Haley may have lost, but she’s not finished
Nobody watching the Republican primary in South Carolina could have been surprised by Donald Trump’s victory over the state’s own former governor, Nikki Haley. His predicted win by at least 30 points had been making headlines for weeks leading up to last Saturday’s open primary.
Yet despite Trump’s victory, which was announced the moment polls closed Saturday, Haley has reason to continue on to Super Tuesday on March 5, when 13 states will hold their primaries and two states plus the American Samoa territory will conduct caucuses. Trump has been indicted, faces multiple trials and owes millions of dollars in punitive damages that will probably move him toward bankruptcy, his preferred mode of business. He’s no wiser nor saner than he has been in years past.
Even so, South Carolina, which is the first GOP primary in the South, has long been considered a bellwether state. With just one exception, every winner of the state’s primary has gone on to become the nominee. The exception was Newt Gingrich in 2012, who won the primary but lost the nomination to Mitt Romney.
Trump’s long lead coming into Saturday has kept pundits busy trying to figure out how this loudmouthed New York braggart with a shellacked combover could yank the nomination away from a homegrown gal who was twice elected governor of our state. My first response is to recall Bill Murray in “Groundhog Day.” A television weatherman, Murray’s character can’t disguise his boredom as he sarcastically explains to his producer, Rita (Andie Macdowell), why the Punxsutawney locals are so excited about the annual groundhog celebration.
“Yeah, they’re hicks, Rita.” With apologies to the easily offended.
Suffice to say, a certain type of South Carolinian loves Trump not despite but because he’s so awful. Also — no small point — the mainstream media for the most part despises him. If the “fake news” doesn’t like Trump, then he must be doing something right, goes the “thinking,” notwithstanding four criminal cases against him that will keep Trump off the campaign trail and in courtrooms for the next few months, likely until summer.
Trump has convinced his supporters these are “fake lawsuits.” Trump, meanwhile, can’t stop being offensive, which some apparently also find alluring. He has said that “the black people” like him because they identify with his plight as a person falsely arrested for doing nothing wrong. Yeah, Rita, he’s an idiot.
Haley, a self-made success story who grew up managing the accounts of her parents’ retail clothing business, was forced to concede to a spoiled, abusive misogynist. Then again, there’s nothing mysterious about the good ol’ boy system that pauses only now and then to let a woman in edgewise. I feel comfortable saying this because I hail from this culture and could tell some stories.
The ironies of this deeply disappointing mess are rich. South Carolina for all its mannered society is in large part a cultural desert. There are islands of sophistication, relatively speaking, in the Upcountry, (Greenville-spartanburg), the Midlands (Columbia) and the Lowcountry (Charleston). But the rest of the state is a rural, potholed, economically depressed and uneducated network of poor people whose generations-ago families used to be somebodies. Many Whites in these areas feel left out, marginalized and are often despairing. They have little to hope for and yet, they feel, immigrants barge into their country illegally and take what rightfully belongs to them.
When Big Deal Don rolls into town and shakes hands at the Waffle House, folks feel suddenly noticed and important — and that’s magic. That’s power.
Haley, for all her polish and political skill, doesn’t have the same ability to engage such people, even though she herself came from the tiny nothing-burg of Bamberg, which I can say because my people came from Barnwell just 20 miles down the road. Adding to her uniqueness, Haley is a first-generation American of Indian descent, who grew up brown-skinned in a southern-white culture. She knows firsthand what racism feels like. Her face should be on billboards as a modern heroine of the quintessential American story. She should also be the next president of the United States.
And she could be if she were the Republican nominee. Polls have repeatedly shown that she would defeat Joe Biden. Trump will lose against Biden, just as he lost in 2020.
Some people say Haley didn’t do enough to maintain relationships in her home state. Others say she got too uppity after she joined President Trump’s Cabinet as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. One thing White Republican men of the Trump variety can’t stand is a woman who’s smarter than they are and lets them know it.
That, my friends, is what happened in a nutshell. The good ol’ boys did it again.