The recent news that the conservative, financially powerful Koch Network has endorsed Nikki Haley for the Republican presidential nomination brought to mind several questions.
First, if the influential Koch group is so determined to prevent former President Donald Trump from getting his third straight Republican nomination, why did its leaders wait till after Thanksgiving, less than two months before the Iowa caucuses, to pick a favorite?
Also, its choice of Haley is yet another sign that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is effectively out of the running for 2024. It is a stunning turnaround for the candidate that just a few months ago appeared to have the good timing and political achievements to wrest the nomination from Trump. He was Trump without all the baggage, his supporters said. But it turns out he wasn’t Trump at all.
Finally, who really thinks the Republican lineup has changed enough to prevent Trump from being nominated next year? The polls certainly don’t: The Real Clear Politics polling average has Trump favored by 62% of GOP voters. DeSantis, who last spring was ahead of Trump, has sunk to 14%, while Haley’s poll numbers have risen — but only to 10%.
Haley’s support from the Koch Network will help her campaign finances, but that has to be translated into caucus and primary votes. She’d better start moving up quickly in polls.
If she delivers another strong debate performance on Dec. 6, she conceivably could catch DeSantis. But then there’s the challenge of catching up to the former president, and that will be a much bigger mountain to climb.
After all, the polling averages say that Trump has the support of nearly two-thirds of Republicans. That means Haley or anyone else who hopes to defeat him has two assignments.
First, a challenger would need all the other candidates to drop out of the race and set up a one-on-one match with Trump.
In Haley’s case, she needs Chris Christie, Vivek Ramaswamy and DeSantis to fold. One or two of them might leave, but it’s unlikely that all three will, and that will make it harder for anyone to catch Trump.
Then, a challenger must convince enough Trump supporters — probably about one-fourth of his voters — to change their minds. That seems unlikely, too. How many Trump supporters from 2016 or 2020 has anyone talked to who’s willing to consider alternatives for 2024?
Jack Shafer, a columnist on the Politico website, has an interesting take on the race. A former political reporter himself, Shafer believes the reporters covering the GOP campaign are bored with Trump’s sizable lead and are talking up Haley in the hopes that the gap between them will narrow and produce better stories.
Shafer suspects that reporters remember Barack Obama’s come-from-behind victory over Hillary Clinton for the 2008 Democratic nomination. Obama trailed Clinton in the polls by 20 points in the fall of 2007. But Obama won the Iowa caucuses and kept rising all the way to the nomination and the presidency.
Could Haley, flush with her Koch Network support, pull off the same feat? Shafer quotes another political reporter who correctly describes Haley as “a better political athlete” than DeSantis. In this scenario, her path to the nomination includes beating Trump in Iowa, New Hampshire and then her home state of South Carolina.
Easier said than done, that’s for sure. Shafer thinks the idea gives reporters something to write about for a while. But there is no convincing signal yet that Haley can defeat Trump.
Jack Ryan, Enterprise-Journal
