Stop Trying to Make Nikki Haley Happen
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Recent horse race coverage of the Republican presidential primary is littered with accounts of Nikki Haley's "surge" or "rise."
At the Washington Monthly, we're focused on her record ... her very, very slippery record.
In Haley's Comet, Contributing Writer Margaret Carlson dissects Haley's pandering on abortion, which typifies her Zelig-esque approach:
The Carolina Contortionist is not just comfortable in her five-inch heels; she’s comfortable in her heels perched on a fence. She’s for a six-week ban. She’s for a 20-week ban. She’s for no national ban!
She loves Trump. She hates Trump. She often says he was the right president at the right time ... on the other hand, he’s an unelectable criminal defendant.
Also at the Monthly this week, in The Great Republican Crackup, Editorial Intern Marc Novicoff chronicles "dizzying Republican division, often along the silliest lines ... from red states like Texas to swing states like Michigan and Arizona."
Reading the two articles together is a reminder that the MAGA wing, while stupefyingly fractious, is the energy center of a party still dominated by Donald Trump.
Political commentators have to severely strain to make a case that the opportunistic Haley can wrest control of the party away from Trump, even though she is currently behind Trump in the Real Clear Politics averages by 51 points nationally, 33 points in Iowa, and 27 points in New Hampshire.
A classic of the so-you're-telling-me-there's-a-chance genre is CNN.com's Here’s Nikki Haley’s Path to the Republican Nomination by Harry Enten.
The piece is anchored with cherry-picked data devoid of context. For example:
Republican George H.W. Bush in 1980 and Democrat Dick Gephardt in 1988 were down by at least 20 points at this point before the [Iowa] caucuses. They both went on to win Iowa.
Bush did mount a furious come-from-behind Iowa victory, trailing Ronald Reagan 50 to 14 percent in a December poll, one month before winning 32 to 30 percent.
But 1980 was the first time Iowa Republicans held a caucus contest determined by popular vote, so there was no history of Iowa caucus polling, making it hard to determine likely voters. And Reagan barely campaigned in Iowa, while Bush blitzed the state, exposing the softness of Reagan's initial lead.
And while it's true Gephardt only mustered six percent in a December 1987 poll, that was a temporary nadir. The Missouri Democrat was leading Iowa for much of the year after Gary Hart dropped out following allegations of infidelity.
It was only when Hart dramatically re-entered the race in December, briefly rocketing to the top of the polls, that Gephardt hit bottom.
But Gephardt had a real Iowa organization. Hart's last-minute effort did not. And in January, Gephardt tapped into blue-collar angst with an ad threatening retaliatory auto tariffs on South Korea; his polling soon recovered. He won with 27 percent. Hart got one.
Enten then notes Haley doesn't need to win Iowa so much as she needs an "overperformance" in Iowa, akin to Hart in 1984, when his unexpected second-place showing in Iowa helped him make up a massive poll deficit in New Hampshire. A December New Hampshire poll had former Vice President Walter Mondale at 45 percent and Hart at a mere six; in February Hart edged Mondale 31 to 28 percent.
But Hart was an unknown before getting a windfall of coverage after Iowa.
Consider this: Dartmouth University held the first televised presidential primary debate in January 1984, about a month before the Iowa and New Hampshire contests.
Not the first televised primary debate of the cycle. The first televised primary debate ever.
(As astronaut-turned-Senator John Glenn criticized Mondale's "gobbledygook" and Mondale complained about Glenn's "baloney," Hart rose above the fray and scolded the "quarrels between you two.")
Haley's situation has no resemblance to these 1980s examples.
She was never the Iowa frontrunner. She hasn't caught the frontrunner sleeping in Iowa. She isn't an unknown figure never seen in a televised debate; tomorrow will be her fourth debate. Her "surge," since late September, amounts to a five point gain in Iowa and nationally, plus a (more impressive) 15-point gain in New Hampshire (where independents can participate).
And the frontrunner is not only well known, but has already experienced the greatest series of scandalous developments in the history of presidential campaigns, without suffering a whit of decreased support among party regulars.
Yes, sometimes late-breaking developments in the final days before early presidential nominating contests can quickly render past poll data obsolete.
But we have little quantitative or qualitative data that would suggest Trump's pole position with primary voters is tenuous and Haley is generating genuine momentum. Trump may be slightly short of 50 percent support in the early states, but a plurality is all he needs and appears to have in hand.
Sure, weird things can always happen, so we in the media shouldn't prematurely declare campaigns to be over. And while Enten is careful enough to caveat that the Haley path is "long and tough" and hardly assured, let's not concoct scenarios with little basis in history or untethered from current on-the-ground reporting.
Most Republicans either strongly want Trump as their nominee, or are comfortable with him even if he's not their first choice.
Consolidating the relatively moderate anti-Trump faction will not be enough for Haley to win. And a political chameleon like Haley is not well positioned to broaden her base by prying hard-line conservatives away from Trump.
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Best,
Bill