley got absolutely trounced in her home state of South Carolina in the 2024 GOP primary.  She has no path to victory.  So why does she keep running? The common theories are that she's delusional, or that she's staying in the race to secure a VP spot, or as a fallback in case president Trump is forced out for legal reasons, OR she's in it to hurt Trump's chances of winning because she's an establishment puppet.  This morning I had another thought.  What if the latter theory is true, and she wants to hurt Trump?  What is the best way to do that?  

It's not going to cut it with her staying in the race and losing state after state. She's not hurting Trump much at all.  Her support is coming from establishment Republicans and crossover primary voters (Democrats) who want to see anybody but Trump win. Firstly take a look at a few clips as the premise for my thinking.

1. Trump is doing everything right and it's no contest at this point:

Keep in mind that ABC is cherry picking to try to find how this is not good news for Trump when they talk about the electability of Trump after a possible conviction of a crime.  Keep that 36% in mind.

2. MSNBC exit polls tell an interesting story:

Yes, it's MSNBC, and yes it's just exit polls (and early ones at that), but there are still some takeaways that add context to the of the ABC report.  Firstly 31% non-Republicans voted. That could, and probably does account for the largest chunk of that 36% mentioned in the ABC exit polls about a Trump conviction.  Not all, but probably the majority.

Secondly, this means for Nikki Haley, is she does not have a shot among Republicans, who will always represent the vast majority of voters among the remaining primaries.  In some cases, they represent the entire primary electorate.   It means she CANNOT win the GOP nomination. But yet she persists, hence all the theories as to why she is staying in the race.

3. Her establishment financial support is also slipping away now too:

This makes her GOP primary win even more impossible (if that's even a thing). So what next? She's still not dropping out, and people like the Koch brothers are backing away because they are wasting money at this point.  Her strategy will have to change, and her tactics will have to also as a result of the strategy shift as well.

No matter the scenario that proves out to be the reason she is staying in the race, the following holds true: she would do better as a third party candidate.  Let's take a look at the possibilities.

She's delusional: If she believes she can win the GOP nomination, she is delusional. She has no path. But she's gotten pretty far politically prior to her run for president this cycle, and that doesn't happen because of delusions of grandeur.  I don't believe she's delusional, she has an agenda. That agenda may be to become president but we cannot pretend she doesn't understand the polls. But to entertain the notion, if she truly just wants to win the presidency, doing it as a GOP candidate is not her path.  An easier approach would be to run as a third party candidate and take the voters from both Trump and Let's Go Brandon with whom she believes she has a connection and can secure enough votes.

The VP slot: She's not really in it to secure a VP slot.  Trump has already intimated that she's not on the list. It's another scenario I'd simply rule out.

The fallback candidate: She does not represent the logical fallback candidate just because she was the last opponent standing. Loss after loss does not inspire confidence. She is hurting her chances in that scenario.  Instead going third party and trying to stand on her ideas seems more like the high road.  If for some (highly unlikely) reason Trump cannot serve as the Republican nominee, being called back in from an independent run seems far more positive and perhaps even gracious; stepping in to rescue the party from it's own flawed electoral 'mistake'.

The Establishment puppet: This scenario, to me, makes the most sense.  The GOP establishment and the establishment writ large, want to hurt Trump; they want to stop Trump by hurting him, constantly. Death by a thousand cuts if necessary. Keep hitting Trump with criminal cases, civil cases, a primary challenger, and whatever else they can throw in his way, so that (i) he cannot focus on his campaign, (ii) they find something that sticks and forces him to bow out and/or (iii) turns off his voter base. In that case having Nikki Haley in the reason is just one more speed bump for Trump. 

But it hasn't been working; Trump's support continues to grow (or at least, not falter) with each roadblock they attempt. Despite his focus being split his campaign seems to be humming along just fine. And with each case crumbling, finding something to stick on Trump seems to be not only falling further out of reach, it's making the establishment look more and more desperate, more and more suspicious and galvanizing support for Trump.  It's all a failure, which is why you are seeing the Koch money pull out.  The strategy has to change.

It won't make Nikki Haley president but that's not the establishment goal. The goal is to stop Trump. A third party run might do to Trump what the RFK Jr. run does to Let's Go Brandon; siphon off enough votes to make a difference. And the Koch money for Haley pulling out of the GOP primaries might be the signal to her to switch strategies.

To be clear, it's not likely to stop the Trump train, but the establishment is running out of options at this point. They may end up trying to ditch Let's Go Brandon as their last play, and if they do it's a sign of desperation. If they do though, it's also a clear sign the GOP establishment and the Democrat establishment are the same establishment, or at a minimum, they have almost identical agendas.  And that goes well beyond president Trump.

Nikki Haley is going to lose in South Carolina tomorrow

The question is, how badly.  If it's by less than 20 points, she's going to count it as a win. And the mainstream media will play right along.

Tulsi Gabbard Defends Trump From Nikki Haley

At CPAC 2024.

If there was ever a sign Nikki Haley, this was it

Losing to none of the above (technically None of these Candidates") has got to sting:

Now might be the time to drop out of the race.

The Nikki Haley rundown

In case you missed it, from the latest astroturfing in the video below, skip ahead to 4:46 if you haven't been paying attention to her campaign flip flops (or outright lies).

Trumped up charges

Mark Dice on the farcical Trump lawsuit results and how Nikki Haley and the Democrat run media are approaching it:

Haley paints Trump as the establishment

The Hill shares a video on two stories, first Nikki Haley claiming, laughably, that Donald Trump is a puppet of the establishment elite.  The same elite who are resoundingly against him.  Makes sense.  It's the weirdest play for Trump voters imaginable.

The new segment goes on to talk about about Let's Go Brandon's age issue (more on that in my next post):

GOP 2024 delegate futures

 

President Trump is going to go into Nevada next and take all 26 delegates. You read that right.  Thanks to weird rules in Nevada where they are holding a primary and a caucus, Trump is not on the primary ballot, and Haley is not on the caucus ballot. The GOP is counting the caucus results for the delegates. That will put Trump at 58, and Haley at 17.

I'm willing to bet she uses that to paint the GOP as being stacked against her, that she's the outsider. That's rich.  Only the donor class and Democrats want to see her win the nomination.

After Nevada comes South Carolina. Nikki Haley's home state. She's going to get trounced there. There are 50 delegates up for grabs and with a 30 point lead as of this writing, I'd expect Trump to take at least 35 of the 50 delegates, probably more. Assuming he wins 35/50, that would put the delegate total at Trump 93, Haley at 32.

Sure, at that point it's still early and she can make the argument that she's still got a fighting chance. But the symbolic nature of losing your home state cannot be overlooked.  

Hot on the heels of South Carolina is Michigan's primary, where Trump leads Haley by 34% in the latest poll (I could find, as of this writing). Of the 55 delegates, 39 will be allocated by caucus (about  a week after the primary) and the remainder based on the results of the primary. Given the polling lead, I'd expect Trump to get another 40 delegates from Michigan.  The one caveat I'd throw at that is that Michigan has an open primary. There could be a lot of Democrat cross-contamination. And while Haley would definitely benefit from that in terms of pure numbers, it severely damages her brand.

At that point his lead would be widened to 133 delegates versus 47 for Haley. The absolute margin is not huge, given that 1215 delegates are needed to win the nomination. But having lost her own state by this point and clearly with only about of a quarter of the delegates won (between her and Trump), justifying staying in the race until Super Tuesday, is a really tough sell. She's damaging her brand, not Trump's. Unless that's her secret goal, and we know it's not, then she has to be just selling out to the donor class for some sort of payoff down the road.

In the other scenario, where there's a lot of crossover Democrats voting for Haley, Trump still is likely to get at least 30 of the caucus delegates and half of the primary delegates. That would put him at 38 delegates in Michigan rather than my already conservative estimate of 40.  The outcome is relatively unchanged.

There's no point in looking into Idaho, Missouri, D.C. and North Dakota primaries which all happen before the 16 Super Tuesday states (not at this point; a lot can happen between now and then). The results of those states are likely to mirror their predecessors.

Nikki Haley has no path to victory. After 5 races, she'll have 5 second place finishes, some of them she'll be a distant second.  After 9 races she'll have 8 or 9 second place finishes. Washington D.C. may prefer her to Trump, so what? If this were a boxing match, the doctor would have stopped the fight long before the 9th round. 

Nikki Haley astroturfers

We knew it would happen.  Nikki Haley is rapidly becoming tangibly, visibly persona non grata among conservatives and Republicans. Not so for Democrats - they love her, for now at least.

Let's Go Brandon might lose New Hampshire

Forget Trump vs. Haley, here's the real story - Let's Go Brandon cannot give New Hampshire the time of day because, well, he's a stopped clock and he doesn't know the time of day.

Nikki Haley's absurd rationale to stay in the race.

Tomorrow is the 2024 New Hampshire primary. Ron DeSantis has dropped out of the race, and Nikki Haley is getting the two person race she wanted. I'm not sure why she wants it though. When Vivek Ramaswamy dropped out he endorsed president Trump.  Now that Ron DeSantis has dropped out, he has done the same, and it appears, his supporters are buying into that idea. In South Carolina as governor, she appointed Tim Scott to the senate to fill a vacant seat. When Tim Scott left the race, he too endorsed president Trump.

And even without the effects of the latest endorsement by DeSantis, Trump already had a huge lead over Nikki Haley in the state that is supposed to make her candidacy viable.  Via RCP:

In fact, in the Trump vs. Haley head-to-head polls, Trump overperforms his average from the other polls with DeSantis still in the race.  Despite all of the Democrat backing, despite the establishment backing, Haley is going to lose. Trump has the momentum.  What happens if Haley has a semi-decent showing in New Hampshire, a respectable second place? The next primary is Nevada.  Trump is ahead by 60 points - over DeSantis.  Haley doesn't even rate in the polling there. There is no blip on the radar at all for her. Then what? South Carolina, where Trump has a 30+ point lead over Haley.  Where is her path?

Following that, in Michigan, the Trump lead over (again DeSantis) is almost 50 points. Haley at least rates third. 

Her chances of winning, are nil. Zero. Her inconsistency is astounding.  Her support in New Hampshire is pure astroturf. Her only chance to win is by gaming the system in the state. She cannot win the nomination, even if she comes close in New Hampshire. The net effect of her staying in the race only helps Democrats.  

Or maybe not. Because on-going primaries help keep Trump's name in the media, so it's not all bad. In fact, it might actually benefit Trump - much to the chagrin of both establishment Republicans and Democrats in toto.

Her rationale to stay in the race, on the surface, is absurd. Unless, she is simply an establishment and/or Democratic stooge, intent on damaging Trump. Republican voters will not support her positions, many of which align with Democrat positions. I don't think she'll drop out any time soon, and that will simply prove that her motivation is not to beat Trump but to hurt him.  If she does drop out, I will be surprised. But I will be even more surprised if after doing so, she endorses the frontrunner. It's not why she's in this race.

Tim Scott endorses Trump, Nikki Haley affected most

Mark Dice explains why a Tim Scott endorsement of president Trump matters most to Nikki Haley:

Nikki Haley for VP?

The argument by Kayleigh McEnany is valid, but...no.  Trump knows going into the election where she really stands. He will not knowingly be encumbered by a non-team-player in his second administration. Nikki Haley is a neo-con establishment persona all the way.  She's admitted she was inspired by Hillary Clinton.  Even if that was merely a ploy to attract more moderate voters to her presidential run, it's really bad optics and enough to turn off the GOP party faithful. Trump knows this.

Megyn Kelly shares her thoughts on how it might be possible. It's a convincing argument. But...no. Probably. Hopefully?

Digesting Iowa Republican caucus results

The big surprise of the 2024 Republican Iowa caucuses was not the margin of Trump's victory or that he won massively, it was that Ron DeSantis came in second.  Pollsters were pointing to a Nikki Haley second place finish. She came third, despite the polls indicating she would run second, and despite the establishment push for her. Vivek Ramaswamy ran fourth as expected, but he did so in a classy way, and bowed out afterward the results were clear, quickly throwing his endorsement behind president Trump.

Most of Vivek's support will likely flow to Trump, though truthfully he really needs no help. It should allow him to run up the score, and it's smart that it comes pre New Hampshire. Trump is leading Nikki Haley there by roughly 14 points according RCP. Vivek's 5 points in that state could allow Trump some additional buffer.

President Trump was uncharacteristically magnanimous in victory, complimenting his primary rivals.  It's of course much easier to be gracious when you have an almost certain lock on the nomination. But that probably helps his candidacy.  His post caucus speech sounded very much like someone wanting the country to come together. It certainly will help him when he wraps up the nomination, to bring the Republican party together. And it will definitely help him in the general election, since the Democrats and media are prepared only for the belligerent version of Trump. It will make Let's Go Brandon look all the more bitter by comparison. At least it will help until the left catches on.  Luckily they don't tend to catch on quickly. It's a smart strategy for Trump.

Ron DeSantis, by coming second, will remain in the race. Even if he knows he cannot win (which may or may not be the actual case), he cannot drop out after a surprise second place finish when he was expected to come third.  It looks bad for his 2028 run if he folds so quickly. DeSantis staying in the race hurts Haley more than Trump. The anti-Trump vote split into two candidates helps Trump possibly even more than a Trump blowout in Iowa. If Trump gets a double digit lead in New Hampshire, going into South Carolina he is expected to blow out everyone again, it could be over that early. That's optimistic but the longer DeSantis stays in the race, the worse the chance become for Nikki Haley, the establishment uni-party darling. 

Iowa caucuses tomorrow - my take

If you are in Iowa and are unsure about caucusing, please do.  This election is one of the most important in our lifetime.  I know everyone keeps saying that, but it's very often true.  To paraphrase what Ronald Reagan pointed out, America is always just one generation away from ruination.  The Left is ever-present in trying to do just that, and have ever pushed America closer to that point.  So yes, this election is important; very, very important.  Here's what is expected.

Most pundits and pollsters have president Trump well ahead of likely second place finisher Nikki Haley who is a few points ahead of likely third place finisher Ron DeSantis. Vivek Ramaswamy is expected to finish fourth in single digits, which is unfortunate.

I support president Trump, and I expect him to win by a wide margin.  Nikki Haley is not only the establishment elite's preferred candidate, but she has been highly inconsistent and ill-spoken in her positions on issues. She will likely come in second, but what matters is how far in second.  Trump needs to mop the floor with her in terms of caucus support. 

Ron DeSantis, no matter how well he does, is likely finished either after Iowa or after New Hampshire.  The one caveat I'd say is that if he can manage second place, he might hang around for a while. His smartest move possible, he missed; that would have been to bow out of 2024 and defer to president Trump. Instead he ran an ill-formed campaign, he made both strategic and tactical gaffes that could conceivably cost him the 2028 nomination too.  He should be in damage control mode at this point but he is not, which is making things worse.

Vivek Ramaswamy who clearly has Trump's back, despite trying to mount his own campaign,  has recently come under fire from Trump himself. I understand that it's politics, but it's optically punching way down for Trump, and does not suit Trump's campaign strategy.  Vivek is the most Trump-like candidate outside of Trump. Unless Trump is angling for Don Jr. 2028, co-opting Vivek's candidacy would be a wise move.  Vivek is well spoken, and agrees with Trump on most every issue and might make a great spokesperson for Trump at every opportunity.

Of course it could be a misdirection play; leading the media to think Vivek won't be the VP nominee when in reality he would be a great pick.  I don't think that's the case though. I think Trump sees Vivek as a fellow outsider billionaire who is a competitor in terms of prestige and he doesn't want to lend the platform to someone outside his family who might shine as much as a Trump. I don't know that, but I sense it.  It doesn't change Trump's politics one iota.  His positions are clear, and intelligent and that's why he needs to be the nominee.  But of all of the candidates, at this point, Ramaswamy is the only other candidate of presidential timbre. Maybe that's why the 'late hit' came from Trump. It doesn't matter. Ramaswamy did not engage and it was a smart move. At some level, he is probably angling for the VP slot and engaging Trump doesn't help that. And in the grander scheme of things, it's likely to be forgotten by both sides. That's for the best.

All that remains to be seen out of Iowa tomorrow is the final numbers. Trump will win (probably handily), Haley will likely finish second, DeSantis third and Ramaswamy fourth.  What matters is less the positions than the margins ahead or behind for each candidate. That will determine who stays in, and if anyone drops out. My guess is the numbers will bear out enough support for everyone that no one drops out before New Hampshire.