EIt took an hour and a half after the polls closed in South Carolina for Nikki Haley to step in front of her supporters on Saturday evening. When Donald Trump's last remaining Republican candidate stood on the stage in Charleston – visibly touched – one could get the impression for a moment that she was giving up.
Haley congratulated the former president on his victory in the primary. Boos rang out from the audience. Then came the sentence that made it clear that she is willing – at least for the moment – to continue fighting: She still doesn't believe that Trump can beat President Joe Biden. She received “around 40 percent” of the votes – which roughly corresponds to the result in New Hampshire.
40 percent isn't 50 percent, she continued, but it's not a tiny group either. More primaries followed in the next ten days, in which Republicans would have a right to vote. She is a woman who stands by her word: I'll keep fighting, that's what that means.
Trump didn't mention Haley
Trump appeared in front of his supporters shortly after the polls closed. American media declared his victory within minutes. But unlike after the New Hampshire primary, when Trump violently attacked Haley because she wouldn't give up, he didn't mention her name this time. In a quick aside, Trump said he had “never seen the Republican Party as united as it is right now.” But he didn't make one of his usual aggressive speeches in South Carolina.
There had been little doubt that Trump would win the state despite Haley's home-field advantage. And so the former president spent election day at the CPAC conference, the meeting of American right-wing conservatives, and only then flew to South Carolina. The appearance near Washington followed more of the usual pattern: First Trump made his supporters wait for quite a while, then for around an hour and a half he conjured up apocalyptic scenarios if he were not elected president in November.
“Our country is being destroyed, and the only thing standing between you and its extinction is me,” Trump said. You are living “in many ways in hell.” He spoke of election day on November 5th as “Liberation Day” and “Judgment Day” and once again vowed revenge on his political opponents. However, he didn't mention his challenger Haley there either.
Why does Haley stay?
But why does Haley stay? She hoped to finish second in Iowa – and failed. She bet on the political center in New Hampshire – and failed. And now she lost in her home state. Does she want to stay because she doesn't rule out the possibility that Trump, against whom several lawsuits are ongoing, will no longer be a viable candidate at some point – and that she will then be the remaining competitor?
Haley had already made it clear before Election Day that she would not drop out of the race even after the expected defeat in her home state. “I refuse to give up,” said the combative former governor of the southern state, who later served as Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations. And: She is “not afraid of Trump’s retaliation.”
Although Haley also courted very conservative and evangelical voters, Trump won by a huge margin in these milieus. She only managed to expose Trump's vulnerability: some of the votes she received will not be winnable for Trump in the November presidential election. Some moderate Republicans and independents are likely to switch to the camp of non-voters. Some are even likely to vote for Biden, certainly fewer than in New Hampshire, for example, since GOP voters in South Carolina are structurally more conservative than in New England.
“The primaries are over”
Haley recently started attacking Trump head-on. She had avoided this for a long time so as not to scare away voters. But she changed that strategy. In view of the demands from the Trump camp that she should finally give up her candidacy, she went on the attack: For example, she said that the former president was becoming more and more “unstable and disturbed”. Trump is becoming “meaner and more insulting every day.” She also attacked Trump for his legal problems: “It is not normal to spend $50 million in campaign contributions on personal court cases.” And it was also “not normal to call on Russia to invade NATO countries.”
Trump's campaign team says they will now focus the campaign on the presidential election – that is, the duel against Joe Biden. Consultant Chris LaCivita said before the result in South Carolina that the primaries were “over.” Now it’s about defeating Biden “and taking back the White House.” Anyone who delays this will help the Democrats. The only honorable thing Haley could do was to get out of the party's internal race.
The next important date in the pre-election calendar is traditionally the so-called Super Tuesday on March 5th, on which 15 states vote and on which more than a third of the delegate votes are awarded. But according to the polls, it doesn't look as if Haley could still achieve decisive surprise victories.
Biden's campaign team, in turn, took Trump's victory in South Carolina as an opportunity to once again warn about a possible President Trump. He, Biden, ran for office in 2020 because “the soul of America was at stake.” Even now, Trump would still see hatred and discord.
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