The first name on her list was Nikki Haley. Longwell laid out a roster of Republican politicians whom the voters could never accept for this reason. Even if you were on Trump’s ticket as his vice president.” (This argument conveniently absolves Trump of blame for his own losses - he was sabotaged by the Establishment, you see.) “If you forged your political identity pre-Trump, then you belong to a GOP establishment now loathed by a majority of Republican primary voters,” she concluded. “The Republican party has been irretrievably altered,” she wrote, “and, as one GOP voter put it succinctly, ‘We’re never going back.’” Such voters have bought into Trump’s argument that the party leaders who preceded him were weak losers. Her primary conclusion is that most GOP voters see the Trump era not as an interregnum but as a kind of revolutionary event she calls “Year Zero.” Longwell, strategic director of Republican Voters Against Trump, has sat through hundreds of focus groups to understand the mental state of the party. In April, Sarah Longwell of The Bulwark wrote what is still one of the most insightful reports about the Republican electorate. Haley’s candidacy is less a way of dealing with the party’s problems than an attempt to pretend they don’t exist. Whatever you might say about the hapless DeSantis candidacy, it is at least built upon a recognition of the actual state of the Trump-era GOP. She is following a formula that can propel her into consideration for the vice-presidency, or position her to step in if Trump is felled by heart disease, but gives her little chance to actually defeat the party’s reigning cult leader and self-styled president-in-exile. The Establishment wing is limited not only in size but also by the intense hostility it inspires among the party’s Trumpier voters. The trouble for Haley is that the faction she is rallying is inherently bounded. Haley has surged past DeSantis into second place in some polls by consolidating what remains of the party’s Establishment wing: traditional conservatives, social moderates, the large-donor class, and other Republican voters who find Donald Trump’s antics mortifying. Haley’s rise is the most interesting story in the Republican primary, the only previous drama being the slow, painful death of the Ron DeSantis campaign. (Wealthy people do nothing passively, not even contemplation.) Health-data executive Jonathan Bush - yes, of that Bush family - gushed, “It’s invigorating to be truly excited by a candidate again,” evoking the sensation of the wind rushing through his hair as he grips the helm of his yacht for the first voyage of summer. JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon has made supportive noises, and billionaire Kenneth Griffin is “actively contemplating” a donation. The powerful Koch network has thrown its weight behind her candidacy. “In recent weeks,” the New York Times reported, “a number of chief executives, hedge fund investors and corporate deal makers from both parties have begun gravitating toward” Haley, the former governor of South Carolina. The rise of Nikki Haley has energized the kind of Republicans who at one time thrilled to the sight of Jeb Bush and had begun to despair that they would ever see his like again.
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