On Saturday, Nikki Haley will suffer a humiliating defeat in her own home state. She was once popular enough in South Carolina to draw a prominent Ambassadorship to the United Nations in the beginning of the first Trump administration despite endorsing Ted Cruz in the GOP primary.
She’s just not as popular anymore. In fact, analysts and commentators aren’t even debating whether she can win but rather how badly she’ll lose. The GOP primary is over. It was over before the Iowa caucus.
But she has vowed to stay in. Granted, everyone vows to stay in presidential primaries longer than they actually intend to because declaring that they’ll consider dropping out means they’re definitely dropping out. But with no illusions that she can actually defeat Donald Trump in any state, the money keeps coming in. Why is that? What do “they” know that we apparently don’t?
There has been speculation that she and her UniParty Swamp backers have reasons to believe Trump will not be able to accept the nomination. Whether through lawfare or even more nefarious means, the Swamp is using every possible ploy to prevent him from taking on Joe Biden or whoever else they decide to run. If they are confident that they can pull it off, then Haley seems to be their replacement candidate.
At this point, public information does not lend to the idea that Trump is going to be lawfared out of contention. The criminal cases against him are moving slowly. Manhattan Attorney General Alvin Bragg is being pressured to focus on putting away criminals instead of obsessing over Trump. Special Counsel Jack Smith is losing more than he’s winning in the early rounds of his cases against Trump. Efforts to remove Trump from ballots continue stalling.
Do the powers-that-be know something? Are one or more of the longshot cases against Trump rigged to jail him? Do they finally have a scandal to unleash that can stick? Are they planning on blackmailing Trump somehow? Or, God forbid, do they intend to take him out in other ways?
In the primary race itself, South Carolina will be a bellwether for Trump’s surging support from Black voters. It SHOULD mark the end of Haley’s uneventful campaign. But if it doesn’t then we must assume there’s something ugly driving her otherwise hopeless actions. Even John Kasich was able to win his home state in 2016. If Haley doesn’t read the writing on the wall, then we’ll know she’s being shown a different, secret picture.
