Cogito Ergo Non Serviam
Koch Donors Back Haley
One must hand it to the billionaire class. When they decide to waste money, they do it better than anyone. The latest episode proving this is not a rocket that can almost do what Alan Shepard did. Nor is it a submersible that can go where other subs have gone before. This time, the wealthy and foolish have decided to back Nikki Haley in her presidential bid to stop Donald Trump from being the Republican nominee for president. The ungrammatically named Americans for Prosperity Action, the stage name for the Koch family network of big dollar donors, has formally endorsed Ms. Haley. They argue, correctly, that she is a better candidate for the general election than Donald Trump. However, the race is not for the White House yet. It is for the nomination, and she has no chance at all.
The problem for anyone not named Trump is the fact that the GOP base is as rabidly committed to him as ever, although the base is smaller now. His polling results show more than half of the Republican voters likely to cast a ballot in primaries or attend caucuses want Mr. Trump to be the nominee.
The Haley campaign at least acknowledges the truth, that her path to the nomination is a narrow one. Reuters explained,
"There is a narrow path" to victory for Haley, said Republican pollster Whit Ayres.
That path involves top-tier finishes in both Iowa and New Hampshire and perhaps a victory in her home state of South Carolina, where she served as governor.That would provide Haley with the things she would need most to have a chance against Trump: momentum, media coverage and money flowing in from anti-Trump donors.
From there, it would be a matter of trying to compete in the larger states later in the calendar such as California and Texas, which award large swaths of delegates.
"Momentum matters a tremendous amount in these things," Ayres said. "So much of it depends on who does well in early states. That has a dramatic effect on later states."
This is, at best, a hallucination. There is absolutely no chance of her winning the big states where winner-takes-all rules apply. California and Texas are great big prizes, but the Republicans are not big on proportional representation at their convention the way the Democrats are. The fact is the Republicans do not like genuine democracy and never really have. So being competitive in those states is not enough. One must go in with a commanding lead, like the one Donald Trump has.
The best hope they might have is for the race to narrow down to her and Mr. Trump. But that means other candidates need to see the light early enough to give her a shot at a one-on-one fight. The trouble is that Ron DeSantis, right now, is ahead of her in Iowa. A third-place finish there and losing to Mr. Trump in New Hampshire (where he has a 30 point lead over her in the polls) would put pressure on her to get out. A win in South Carolina, where she was governor, could stop the bleeding, but she is losing there as well.
She may well wind up as her generation\'s answer to John Connally. The former Texas governor was in the car when JFK was shot. He ran for president in 1980, and he spent $11 million. In those days, that was serious political money; $500,000 came out of his own pocket. He campaigned for 14 months, selling his experience as a three-term governor. He was a president-in-waiting except for one small matter. No one voted for him. At the end of it all, he had exactly 1 delegate to the convention that nominated Ronald Reagan.
The Koch mob will spend far more than that, even when adjusted for inflation over the years. They will likely do better than 1 delegate. They will not get 50%+1 to win the nomination, though. Still, they have more cash where that came from.
© Copyright 2023 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Ubuntu Linux.
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