GOP RACE LOSING ENERGY FAST. Have you noticed something about the intensity of interest in the Republican presidential race? It seems to have peaked earlier this week with the Iowa caucuses, specifically with former President Donald Trump‘s 51% win, 30 points ahead of second-place Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and 32 points ahead of third-place former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley. After Iowa, in the conventional scenario, the race’s energy was supposed to rise in the big contest in New Hampshire, and then rise further to an epic showdown in South Carolina.
Instead, interest seems to be flat or declining. Before Iowa, every discussion of the GOP race included this caveat: But no one has voted yet! Now they have, even just 110,000 voters in Iowa, and there seems to be a growing assumption that the voters’ decision has been made. It’s over, or nearly over.
All through the race, Trump’s critics hoped that the contest would narrow, that Trump’s competitors would drop out and make the contest a one-on-one faceoff between Trump and one remaining anti-Trump candidate. The race could then go to a climactic finish in New Hampshire and South Carolina, and the anti-Trump majority could vanquish the former president.
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The problem is the anti-Trump forces have almost gotten their wish, but their preferred result doesn’t seem to be happening. Trump is running in New Hampshire against Haley, with DeSantis barely a blip in the race. And yet the polls — remember, no one in New Hampshire has voted yet! — continue to show Trump with a solid lead, about 13 points in the RealClearPolitics average of polls.
Now, Haley’s strategy is raising questions about how hard she will fight Trump with everything on the line. She is known as a hard worker and has thrown herself fully into the campaign for months. But now there are several stories to the effect that she is easing off in New Hampshire right at the moment she needs to push the accelerator to the floor.
Some of those hoping to defeat Trump “complain that [Haley] isn’t barnstorming the state aggressively enough in the final days before the first-in-the-nation primary next week,” reports the Washington Post. A report from NBC notes Republican unhappiness with Haley’s refusal to debate DeSantis, as had been previously scheduled, and her refusal to take questions from voters at town halls after her what-caused-the-Civil-War gaffe three weeks ago. From NBC: “‘Everybody in New Hampshire is disappointed’ about Haley choosing not to debate, said Julianna Bergeron, a Republican National Committee member from the state who has not endorsed a candidate. She said declining to take questions from voters on the stump gives off a similar vibe and that Haley’s highly controlled campaigning could turn off voters who are still undecided.”
It should be said that Haley left New Hampshire briefly late Tuesday to fly to South Carolina to visit her ailing father, who is in his 90s and has been hospitalized. Certainly no one would hold that against her. But beyond that brief absence, there seems to be a lack of the kind of intense energy that has characterized the campaign earlier. From the Washington Post: “Mike Dennehy, a GOP strategist in New Hampshire who helped lead Republican John McCain to victory in the state in 2000 and 2008, said he doesn’t understand the Haley campaign’s strategy to win the state, calling her attacks on Trump ‘weak’ and her one-event-a-day schedule inadequate.”
On those “weak” attacks on Trump: Haley is clearly trying to walk a fine line between not insulting pro-Trump voters and not turning off anti-Trump voters. But she might not be succeeding, especially with the anti-Trump voters she desperately needs. The line Haley has repeated most often is this: “I believe Donald Trump was the right president at the right time. I agree with a lot of his policies.” What true Trump opponent would approve of that? No wonder the voters most vehemently opposed to Trump aren’t terribly energized by Haley.
In recent months, Haley has become a favorite of the Republican Party donor class, which is deeply anti-Trump. But a prominent member of that class is so concerned by Haley’s effort in New Hampshire that he is publicly threatening to cut her off unless she does well on Tuesday. This is from the Financial Times: “Ken Langone, co-founder of Home Depot, said he was prepared to give Nikki Haley ‘a nice sum of money,’ but may wait until Tuesday’s primary before making the ‘major gift.’ ‘If she doesn’t get traction in New Hampshire, you don’t throw money down a rat hole,’ he told the Financial Times.” However serious you might assess the situation to be, it’s not good when a billionaire donor describes your campaign as a “rat hole.”
On Thursday afternoon, Haley’s team was sending out emails stressing the number of events she took part in that morning, pushing back against the notion that she is not going at full speed. Then it sent out her schedule for Friday, which listed six events starting at 7:20 a.m. and ending at 6:30 p.m. That’s full-tilt campaigning.
Then there is Ron DeSantis, who is trying to be both in and out of the New Hampshire race. After Iowa, where he beat the growing assumption that Haley would take second place to Trump, DeSantis made a quick stop in South Carolina on the way to New Hampshire. Then, once in New Hampshire, he announced that he would campaign over the weekend in South Carolina. What’s going on? Obviously he wants to plant the flag in South Carolina and signal that he will fight Haley in her home state. But his moves just served to highlight that he is nowhere in New Hampshire. In the two most recent polls, DeSantis has 6%, while Haley is in the high 30s and Trump is in the 50s. DeSantis’s post-Iowa movements seem erratic at best.
Finally, Trump, after holding the fewest events of any candidate in Iowa, is not exactly burning up the schedule in New Hampshire, either. But he is surfing on a new wave of confidence after his majority-of-the-vote win in Iowa. If Trump knocks out Haley in New Hampshire by the margin the polls are suggesting now — say, 14 points — the race might be over.
In the end, that is the suspicion — that it might be soon over — that is likely behind the decline in the intensity of interest in the Republican contest. On Thursday night, Haley appeared on a town hall on CNN. She said her goal for New Hampshire “is to do better than we did in Iowa.” That wasn’t a particularly ambitious goal given her third-place finish in Iowa. A lot better than she did in Iowa, like winning New Hampshire, would turn the race upside down. But just a little better than she did in Iowa, like finishing a distant second instead of a distant third, could mean the end of the campaign. New Hampshire is only the second vote in the Republican presidential schedule, but unless Haley musters a greatly improved effort, it might be the last.
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