Follow the money
Apparently Republicans want a choice
Afunny thing happened on the way to a Biden-Trump rematch: Republican donors didn’t dry up on Nikki Haley, and the Republican presidential primary is still ongoing.
Donald Trump has a massive polling lead. Everything points to his winning in South Carolina this weekend. That’s Nikki Haley’s home state.
So why is this still going on? Mainly because of Nikki Haley’s perseverance. But she wouldn’t be able to persevere in the first place if the money wasn’t rolling in.
According to The Wall Street Journal, last month the Nikki Haley campaign took in more than $9.8 million in campaign contributions. A super PAC in her corner pulled in another $5.8 million, “thanks almost entirely to donations of $100,000 or more. Venture capital and business leaders were among the most generous.”
The MAGA crowd might point to that and say aha! That just shows that Big Money doesn’t want Donald Trump back in the White House.
That might be partially true. (He has his own donors.) But those who make up Big Money in politics are always heard from around this time of the presidential nomination cycle. Depending on their views, they give to both parties.
Many of them can’t abide another Trump nomination. We have to ask why.
Could it be because Donald Trump tweeted 26,237 times during his presidency? Which is about 18 times a day. With all the maturity of a school bully. Including insulting nicknames, questionable boasts, and punching down.
(Part of Donald Trump’s Christmas post a few months ago, and the joke is we’re not kidding: “Merry Christmas to all, including Crooked Joe Biden’s ONLY HOPE, Deranged Jack Smith, the out of control Lunatic who just hired outside attorneys, fresh from the SWAMP (unprecedented!), to help him with his poorly executed WITCH HUNT against ‘TRUMP’ and ‘MAGA.’ Included also are World Leaders, both good and bad, but none of which are as evil and ‘sick’ as the THUGS we have inside our Country who, with their Open Borders, INFLATION, Afghanistan Surrender, Green New Scam, High Taxes, No Energy Independence, Woke Military, Russia/Ukraine, Israel/Iran,
All Electric Car Lunacy, and so much more, are looking to destroy our once great USA. MAY THEY ROT IN HELL. AGAIN, MERRY CHRISTMAS!”)
Could donors still be giving to Nikki Haley’s campaign because Donald Trump is the only president in American history to not concede an election? Who pushed a mob to assault the Capitol afterward? And who—shrugging off all traditions—didn’t appear at the inauguration of his successor to show the world that the United States peacefully transfers presidential duties after elections, unlike so many other countries in this world?
Could donors be looking at polls, which show how many Americans dislike Donald Trump, and believe that maybe Nikki Haley would be a better nominee against a clearly weakened President Biden? As long as we’re talking about money, Team Trump has $30.5 million in the bank as of this writing, according to The Journal. But Team Biden has nearly twice that.
Or maybe the moneyed interests, as they’re called, like Nikki Haley’s mettle. She has refused to get out of the race, vowing to stay in until the last voter votes (or at least the last voter on Super Tuesday, when Arkansas will be heard from). And she has repeatedly shown she’s a fighter, too, by taking on Donald Trump when all the male candidates this past year seemed so frightened of getting a nickname.
Again, from The Journal, which has a habit of following-the-money: “… Haley’s supporters have poured money into what has increasingly become a longshot bid for the Republican nomination. Those dollars have allowed for more polling, media and travel expenses— even as she has lagged in every survey.
“Her financial support has underscored a chasm in the Republican party as some of its voters seek an alternative to Donald Trump. About one in five Republicans who planned to take part in the New Hampshire primary said they wouldn’t back the former president if he were the GOP nominee . . . . ”
Maybe the Big Donors see, read, and hear all this, and prefer to give their money to someone other than the front-runner, and prefer their money went to campaign ads and polling instead of legal bills. And we wouldn’t blame them a bit.