Only the other day, I asked “What happened to Ron DeSantis?” His campaign survives on life support; it’s connected to a breathing machine but has no brain activity.
Republican operatives invited DeSantis to enter the gladiator arena. He accepted the challenge with no serious training. A street dog who picked a fight with one trained to fight. Why train when you’ve been all but assured that you will be the heir-apparent to the presidency; once Trump is fully dispatched of course.
A few things happened in the interim, however.
The debates.
While DeSantis may have won the debates on substance. He lost in the battle of public opinion. DeSantis was supposed to trounce the second-place wannabes, and emerge with all of their support. After this, the RINO contingent of the Republican Party would mount a new set of offensives in conjunction with Democrats to get Trump.
Trump didn’t go away.
And in fact, with his newly designed nuclear-powered Teflon suit, Trump got even more powerful. As DeSantis struggled to remain the top second-place challenger, Trump targeted him.
“Ron DeSantimonious”, Trump mocked him.
DeSantis got in his own way.
Meanwhile, DeSantis did himself no favors. He drones on about Florida, as if that will impress other areas of the country. He’s horrible on foreign policy, and his debate with Newsom delivered nothing.
As all this was happening, DeSantis ignored the whispers in the wind. And he made no adjustments, thus allowing the wind to continue to shift in the direction of Nikki Haley. More apropos is the perception of the shift to Haley.
If you still believe the fake news press, then you might (stupidly) believe that Nikki Haley could win the Republican nomination. Once DeSantis’ light dimmed, the Republican establishment needed a new champion. Since one won’t emerge, the establishment again tried to create one.
Meet the new and supposedly improved Nikki Haley.
Oh, she’s the same old tired Nikki Haley. The turncoat who said she’d not run if Trump ran. And what’s different that makes Haley suddenly viable? Absolutely nothing.
If she and DeSantis shift spots, how does this affect the Republican nomination? No more than if you or I declare a run for president right now. But that won’t stop the media from trying to pump Haley up.
In one of the funniest posts, Newsweek explains how Haley is “closing in on Trump”.
A Rasmussen Reports survey of 792 likely Republican voters shows that the former South Carolina governor is the second-placed candidate in the GOP primary at 13 percent while Trump is way out ahead with 51 percent.
Haley, who has seen some momentum for her 2024 campaign off the back of strong performances in the televised debates, has seen her support rise marginally in the primary and is up four points from the 9 percent she recorded in a previous Rasmussen poll in November when Trump was on 50 percent.
The survey also arrived after a December 17 CBS poll showed that Haley had narrowed Trump’s lead in New Hampshire to 15 points (44-29 percent).
I wonder what the polls will show after Haley’s monumental screwup in answering a fairly simple question about the Civil War:
This wasn’t even meant to be a “gotcha” question. But Haley wanted to outthink the public and provide some “cutesy” answer. When she figured out that she screwed the pooch, she tossed back the man who asked the question: “What do you think it means?”
Nice try, Princess. It’s Constitution time
A missed opportunity for Haley to explain that Democrats wanted to thwart Article 1, Section 9 of the Constitution. They tried an end-around of the Constitution which forbade slavery after Jan 1, 1808. Democrats schemed to make the children of slaves slaves forever.
Republicans–the Anti-Slavery Party–told the Party of Lynching of Negroes that they were willing to fight over this technicality. Because for Republicans human dignity of all people was worth fighting for.
Imagine if Haley had provided that history lesson? And showed how Democrats couldn’t care less about America’s constitutional republic they constantly refer to erroneously as a “democracy”.
Haley wouldn’t have beaten Trump even with my amazing answer. But she would have proven herself a solid conservative. But that stupid answer she gave sickened me. Then to kick the question back to the person asking the question? How amateurish was that?
Haley’s candidacy was going nowhere anyway. But she did herself no favors. And it’s for these reasons that Americans won’t trust the presidency to anybody but Trump. I’m not sure what he would have answered, but it would have been better than that. More importantly, it would have been genuine.
Haley is not genuine.
Her poll numbers will reflect this poor answer. And Haley has no more debates to try to make herself look good. Moreover, I suspect she will be a bit more gun shy about answering questions, and that’s never good.
Queue Queen: Another one bites the dust.
The so-called Trump challengers will continue to fall like Raid-sprayed flies. And Haley just hastened her descent.
