With the first Republican Primary out of the way and the next already set for South Carolina, Republicans are gearing up for another fighting match between former President Donald Trump, and his own former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley.
In Tuesday’s primary, Republicans went to the polls and helped Trump score a huge victory ahead of Haley, who trailed at 43.4 per cent. Now, since the primary wasn’t a caucus, Trump was able to sweep away all 22 delegates at stake.
Also, different to last week’s caucus, was the fact, that Haley had more counties to pick up. In Iowa, Trump had 98 of the 99 Iowan counties. This time, Haley picked up through the state’s capital, Manchester, as well as other major counties, including Bow and Concord counties, where she had a 5- and 9-point lead over Trump respectively. Despite where you stand with Nikki Haley on the issues, she is showing to be a strong candidate going into the Sunshine State.
Bidenomics, a focus of discussion, aims to derail petty politics and give the voters a chance to speak about kitchen-table issues.
Haley’s campaign is extensively successful at breaking some of the momentum, Trump has gained over the past 6 months. It’s quite surprising Nikki Haley made it this far, and without much criticism some of the other candidates faced across their short-spanned endeavour for becoming President of the United States. Now, that’s changing, with Trump seeing Haley as a big threat to the race to win delegates, and as a jab to his support, amongst moderate and independent-leaning voters.
In New Hampshire alone, after the primary, it was found that Haley managed to change the minds of many of the independents of the state. A whopping 30% said that they would never vote for Trump in a general election, given the case made by Governor Haley against him, and the shadowing unpopularity to disassociate from Trump-something that was absent for a large part of the 2020 election.
With just over 25 days left to the South Carolina Primary and Super Tuesday states, Haley is looking to capture this anti-Trump sentiment and cash it in her grassroots funding effort to keep the campaign afloat. Some of her biggest supporters-even those who are new likely voters-feel that she must sustain her campaign through the convention, even if the GOP presumptively nominates Trump, in a biased move against the basic rules of democracy. News about this broke earlier this week when it was found that Ronna McDaniel, chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, was considering announcing that Trump had been the presumptive nominee for the GOP, even though Super Tuesday states are still a month away in March.
In South Carolina, current polls have her at 30%, while Trump is at 60%, with most of the lead. While it doesn’t seem to be in Haley’s favour, she’s pushing through with all the funding she’s received and running ads across the nation to make sure she proves her point that Trump has alternatives. At the same time, some of her critics, also feel that she may be trying to keep a close distance between herself and Trump since Trump may choose to select her as his running mate. And while that is a possibility, it would also prove disastrous for both their reputations, backtracking from all the jabs they’ve made at each other in the past. But when has that ever stopped the Republican Party from uniting itself as the apparent synonymous function to hypocrisy?
This got her much-needed criticism from the Haley Campaign and her surrogates across the nation, including Governor Chris Sununu of New Hampshire, who cited the move as ridiculous. It’s worth noting that Haley and her campaign have been very open against the establishment of the GOP recently for something that could be linked to a 2016 Donald Trump, who came in looking to win over the RNC establishment and was so averse to the idea of his election. That’s not all. Nikki Haley is also using tactics like celebrating coming in second place as a big win-sort of scoring on the point, that if Trump were to go to jail, with one of his many pending legal cases out of the way, she would very well be next in line to run against Joe Biden in the fall.
Now, sources say the Biden Campaign is closely assessing Nikki Haley’s place in the polls, and how voters would feel if she were put on the ballot paper against the President. However, the team is not at all concerned about her, perhaps since she has been very apparently inconsistent on many issues including the fact that she doesn’t believe that much in racism and that she seems to distance herself away from Trump, while also praising him.
For the Biden Campaign, what’s the primary focus right now? Well, it is securing a deal to protect the Southern Border and border cities. It also appeals to industrial states and sets up a more robust economy in swing states, including North Carolina, where the infrastructure bill passed two years ago, is creating many new jobs. Bidenomics, a focus of discussion, aims to derail petty politics and give the voters a chance to speak about kitchen-table issues. Democrats are also hoping to get in place legislative powers and control both houses of Congress. Getting rid of right-leaning Democrats is also a primary focus going into the primary summer and the general election.
The writer is a columnist and a linguistic activist.