Ideological purity at the cost of victory: That pursuit plagued the Republican Party long before Donald Trump came around, but now the loudest MAGA voices are pushing it with a vengeance — at the risk of driving away the disaffected Biden voters the GOP needs if it’s to win (and keep) a clear majority this fall, and a mandate for real change from the voters.
Spare us the whining over Nikki Haley seeking the votes of independents (and even disaffected Democrats) in her quest for the White House: It doesn’t make her a RINO (Republican In Name Only), it makes her smart.
Tellingly, the only two GOP candidates left, Trump and Haley, are the ones who didn’t promise a self-defeating hard line on abortion — each signaling that it’d be pointless to push for some national law drastically limiting it right now: The votes just aren’t there, and won’t be any time soon.
This is far bigger than who makes it out of New Hampshire, where Haley believes her common-sense tone will appeal to independents fed up with President Biden yet reluctant to vote for Trump.
Among unaffiliated voters, who make up 40% of New Hampshire’s electorate and can cast ballots in the GOP primary, Haley topped Trump by a whopping 58% to 30% in a CNN poll Sunday.
And of course swing voters will be crucial to winning the White House in November.
In Maricopa County, Ariz., for instance, Trump beat Hillary Clinton by just three points in 2016 but lost to Biden by two in 2020 — and less than one point statewide.
Erie County, Pa., shifted from backing President Barack Obama in 2012 to putting Trump over the top by less than a point in 2016 — only to back Biden 50%-49% in 2020.
For the record, Haley’s outreach to independents hardly means she’s jettisoned her conservative bona fides: As South Carolina’s governor, she lowered taxes, toughened voter-ID requirements, reformed public pensions; at the United Nations, she faced down the anti-American bureaucracy and both US enemies like Iran and Russia as well as the clueless “split the difference” Europeans.
She’s vowing to secure the border — and is as conservative as anyone on foreign policy. Recall her fierce support for Israel, particularly as Trump’s UN ambassador.
It’s ridiculous to call her a RINO for daring to contest Trump’s march to the nomination — as silly as calling Trump a RINO in 2016 for getting in Jeb Bush’s way.
Heck, Trump switched political parties no less than five times since 1987.
More, it’s not just the White House at stake: The GOP needs to win enough Senate and House seats to pass legislation, too, and roll back all the green pork and all the other waste Democrats rammed through in Biden’s first two years.
You don’t win strong majorities by demanding everyone toe the line on everything: You build a big tent where everyone basically agrees on the most important things — the economy, the border, strong national security.
Neither MAGA nor the GOP will prosper as some exclusive and exclusionary club, whether its terms are dictated by Trump or Ted Cruz, by the old Chamber of Commerce crew or opportunists loudly claiming to be the only true believers.
Endless litmus tests, especially arbitrary ones, can only send the ex-Biden voters running back to the Democrats, as they did in most of the country in 2022.
Keep your movement “pure,” and you keep it too small to make a lasting difference.