The Unfolding Scenario

The GOP presidential nomination contest is quickly collapsing around three candidates. Can either challenger defeat Trump in Iowa and/or New Hampshire? A scenario is unfolding.

Editor’s note: Apologies for the drop in posts over the past month, but we’re in the process of a challenging relocation. Moving is hell and is not recommended. Choose your moving company wisely. And stop accumulating stuff your inheritors will never want or need.

For Republican GOP presidential primary/caucus watchers, we live in interesting times, as in the old Chinese curse. It’s true differently for all Americans, but let’s focus on the Grand Old Party and its presidential primary contest.

Between managing contractors and movers to a new home in bucolic western Loudoun County, Virginia, I’ve watched events in the ever-unfolding GOP contest. It’s a helpful distraction while unpacking a few million boxes.

First, it’s helpful to remember the various coalitions within the GOP, which has all but cemented itself as the party of the working class. They’re about to collapse into two. Stay with me.

I remember my first congressional campaign foray as a press secretary in northeast Oklahoma in 1978. I always cheered when I saw my candidate’s bumper sticker on the back of a pickup truck, a sighting as frequent as the Northern Lights being seen south of the Mason-Dixon line. Even in deep blue northern Virginia, I see GOP candidate stickers frequently. The phrase “country club Republicans” is seldom heard these days.

When the late US Senator Howell Heflin (D-AL) was running for reelection in 1990, with his signature deep southern drawl, he mentioned in a campaign speech how Republicans were encouraging him, one of the last genuinely conservative southern Democrats, to switch parties. “I’m not one of THEM,” he sneered. He lived long enough to see not only his successor, former GOP Sen. Jeff Sessions, win but his colleague, former Sen. Richard Shelby, change parties and become one of THEM. The now-deep-red state will host the fourth GOP presidential primary debate Wednesday night.

I also thought the GOP would never lose the “managerial class” of so-called “country club Republicans.” But they have, as a large swath of higher educated, higher income voters, shifted to the Democratic party and embraced an increasingly secular, “progressive” pro-government, virtue-signaling political worldview. An increasing number of younger voters, indoctrinated by woke institutions, are now the stormtroopers for the Democratic left. For evidence, witness the shocking array of anti-Semitic protests on campuses and elsewhere. Their young minds are imprisoned by an intersectional “oppressed versus oppressors” mindset and incapable of seeing the emotional immaturity and illogic of the philosophy, dripping with victimhood and resentment.

A favorite unwoke Democratic Substack site (they exist), The Liberal Patriot, has repeatedly documented these shifts, much to their chagrin.

But as I remember distinctly from my campaign work from a few decades ago, “working class” voters outnumber the more highly educated (as measured by diplomas, not knowledge, intellectual capacity, or, more importantly, wisdom). Increasing numbers of non-white voters, including Hispanic and Black males, are slowly but undeniably shifting to the GOP, even as once reliably Republican suburbs are increasingly purple, if fickle.

Religious affiliation is also a poor predictor of political bent. According to a Washington Post exit poll in Ohio of last month’s election, 24 percent of self-described White evangelical Christian voters - generally assumed to be pro-life - supported Issue One, a constitutional amendment to protect access to abortion at any time for any reason.

The bottom line is that recent political shifts are building momentum, and significant events are paradigm-shifting, most recently for Jewish voters and others shocked at the anti-Israel, pro-Hamas protests and intimidation of Jewish business owners, as was seen in downtown Philadelphia last night, largely unreported by the legacy media. But even the Philadelphia Inquirer couldn’t ignore several hundred protestors calling for violence (“intifada revolution”) in front of Goldie in Center City, owned by an Israeli-born businessman, Mike Solomonov.

Between government handling of Covid, 500 violent events across 200 cities in reaction to George Floyd’s death, Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal and multi-trillion-dollar spending spree, and the proliferation of Charlottevilles across college campuses after Hamas’s terror attack, fundamental things are afoot.

Pennsylvania first-term Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro, who is Jewish, certainly took notice.

This response:

Let’s inventory the significant events that are now factors in the GOP presidential contest and the political environment in general.

Debates

The third GOP presidential debate was the best of the season so far (and the fourth will be the chippiest, given that two of the candidates are fighting for relevance and survival, Vivek Ramaswamy and former NJ Gov. Chris Christie).

There was also the disappointing debate hosted by Fox News’s Sean Hannity with Governors Ron DeSantis and Gavin Newsom, best remembered for their talking over each other. DeSantis won on points but not personality. It likely didn’t change any minds in the GOP ranks or elsewhere.

Where there have been several “winners” and “losers” during the debates, Nikki Haley seems to have benefitted the most.

Americans For Prosperity Action and other endorsements

The Charles Koch-led (the other Koch brother passed away) political action arm of Americans For Prosperity has endorsed former United Nations Ambassador and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley. Given the organization's six-million-strong network, the libertarian-leaning AFP’s endorsement is meaningful. It also signals financial support, which has flowed Haley’s way recently.

For Iowa, Gov. DeSantis has captured key endorsements from Iowa’s highly popular Governor, Kim Reyolds, and evangelical leader Bob Vander Plaats, who helped prior GOP candidates win the Iowa Caucus (Gov. Mike Huckabee, Sen. Rick Santorum, and Sen. Ted Cruz). DeSantis is putting all his marbles into Iowa; Haley and Christie in New Hampshire, where incumbent Joe Biden has removed his name from the Democratic ballot. More about that mistake later.

Hamas’ brutal attack on Israel

The reaction to the brutal attack of several hundred Hamas terrorists on Israeli men, women, and children, and Israel’s response to it, is contributing to a global paradigm shift. That and events in Ukraine and increasing tensions in the Taiwan Strait have raised foreign affairs and national security as top campaign issues, not far behind inflation and the economy.

House Republican disarray and international elections

The vote to remove Kevin McCarthy and replace him - eventually - with new Speaker Mike Johnson amidst budget and spending crises - created the impression that Republicans are in disarray and can’t run a two-car funeral. That has calmed down somewhat under Speaker Johnson's steady and competent leadership, but rough seas lie ahead. He’s being sorely tested right now.

Add to that the spectacle of populist revolts in Argentina (Javier Mileil as the chainsaw-wielding new President) and the “far right” (the media never refers to anyone as “far left”) Geert Wilders, whose anti-immigration but otherwise culturally libertarian party won the most seats in recent parliamentary elections, and might be the Netherlands’ next prime minister.

Closer to home, a Republican candidate won an election as Mayor of Charleston, South Carolina. It’s the first time since 1877 - Reconstruction - that a Republican was elected as Mayor. Also, the Black Mayor of Dallas, Texas, has switched to the GOP.

Worth repeating: Fundamental things are afoot.

Polling in Canada also has its voters ready to dump its eight years of Liberal government, but those elections are unlikely to be held until October 2025.

The Budding Scenario

What follows seems to be unfolding before our eyes. No guarantee and I’m often wrong, but the handwriting is on the wall.

It is increasingly clear that the “establishment,” national security wing of the GOP, which is mainly anti-Trump, is beginning to coalesce behind Haley amidst disarray among DeSantis’s “Super PAC” community. The conventional thinking is that the field needs to narrow down to a single candidate against Trump to defeat him.

Conversely, the party “base,” its rank and file, remains pretty solidly behind President Donald Trump, even though he’s likely to spend more time in courtrooms than on the campaign trail, and faces the strong possibility, if not likelihood, of at least one conviction among the three trials he’s facing (my money is on an obstruction of justice charge related to his handling of classified documents). Then what?

It is not without precedent for competing campaigns to cut deals - understandings - between each other. I saw that happen in Arkansas in 1980 when then-Sen. Howard Baker’s campaign turned their support over to Ronald Reagan to prevent a solid organizational campaign by George H. W. Bush from winning that state’s caucuses. It was something of an upset. I was working at the time for the Diamond State’s lone GOP Congressman, the late John Paul Hammerschmidt, a close personal friend of Bush and chair of his Arkansas campaign.

Watch for a similar deal between Haley and DeSantis in Iowa, with Haley happy to secure a distant third-place showing to help DeSantis defeat Trump.

Watch for New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (R), who is anti-Trump, to endorse Nikki Haley. In my humble opinion, he is likely to conclude that Haley stands the best chance of preventing a Trump nomination in a state where DeSantis has barely campaigned.

The popular Sununu, who is not seeking reelection in 2024, is highly influential. Add to that the specter of independents being allowed to vote in the party primary of their choice. With Biden vacating the state in a pique over its refusal to cede first in the nation status to South Carolina - Biden finished fifth in New Hampshire in 2020 - more moderate independents are now likely to flock to the GOP primary. That benefits Haley and possibly Christie. And it helps neither Trump nor Biden.

Biden’s handlers, counting on a Trump nomination, may rue the day they skipped the New Hampshire primary, especially if Haley defeats Trump in the Granite State primary, a far better predictor of GOP presidential success than Iowa’s caucuses.

Haley benefits if DeSantis wins Iowa’s caucuses, with Trump limping to New Hampshire. South Carolina’s primary soon follows, home turf for Haley (despite Trump leading in polls there).

If there’s to be a candidate who emerges as the “Trump alternative,” it is likely to be Nikki Haley, at least at this point, with the two largest wings of the GOP braced for combat in the remaining primary states.

The GOP presidential primary is now very interesting; this is an excellent time to start paying attention. Wednesday’s debate will be a good place to start, which promises to be the most important event of the primary season thus far. . . until the next one.

Now, back to work for me.