Nikki Haley shows Hillary Clinton-esque contempt for Iowa voters
Jeremiah Poff
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In her bid to become the last remaining Republican challenger to the expected renomination of former President Donald Trump, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley is taking a page out of Hillary Clinton’s playbook: insulting voters.
At a rally in New Hampshire on Wednesday, Haley did her best impersonation of the failed and hated presidential candidate by insinuating that the results of the Iowa caucuses in less than two weeks will need to be “corrected” by the Granite State.
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“You know, Iowa starts it. You know that you correct it, and then my sweet state of South Carolina brings it home,” she told her crowd of supporters in New Hampshire.
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Haley’s insulting remark draws parallels to Clinton, who infamously said she wanted to put coal miners out of business before the West Virginia primary in 2016 and called Trump supporters a “basket of deplorables” in the months leading up to the general election. Needless to say, Clinton lost, proving that insulting or dismissing the concerns of a wide swath of voters is generally a bad idea for someone trying to win elected office with the support of said voters.
There is certainly good reason for why Haley would prioritize the Granite State over Iowa. The RealClearPolitics average of polls shows her in a tight battle for second place with Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) in Iowa but more than 30 points behind Trump. In New Hampshire, she is the clear-cut second-place candidate, trailing Trump by slightly more than 20 points but 14 points ahead of third-place former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.
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Thus, no one faults Haley for choosing to dedicate the bulk of her campaign resources to the early state most likely to deliver her an upset victory. But her remark that New Hampshire will “correct” Iowa reeks of condescension and contempt for an electorate she claims to have not written off, and it could come back to bite her in the state she’s staking her political fortunes on.
Trump enjoys comfortable leads in Iowa and New Hampshire, and Haley’s suggestion that Iowa will make a mistake by supporting the former president could easily come back to bite her in the Granite State primary by motivating Trump’s support base even further.