Nikki Haley exited the presidential race on Wednesday with a final challenge for former president Donald Trump: to bring her more moderate and independent supporters into the MAGA fold.
To do so, GOP strategists say Trump will have to turn down the temperature of his rhetoric. It remains to be seen whether he will — or even can.
Haley said it is now on Trump to “earn the votes of those in our party and beyond it who did not support him, and I hope he does that.”
“At its best, politics is about bringing people into your cause, not turning them away. And our conservative cause badly needs more people. This is now his time for choosing,” Haley said, an apparent reference to Trump’s having said he would “permanently” ban anyone who donated to Haley from the MAGA camp.
But while Trump made an appeal for party unity in his speech on Tuesday, he showed little concern for bridging intraparty divisions in a post on Truth Social on Wednesday: “Nikki Haley got TROUNCED last night, in record setting fashion, despite the fact that Democrats, for reasons unknown, are allowed to vote in Vermont, and various other Republican Primaries.”
He did ultimately go on to extend a gracious invitation to Haley’s supporters to “join the greatest movement in the history of our nation.”
GOP strategists told National Review this message is the exact opposite of the approach Trump should be taking.
To court these voters, Trump should focus on two things, says an adviser to a super PAC that supported Haley: make a concerted effort to prioritize reining in government spending and to generally soften his tone, as his rhetoric has harmed the Republican brand and turned off voters in key swing states.
“Whatever it is that he has to do, I think he is completely unwilling — and in many instances unable — to get himself to do what it takes,” the adviser said.
GOP strategist Alice Stewart similarly suggested that Trump has had a difficult time getting out of his own way when trying to broaden his appeal.
“You have to look at what attracted Haley supporters to her, and a big part of that is the fact that she advocated for less drama and less chaos,” she said. “And that’s what Donald Trump needs to recognize.”
On this issue, Trump could stand to take a page out of President Biden’s book: The Democrat issued a more even-keeled appeal to Haley’s voters in a statement on Wednesday.
“Donald Trump made it clear he doesn’t want Nikki Haley’s supporters. I want to be clear: There is a place for them in my campaign,” he said.
He added: “I know there is a lot we won’t agree on. But on the fundamental issues of preserving American democracy, on standing up for the rule of law, on treating each other with decency and dignity and respect, on preserving NATO and standing up to America’s adversaries, I hope and believe we can find common ground.”
In further evidence that Democrats have their sights set on Haley’s supporters, a super PAC that advocated for non-Republicans to support Haley in the GOP primary contests will now shift its focus to urging Haley’s voters to support Biden in November, Semafor first reported.
“This is an effort from people who have actually supported Nikki Haley to try to guide as many of them as possible toward the candidate that respects democracy, even if they may disagree with him politically,” Primary Pivot co-founder Robert Schwartz told Semafor. The group will now become Haley Voters for Biden and will focus on Haley voters in key states including Michigan and North Carolina.
This appeal is a smart one, says Republican strategist Lorna Romero-Ferguson, who believes Biden absolutely has a chance to pull in some of these voters.
“The message that President Biden issued this morning was spot on and it was the right tone,” she said.
Also smart was Biden’s decision to run against Trump from the very beginning, the Arizona-based strategist adds. Though Trump did in fact face more formidable primary challengers than did the current president, he spent more time than he should have attacking Haley rather than attacking Biden, she suggested, contributing to the uphill battle Trump now faces to bring in Haley voters he may have alienated.
“My fear is that they’re going to take those voters for granted, that they’re going to make the assumption that they will all just come home at the end of the day and support Trump, which we’ve seen in previous election cycles since 2016 that that hasn’t necessarily played out for Republicans who have run a Trump-type campaign,” she said.
Meanwhile, the super-PAC adviser warned that many people are “in denial” that Trump has a problem among Republican voters. “People will point to the fact that it’ll be like, oh, independents or Democrat voters or former Biden voters were the ones voting for Haley,” the adviser said. “What we don’t have is any indication of how many people or how many of those people are former Republicans, and so there are a lot of Republican or potential Republican voters that Trump needs to be successful that he has a problem with.”
NR’s Noah Rothman predicts that Haley voters will in fact come home to the GOP candidate in the fall, “so long as their candidate gives them a reason to.” However, Republicans will be in trouble if they convince themselves that the anti-Trump vote in the primaries is attributable only to “resistance libs,” or if they suggest those who are skeptical of Trump’s candidacy are “welcome to leave” the party, as Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump, the incoming co-chair of the RNC, recently said.
But in a strong sign that even Trump’s GOP detractors will fall in line, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell finally endorsed the former president on Wednesday despite the pair’s strained relationship.
And Stewart says Trump is poised to benefit from having faced only a short primary challenge, giving him more time to line up with the RNC and merge resources to take on Biden, a benefit that is “immeasurable.”
Around NR
• Noah Rothman urges Republicans not to dismiss the GOP anti-Trump vote:
The anti-Trump vote on the right is modest, but it illustrates a consistent phenomenon. Donald Trump has a problem with higher-income, degree-holding, high-propensity voters in the suburbs and exurbs, whether they identify as Republican or not.
• Biden won the normality test in 2020 — but that advantage is now long gone, writes Rich Lowry:
If Democrats hope to rerun the 2020 campaign, they will once again have plenty of material to work with against Trump, but the other side of the equation — the supposed safe alternative — is AWOL and never coming back.
• The Republican Governors Association (RGA) kickstarted its offensive against North Carolina state attorney general Josh Stein on Wednesday, one day after voters in the key battleground state formally chose Stein and Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson as the Democratic and Republican gubernatorial candidates, respectively. As Audrey Fahlberg reports:
The RGA is up with a new website called “The Real Josh Stein,” first shared with National Review, that highlights the Democratic nominee’s liberal record and ties him to President Joe Biden, who is unpopular in North Carolina and narrowly lost the state in 2020 to former president and likely 2024 nominee Donald Trump.
• The GOP never stopped being Trump’s party, Philip Klein writes:
Nikki Haley dominated Donald Trump on Super Tuesday among voters who believe the economy is doing well and those who approve of the job President Biden is doing. Unfortunately for Haley, she is seeking the Republican nomination. And among the groups that mattered on that front, she got trounced.
• Biden doesn’t know what he’s talking about when he claims he’s won the last five general-election polls, Jim Geraghty says:
It’s hard to get a clear sense of what Biden has in mind. In the RealClearPolitics average, Biden leads just three of the last ten national polls, with one tied. It’s a similar story over at FiveThirtyEight. Both RCP and FiveThirtyEight are pretty darn good poll aggregators, and it’s unlikely that they would miss some survey that the allegedly anti-Biden mainstream media has refused to mention — much less miss five in a row.
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