These US Republicans want to race against Trump North Island devastation: New Zealand declares national emergency over tropical storm

The first to dare is a woman. And the Republican Party has barely seen one on the presidential candidate list. But now Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, has announced her candidacy for the 2024 Republican nomination. A step she already ruled out about two years ago: if Donald Trump – who brought her into his cabinet as UN ambassador in 2017 – resigns, she will let him go first. That’s what Haley said shortly after the end of his presidency.

A lot has happened since then. Several investigations are underway against Trump, including his attempt to subsequently manipulate Joe Biden’s election victory. No longer filling arenas, the former president recently officially kicked off his campaign at a high school in Salem, New Hampshire. Even in the media, which jumped over every stick for years, Trump has clearly lost relevance. When he announced in November that he would run for the third time, even the right-wing news channel Fox News did not broadcast the speech in full.

And the voters? Most want another. At most a third of registered Republicans would still support Trump, according to research by conservative pollster Sarah Longwell. Other polls showed months ago that Trump no longer knows his party.

Major donors oppose Trump

Trump has held Republicans in his grip for so long and seems weakened and isolated. The ideal opportunity for other representatives of the party to put themselves in the game. Haley is the first to grab it. She takes a risk – for herself, but also for the party.

Positioning this early means she needs stamina if she really wants to be a candidate. And that means one thing above all in an American election campaign: money. The Club for Growth, an association of conservative major donors advocating lower taxes, has invited Haley and other potential Trump challengers to its general meeting next month, but not himself. Other such Political Action Committees, PACs for short, as these lobby groups are called, are also sending clear signals that Trump cannot count on their support. They want someone who can win and carry out their agenda; Trump is too polarizing and too unpredictable.

He himself has always boasted that he was less dependent on the large associations and that he had won thanks to smaller amounts from private individuals. His income has fallen recently, after the announcement of his renewed candidacy for president, he took even less than in the previous months. That’s probably also due to the timing: so close to the midterm elections that took place in November, voters may have been irritated by the many calls for donations from the last election campaign. The longer it takes, the more opportunities Trump could raise — especially since his Facebook account was recently unblocked, boosting his public platform again.

Haley, who called Trump’s 2016 election success “shameful,” became a supposedly ardent supporter soon after. She said, among other things, that the Republican Party should not go back to the time before him. It can be considered a classic example of how the party offered itself to Trump to take advantage of his lust for power. Now Haley is an example of how Republicans, in turn, are trying to disengage from Trump as a person in order to win elections again – mind you, without giving up Trumpism.

It’s “time for a new generation,” Haley said now. Even though her polls are still low, this will satisfy the majority of Republican voters, who also want to outperform Trump. The question is, what about the others? That part of the base that still adores him and loves his incendiary rhetoric and his far-right, sometimes conspiracy-theoretic views? The part that rejects the bourgeois habitus with which Haley ends up wrapping her no less reactionary Make America Great Again messages? Survey expert Longwell has collected some remarkable figures. Nearly all Republican voters who would most like to see Trump as a candidate in the upcoming election would support him even if he ran as an independent, i.e. broke away from the party.

Trump is unlikely to win a presidential election with this. But just as likely to lose is the person running for the Republican Party. A scenario that Trump has been subtly threatening for a long time and which the party therefore fears. As Longwell writes, “The vast majority of Republican voters are willing to disengage from Donald Trump. But a minority loyal to him can stop them.”

Added to this is Trump’s penchant for strategically slandering and lying to his opponents. Combined with the strong sense of vengeance fueling his claim that Biden stole his election, that suggests vicious attacks on his competition from within. Especially about Haley, who was once part of his administration, even though Trump was reluctant and the two allegedly even discussed their plans. She herself seems to warn him in her official announcement: even though Trump’s name is not mentioned, there is a message in Haley’s words that she will not let “tyrants” push her around. Especially not as a woman: “When you quit your job, it hurts them more if you wear heels.”

“Ron The Sanctimonious”

It is all the more striking that the favorite for this match is still keeping a low profile. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has been touted as the one who could do the long unimaginable and beat Trump in the party’s primary. This is also supported by ongoing surveys. While he was close in many positions, he was never much of a Trump ally. He didn’t agree with his lie about the allegedly stolen 2020 election — at least not publicly. The former president is now all the more persistent in taunting him with swear words and the nickname “The Sanctimonious”. The term can be roughly translated as moral arrogance; exactly what Trump fans have always loved to hear about his opponents.

DeSantis lets the attacks go to naught: he had no desire to badmouth other Republicans, he recently said. For now, that should help him sharpen his anti-Trump image and bolster the grassroots support he already appears to have. But at some point he will have to venture. Whether he gets the nomination will also depend on Trump’s legal status. At least as much as what the rest of the competition looks like.

The larger and therefore fragmented the field of candidates, the greater the chance that Trump will still win the Republican nomination. DeSantis could have beaten Trump in a duel, a survey recently showed. However, with Haley as a third option, Trump could well get a majority because the votes of his opponents are divided. So the difficult task for the Republicans is this: they must succeed in bundling the anti-Trump vote in a way sufficient to force him out of the race – and not to cannibalize himself.

A prominent representative of the “Never Trumper”

And it’s not just Haley. Tim Scott would also plan to participate. The US Senator would be the first black Republican presidential candidate; he’s from South Carolina, just like Haley, which makes things harder for both of them. But there’s also former Vice President Mike Pence, who has finally made a name for himself as anti-Trump since the end of his term. His main argument for anti-Trump voters is his refusal to go along with the January 6 conspiracy lies.

It’s not inconceivable that Haley and Scott will eventually end their campaign with the goal of joining Trump and becoming his running mate. In the case of De Santis and Pence, that can almost certainly be ruled out. And especially with one: Liz Cheney. The former congressman has become a prominent representative of the Never Trumpers in Congress over the past two years — and a very lonely one. That’s why she gets even fewer chances than Haley or Scott. She should at least take her time with her decision and see how the others are doing. Not least with Biden, who made a strong comeback in his State of the Union speech and thus increased the pressure on the Republicans.

If there’s one lesson we can learn from previous election campaigns, it’s that things can turn out very differently than they seem a year and a half before the election. That could mean a success for Trump, as in 2016. Or for someone from the field of candidates who is just starting to open up.

This article was first published on Zeit Online. Watson may have changed the headings and subheadings. Here’s the original.