Nikki Haley, Donald Trump, and ‘chaos follows him’
Byron York
NIKKI HALEY, DONALD TRUMP, AND ‘CHAOS FOLLOWS HIM.’ Like all the Republican candidates for president, Nikki Haley is trying to find the secret formula for running against Donald Trump. The most recent Fox News national poll, in which the former president is leading Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) by 57 points and Haley by 60, shows that no one has discovered the formula yet.
Haley’s most recent attempt to deal with the Trump question — why vote for me instead of him? — is to say that “chaos follows” Trump wherever he goes. Haley began testing the “chaos” idea in October and specifically used the phrase “chaos follows him” in an interview with CNBC on Nov. 15. But she gave it a full airing for the first time in a speech in Bluffton, South Carolina, on Nov. 27. Here’s what she said:
We have to acknowledge some hard truths. Republicans have lost the last seven out of eight popular votes for president. That is nothing to be proud of. We should want to win the majority of Americans. But the only way you do that is you have to go with a new generational leader. We have to leave the negativity and the baggage of the past and start looking at the solutions in the future. And the truth of it all — and this is another hard truth — I believe President Trump was the right president at the right time. I was proud to serve America in his administration, and I agree with a lot of his policies. But the truth is, rightly or wrongly, chaos follows him. You know I’m right. Chaos follows him. We have too much division in this country and too many threats around the world to be sitting in chaos once again.
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When Haley first said “chaos follows him,” there was a mix of murmurs and approval in the crowd. That’s when she pressed her point by saying, “You know I’m right.” With that, the crowd applauded. But clearly, at first, that group of South Carolina Republicans didn’t quite know how to react to Haley’s “chaos follows him.”
So what to make of it? At first glance, “chaos follows him” seems to be simply an acknowledgment of Trump fatigue — what Republican voters mean when they say they liked Trump’s policies but got tired of all the “drama” surrounding Trump’s time in the White House. But on second thought, “chaos follows him” seems to be something bigger, and that is what might not sit well with many Republicans.
A commonsense reading of “chaos follows him” leads to the question: Is Haley talking about chaos that Trump created or chaos that Trump’s adversaries, Democrats, resistance, and Never Trump Republicans created in an effort to bring him down? Haley’s problem is that — this is more a guess than the result of polling — most Republican primary and caucus voters hold Democrats more to blame for the controversies of the Trump years than they hold Trump himself to blame.
Does “chaos follows him” include the Trump-Russia matter, which featured media commentators wildly speculating about collusion, slanderous Democratic opposition research, commentators calling Trump an agent of Russia, and a special counsel inquiry ending with the investigator admitting that he could not establish that what he was investigating ever happened? Who is to blame for that chaos — Trump or the Democrats and media who attacked him?
What about the other daily hysterias that seemed to comprise media coverage of Trump? Were those his doing or the work of the media? You get the point. Republicans overwhelmingly blame the media, not Trump.
But here’s the other side. In some instances, Trump did create chaos, but it’s not something that many Republicans like to acknowledge. It started when Trump first took office, when he imposed a travel ban on a few terrorism-plagued Muslim-majority nations. It was within Trump’s authority to do so, but he had done nothing to prepare the nation for doing it, and chaos briefly ensued. There were other examples, all created or exacerbated by Trump. Still, when a Republican refers to the “chaos” of the Trump years, that is usually a reference to what Republicans see as the unhinged opposition that tried to bring Trump down.
So when Haley says of Trump that “chaos follows him,” many Republicans might hear her saying: Democrats, the resistance, and Never Trumpers hate Trump, and they will make life hell if we elect him again. So vote for me instead, and we’ll avoid that problem. Some of those Republicans might view following Haley’s advice as giving in to their adversaries. And besides, if Haley were to become president, she would become the villain, the new target of the coalition that attacked Trump.
There might be other ways for a Republican to take on Trump, but all have their drawbacks. For example, one might say that Trump accomplished good things, but everything he did after Nov. 3, 2020, was a disaster. And indeed, it was a disaster, culminating in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, that was so big one might reasonably conclude it is disqualifying. That is a legitimate point of view, and a GOP candidate might say that, but he or she would end up sounding like former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, which is a good way to lose by a million miles. Just ask former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who is the most unpopular Republican on the primary ballot.
A Republican candidate might say that Trump just didn’t deliver on his promises, such as building a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. DeSantis has been trying that for quite a while, but so far, it is not catching on. If it were, DeSantis would not be 57 points behind Trump in the Fox News poll.
And then there is “chaos follows him.” Who knows if Haley will stick with the phrase — the search for the secret formula of running against Trump is an ongoing effort. And here is the worrisome news, for Haley and the other challengers: Maybe there is no secret formula.
No Republican alive today has ever run against a former president running to get his old job back. None has run against a former president they have to acknowledge “was the right president at the right time” but now seek to defeat. None has run against a former president whom voters picture in the White House, behind the Resolute Desk, standing behind the presidential seal, and boarding Air Force One — in other words, at home amid the trappings of the presidency. None has run against a former president who they have to acknowledge that “I agree with a lot of his policies.” And none has run against a former president who has been indicted four times and whose standing in the polls rose, not fell, when each charge against him was made.
So have some understanding when Haley and the other challengers struggle to find the right way to run against Trump. It isn’t easy. It might not even be possible. But here’s the thing. Trump is running like an incumbent president, but he is not the incumbent president. There have to be caucuses and primaries. There have to be other candidates so that Republicans can make a choice. If, knowing everything they know, they choose Trump again, so be it. But it is important that Haley, DeSantis, and the rest of the Republican field give the GOP a real contest.
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