Haley's Defeat Signals The Death of Neo-Conservatism As A Dominant Force In American Politics

The media propped up Nikki Haley because it wanted consolation that Trump could be defeated. That illusion has just been shattered.

Nikki Haley was made for New Hampshire, and New Hampshire was made for Nikki Haley.

At least that was the myth being perpetuated by the mainstream media, as it crafted a narrative in one of its last attempts to revive the traditional old guard of the Republican Party. For years, the anomaly that was Trump’s presidency had vexed them, challenging everything they had understood about how politics was conducted. Through Haley, they found a vessel to stabilize their fracturing world-view. They desperately wanted to persuade not just their viewers, but themselves of her potency and Trump’s vulnerability in the Granite State and beyond. They hoped that by constantly regurgitating this mantra that it would crystalize as truth, that Trump’s hold over the party would unravel and pave the way forward for a ‘moderate’ to recapture the party and restore sanity to the conservative movement.

It’s not hard to see why this myth took hold. Over the preceding weeks, Nikki Haley’s campaign experienced a sudden surge in funding and poll numbers, jumping from an irrelevant fourth place to a close second, with Trump’s lead being cut down to single digits as his opponents within the party coalesced around her. New Hampshire’s unique political environment seemed to provide the fertile ground necessary for this moderate revival. It was an open primary, both Democrats and independents could participate, and New England Republicans are generally viewed as more moderate compared to the rest of the national Republican Party.

Haley’s supporters hoped that a convincing win there could inject much-needed momentum into her stalling campaign, catapulting her to a win, or at least a close finish, in South Carolina, her home state, which holds a primary next week. With the contest narrowing down to two candidates, the argument continued, voters would suddenly recognise polls that showed Haley with a better chance in a one-on-one contest against President Biden than Trump had. They would come to their senses, emancipated from their blind ignorance. And on the far side of that epiphany gleamed Haley, her youth, ethnic background, and gender giving the Republican Party a new vitality. A new imagine. A fresh start.

That illusion has just been shattered. The results on Tuesday night, when Trump followed his commanding victory in the Iowa caucuses with a sizeable one in the New Hampshire primary, leaves Haley with no discernable path to the Republican nomination. Haley didn’t just lose, she lost by a humiliating margin - about 11%, according to exit polls. For what was supposed to be a rebuke of Trump, Trumpism and the rightward veer taken by the GOP in recent years, the project failed abysmally. Haley, even with the intervention of moderate Republicans, independents and Democrats, could only dent Trump’s image. To the devout conservatives who represent nearly 80% of the party’s base, Trump, despite all of his flaws, is still their messiah.

Though Haley won 74 percent of moderates, along with 58 percent of college graduates and 66 percent of voters who weren’t registered Republicans, she lost Republicans by a staggering 74 percent to 25 percent — a group of no small import in a Republican primary, especially in the states where only registered Republicans can vote. Conservatives gave Mr. Trump a full 70 percent of the vote. Voters without a college degree backed Mr. Trump by 2 to 1. In other Republican primaries, where Conservatives, Republicans and voters without a degree represent a far greater share of the electorate, numbers like these will yield a rout.

While Haley has pledged to stay in the race and make a play for her former home state of South Carolina, which she governed from 2011 to 2017, the race is all but done, the curtains have been called. Trump, in all likelihood will eviscerate Haley in both South Carolina and Nevada - by about 30%, if recent polls are to be believed - before finally being coronated during Super Tuesday.

New Hampshire’s primary may be less remembered for its results and more for what it represented - a paradigm shift in American politics, the moment when the last, dying embers of neo-conservatism were finally extinguished, for good.

Perhaps the sanguine centrist pundits who delude themselves into believing that the Republican Party can be salvaged from the throngs of right-wing populism will finally start to see the truth, that Trump isn’t some phenomenon about to pass, some fever about to break. He is here to stay. He was the party’s standard-bearer in 2016 and in 2020, and all signs point to him being the party’s standard-bearer in 2024.

Why? Because he is the Republican Party.