The Republicans’ Haley Mary pass

The New Hampshire primary is likely to be the last opportunity for anyone other than Donald Trump to demonstrate there is any chance they could be the next Republican candidate for US president. If former South Carolina governor and US ambassador to the UN in Trump’s administration Nikki Haley can’t at the very least run him close, the impression of the Republican primary as a coronation will be all but confirmed.

The media around New Hampshire have a resigned tone. Take The Washington Post‘s analysis:

Might the first primary of the cycle yield an upset that propelled a different candidate toward the nomination? Could polls taken at the beginning of January finally demonstrate that some obstacle was about to land in Trump’s path toward November?

With new Washington Post-Monmouth University polling added to other recent measures of the contest, it seems safe to offer an answer to that question: no.

Only our own national broadsheet seems hold out some dim hope: “In the interest of democracy, it is to be hoped feisty former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, the only Republican left to oppose Trump, will show more ticker than [Ron] DeSantis,” reads The Australian‘s editorial today. “That will be hard in the face of Trump’s uncouth denigration of her. It is vital she does not allow herself to be bullied into withdrawing … If Haley sticks to her guns in the manner of her Republican hero Ronald Reagan, she has the potential to deny Trump the coronation he craves but does not deserve.”

But the sense that Trump’s shuffle to the nomination is to be completely unobstructed is so pervasive that Haley’s latest speeches on the campaign trail went a bit Trumpy, urging New Hampshire voters to defy the “political class” behind the former president. But most noteworthy would appear to be the relative lack of activity in what is normally considered a crucial contest: “The big thing that’s missing: candidates. And campaigning”, WashPo reports, and The New York Times concludes it “adds up to something that feels like less than a serious competition”. DeSantis’ withdrawal has helped Trump’s numbers more than Haley’s.

Vanity Fair sums up her approach as a “soft-focus not-quite-never-Trumpism that might peel away doubters, independents, and even Democrats”, best illustrated by her regal turn from girlboss aphorism to culture war bait in an Iowa stump speech: “We have to raise strong girls because strong girls become strong women and strong women become strong leaders. And none of that happens if we have biological boys playing in girls sports.”

And of course, she finds herself in the same bind as anyone up against Trump in the warped universe with its own rules and standards where only he seems to live. So Haley rightly gets pilloried for what was almost certainly a calculated decision to omit slavery from her assessment of what caused America’s civil war (the 1860s version, not the one about to happen).

But Trump, ever fragrant with the scent of senescence, can give a rambling account of the January 6 riots in which he repeatedly mistakes Haley for former Democrat House speaker Nancy Pelosi (“You know, Nikki Haley, Nikki Haley, Nikki Haley … did you know they destroyed all of the information, all of the evidence, everything, deleted and destroyed all of it? All of it, because of lots of things, like Nikki Haley is in charge of security … “) and his advisers can shrug it off as a “distinction without a difference”.

The presumptive Republican nominee can call Haley a “birdbrain” or mockingly bring up her Indian heritage (referring to her first name, Nimarata, and getting it wrong, naturally) and watch his lead over her grow while Haley has to make clear she voted for Trump twice and was proud to represent his catastrophic administration. When she does point out that Trump is having trouble keeping his names straight (we’d add dates and world events to that list), she stops herself: “I’m not saying anything derogatory.”

Has Nikki Haley got any chance of beating Donald Trump? Let us know by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.