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Critics in, as it were, the bleachers, fault Haley for not focusing her campaign against the former president. What these critics have in common is that they do not have what she has: responsibility. She is competing in the game. They do not have the challenge of prudence — of applying personal preferences and principles to untidy realities. This task falls to the few who are in the arena where great power is at stake.
Critics of Haley’s judiciously modulated nomination campaign can haughtily disdain compromises and maneuverings. These critics can concentrate on curating their pretty political profiles. They have the luxury of ignoring stubborn facts while proclaiming the importance of stopping Trump. Haley, however, must attend to the practical politics of doing that, which begins by accommodating this fact:
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Americans gave Trump 62,984,828 votes in 2016 and, after watching him govern for four years, 74,223,975 of them asked for four more years. Many voted for him not as a complaint about the nation’s distribution of material rewards but to protest a more searing deprivation: of dignity. The large and widening “diploma divide” between the roughly one-third of Americans who acquire the (often foolish) prestige that comes with a four-year college degree, and the nearly two-thirds who do not.
Never mind that the prestige of U.S. institutions of higher education has plummeted to unprecedented depths. Many on the majority side of the diploma divide nevertheless feel subjected to an unjust allocation of social status. When they hear Trump criticized, they hear themselves being disparaged. This is a facet of today’s pandemic of prickliness, in which “I disagree with you” is often heard as “I think you are a dolt.”
Follow this authorGeorge F. Will's opinionsFollow
Haley is wisely delaying as long as possible the moment when she must sharpen her contrast with Trump. That moment might be Wednesday morning, Jan. 24, after New Hampshire’s primary.
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Americans’ quadrennial (and often justifiable) complaints about the presidential candidate selection process are obscuring this: The array of 2024 Republican competitors has been winnowed efficiently. Six weeks before Iowans cast the first votes, it already is highly likely that, at the end of the process, the winner of the nomination will be Trump, Haley or Ron DeSantis.
DeSantis’s long slide, which began when he began actively campaigning, is unlikely to be reversed. Were he to finish third behind Trump and Haley in Iowa, where he is concentrating his resources of time and money, his candidacy would implode. And many of his voters might flock to Trump, without waiting to consider Haley after an impressive New Hampshire showing by her. Even if DeSantis finishes second in Iowa, he probably will finish far behind Haley eight days later in New Hampshire.
There, Republican Chris Sununu, among the nation’s most popular governors, has abundant political capital to spend. And he has not won four terms without understanding that it is malpractice not to use perishable political assets. Ideally, he will endorse Haley soon and campaign for her energetically.
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If, in his state, she receives, say, 25 percent of the vote, and Trump less than 40 percent, there will be intense pressure on DeSantis to acknowledge that it has become a two-person race. And those Trump supporters who have assumed there would not be a realistic alternative will have an exhilarating occasion for second thoughts.
Trump’s floor of support might not be solid; his ceiling seems to be. The Cook Political Report’s Amy Walter notes that since 2016, Trump’s showing in key battleground states has been “remarkably stable,” varying only two points or less. Although President Biden’s weakness should have enabled Trump to break through these ceilings, in many polls, Trump’s performance mirrors his in 2020.
Trump’s responses to those who challenge him range from volcanic to thermonuclear, but his limp disparagement of Haley (“birdbrain”) indicates that he has lost a foot off his vituperation fastball. Her confidence and discipline should enable her to respect his voters by ignoring his eruptions and offering him compliments, which are his favorite drug:
Thank you for your 2017-2021 accomplishments. You have earned the right to devote your late 70s and early 80s to those pesky courtroom distractions.
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Delicacy is rare in the mass-mobilization politics of democracy, where candidates prefer bold brushstrokes of primary colors rather than pastels. But while the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination is a fountain of colorful rhetoric, Nikki Haley’s ascending candidacy is using tactical reticence to reach the right moment for becoming the last challenger standing against Donald Trump.
Critics in, as it were, the bleachers, fault Haley for not focusing her campaign against the former president. What these critics have in common is that they do not have what she has: responsibility. She is competing in the game. They do not have the challenge of prudence — of applying personal preferences and principles to untidy realities. This task falls to the few who are in the arena where great power is at stake.
Critics of Haley’s judiciously modulated nomination campaign can haughtily disdain compromises and maneuverings. These critics can concentrate on curating their pretty political profiles. They have the luxury of ignoring stubborn facts while proclaiming the importance of stopping Trump. Haley, however, must attend to the practical politics of doing that, which begins by accommodating this fact:
Americans gave Trump 62,984,828 votes in 2016 and, after watching him govern for four years, 74,223,975 of them asked for four more years. Many voted for him not as a complaint about the nation’s distribution of material rewards but to protest a more searing deprivation: of dignity. The large and widening “diploma divide” between the roughly one-third of Americans who acquire the (often foolish) prestige that comes with a four-year college degree, and the nearly two-thirds who do not.
Never mind that the prestige of U.S. institutions of higher education has plummeted to unprecedented depths. Many on the majority side of the diploma divide nevertheless feel subjected to an unjust allocation of social status. When they hear Trump criticized, they hear themselves being disparaged. This is a facet of today’s pandemic of prickliness, in which “I disagree with you” is often heard as “I think you are a dolt.”
Haley is wisely delaying as long as possible the moment when she must sharpen her contrast with Trump. That moment might be Wednesday morning, Jan. 24, after New Hampshire’s primary.
Americans’ quadrennial (and often justifiable) complaints about the presidential candidate selection process are obscuring this: The array of 2024 Republican competitors has been winnowed efficiently. Six weeks before Iowans cast the first votes, it already is highly likely that, at the end of the process, the winner of the nomination will be Trump, Haley or Ron DeSantis.
DeSantis’s long slide, which began when he began actively campaigning, is unlikely to be reversed. Were he to finish third behind Trump and Haley in Iowa, where he is concentrating his resources of time and money, his candidacy would implode. And many of his voters might flock to Trump, without waiting to consider Haley after an impressive New Hampshire showing by her. Even if DeSantis finishes second in Iowa, he probably will finish far behind Haley eight days later in New Hampshire.
There, Republican Chris Sununu, among the nation’s most popular governors, has abundant political capital to spend. And he has not won four terms without understanding that it is malpractice not to use perishable political assets. Ideally, he will endorse Haley soon and campaign for her energetically.
If, in his state, she receives, say, 25 percent of the vote, and Trump less than 40 percent, there will be intense pressure on DeSantis to acknowledge that it has become a two-person race. And those Trump supporters who have assumed there would not be a realistic alternative will have an exhilarating occasion for second thoughts.
Trump’s floor of support might not be solid; his ceiling seems to be. The Cook Political Report’s Amy Walter notes that since 2016, Trump’s showing in key battleground states has been “remarkably stable,” varying only two points or less. Although President Biden’s weakness should have enabled Trump to break through these ceilings, in many polls, Trump’s performance mirrors his in 2020.
Trump’s responses to those who challenge him range from volcanic to thermonuclear, but his limp disparagement of Haley (“birdbrain”) indicates that he has lost a foot off his vituperation fastball. Her confidence and discipline should enable her to respect his voters by ignoring his eruptions and offering him compliments, which are his favorite drug:
Thank you for your 2017-2021 accomplishments. You have earned the right to devote your late 70s and early 80s to those pesky courtroom distractions.
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