NIKKI HALEY PAINTS HERSELF INTO A CORNER. With the South Carolina primary less than three weeks away, Nikki Haley has become more overtly critical of former President Donald Trump. That is to be expected. After all, Haley is running against Trump one-on-one — what else is she going to do? Lagging far behind Trump, really far behind Trump, Haley has ramped up her attacks as the only way to catch up with the former president. But at the same time, Haley has few, if any, major policy differences with Trump that might normally form the basis of new political attacks. So the Haley offensive against Trump has been mostly based on personal attributes: Trump is old, he’s out of it, he’s unhinged, he’s mean — that sort of thing.
When she hits Trump that way, Haley does two things. One, she wins positive reinforcement from the parts of the political and media world that love that kind of attack on Trump. Just look at her weekend appearance on Saturday Night Live. The producers gave her valuable national airtime in a skit playing the sensible foil to a ridiculous Trump impersonator. They even offered her a little absolution on her Civil War blunder of several weeks ago. For her work, Haley received an anti-Trump pat on the head from the people who give out pats on the head.
The other thing Haley is doing is alienating many of the Republicans whose support she will need to accomplish her seemingly impossible goal of overtaking Trump. The former president leads Haley by 26 points, 58% to 32%, in the only recent South Carolina poll. Nationally, Trump leads Haley by an incredible 54 points, 73% to 19%, in the RealClearPolitics average of polls. The really simple version of her problem is: Haley needs more Republicans to vote for her. And yet she seems intent on turning off many of those GOP voters, most of whom like or appreciate or at least don’t hate Trump. Sure, you can say she was never going to win those voters anyway, and maybe she wasn’t. But she’s surely not going to win them now.
The policy similarities are an important part of what is going on. There was an extraordinary moment recently during an interview of Haley by conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt. Hewitt was asking Haley about the Israel-Hamas war and the wider Middle East concerns it has raised. It gradually became clear that Haley had nothing substantive to add to Trump’s policy and could only argue that as president, she would do what Trump did, just with a less objectionable “style.”
Hewitt began by asking Haley how she would retaliate against Iran. First, she would reinstate sanctions on Iran, Haley said. Then she would destroy Iran’s missile production sites. And then go after Iran’s leadership “the same way that we did with Soleimani,” Haley said, referring to Trump’s 2020 assassination of Qassem Soleimani, the military and terrorist leader thought to be the second most powerful man in Iran.
What was striking was that Haley’s answer was exactly the Trump playbook. Hewitt noted that Trump had ordered the killing of Soleimani and then asked, “How do you expect your decision-making process would differ from that of the former president if you were … in the White House?” Haley took some credit for helping Trump to do the right thing and then said this: “The big part of this is it’s the style in which you do it.” Haley then explained that she disagrees with a number of things Trump has said — calling Hezbollah smart or writing “love letters” with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un or congratulating the Chinese Communist Party on its 70th anniversary.
The exchange was a perfect example of the dilemma facing a Republican running against Trump. Haley fully agreed with what Trump did and objected to what Trump said. Haley is running the campaign that other anti-Trump candidates have tried and failed, offering the substance of Trump governance without the “drama” of day-to-day life with Trump.
Millions of Republican voters have considered the Trump-policy-without-drama argument. They’ve weighed their opinions of what Trump has done versus their opinions of how Trump acted. And they’ve come to the conclusion that they value Trump’s policies and decisions more than they object to his style. For them, it’s not the “style in which you do it.”
Every time she goes after Trump in a way that delights Saturday Night Live producers, Haley paints herself a little farther into a corner. She reduces the number of Republicans she might win over, not just in South Carolina but in the country.
Yes, Haley is receiving praise for her anti-Trump turn. For example, the virulently anti-Trump liberal magazine the Atlantic recently wrote: “In the past week, Haley has been on a tear, calling Trump ‘totally unhinged,’ ‘self-absorbed,’ and lacking in ‘moral clarity.’ Her campaign unleashed a new attack-ad series in which Trump and President Biden are portrayed as two ‘grumpy old men’ standing in the way of the next generation. And yesterday, Haley posted a gag photo of a Trump Halloween costume labeled ‘Weakest General Election Candidate Ever.’ To paraphrase the words of the Democratic-primary candidate Marianne Williamson, Girlfriend, this is so on.”
Do lots of South Carolina Republican voters look at that and say, Girlfriend, this is so on? We’ll know more on primary night. For its part, Politico wrote that Haley “has entered her YOLO stage” — You Only Live Once — suggesting that she is so far behind Trump that she really doesn’t have anything to lose.
This has nothing to do with fairness or with Trump’s feelings. Like he does with any opponent who represents a real challenge, Trump has attacked Haley relentlessly, calling her “birdbrain” and even getting catty about the dress she wore on election night in New Hampshire. He used his victory speech that night to carp about Haley taking the stage early to claim a close race. Trump will hit Haley as hard as he feels he needs and believes he can get away with.
As for the ability to take a hit, has anyone taken more than Trump over the last eight years? Don’t worry about his feelings. And Trump often remains on good terms with people who have trashed him in the past. So Haley could throw a lot worse at Trump and still work with him in the future if that were the way things worked out.
So it has nothing to do with fairness or with Trump’s feelings, but it does have something to do with the voters. The problem with Haley’s style-based attacks on Trump is that they irritate voters, who have already rejected the thinking, and make them less likely to switch their vote from Trump to Haley. Seeing the Saturday Night Live skit, one well-connected South Carolina politico texted, “Everyone in SC politics who is not on her payroll is scratching their heads watching her.” And with that, Haley painted herself just a little more into the corner.
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