A version of this article was first published in the On the Trail 2024 newsletter. Sign up to receive the newsletter in your inbox on Tuesday and Friday mornings here. To submit a question to next week’s Friday Mailbag, email onthetrail@deseretnews.com.
Good morning and welcome to On the Trail 2024, the Deseret News’ campaign newsletter. I’m Samuel Benson, Deseret’s national political correspondent.
3 things to know this week
- The New Hampshire GOP primary is today, marking a huge — and perhaps final — opportunity for Republicans to choose someone other than Donald Trump as their nominee. Nikki Haley is the lone challenger remaining, and despite flashes of hope, she trails in the polls. More on that here.
- Democrats will be voting in the Granite State, too — but Joe Biden won’t be on the ballot. The Democratic National Committee won’t recognize the results of today’s election, leading some Democrats to revolt (and others to run for president). Read more on Biden’s Democratic challengers here.
- Ron DeSantis bowed out of the race on Sunday, bringing to close an underwhelming campaign that once appeared to be the most formidable of the non-Trump Republicans. His supporters are taking the long view: “I believe he will be a leading presidential candidate in 2028 regardless of the 2024 outcome,” doTERRA founder Gregory Cook, one of his top Utah donors, told me. Read more here.
The Big Idea
Why Romney’s wish may have backfired
The writing on the wall was there for months. The DeSantis campaign was losing steam. Tim Scott and Mike Pence never caught on. Vivek Ramaswamy appeared more cartoonish than competitive. And all the while, Trump inched higher.
Utah Sen. Mitt Romney got his wish: a lone Republican challenger to Trump, ahead of his declared deadline of February 26. The strategy was simple: to prevent the same demise as 2016, when Trump’s overconfident challengers self-cannibalized while Trump waltzed, mostly untouched, to the party’s nomination, Republicans should learn their lesson and coalesce early. Find one candidate to take on Trump, Romney reasoned, and throw all the anti-Trump votes and cash behind him or her.
At present, the battle for the Republican nomination is a two-person race. Trump is still around, strong as ever. Nikki Haley has stuck it out, too, hoping for a small miracle tonight in New Hampshire.
So, yes, Romney got his wish. But does it make any difference?
It appears it would take a monumental act — say, Trump being convicted and public opinion swinging against him — to keep him from winning the GOP nomination. Polls are uncertain about Haley’s chances tonight in New Hampshire (some show her down by two percentage points; others, by 20). But even if Haley wins in New Hampshire, the path forward doesn’t get easier. Trump will run unopposed in the Nevada caucus. After that, it’s back to Haley’s home state, South Carolina, where most major sitting officeholders — including Gov. Henry McMaster, Haley’s former number-two, and Sen. Tim Scott, an ex-Haley appointee — have endorsed Trump.
For Haley, South Carolina is a “massive wood chipper of multiple proportions,” one observer told The Messenger.
Yes, the field is smaller. But in some ways, Haley is no better off now than she was a week ago, before DeSantis and Ramaswamy bowed out of the race. Chris Christie was the last never-Trump candidate in Haley’s lane — the last one whose exit would realistically free up significant votes and donors to Haley. The others? Vast majorities of DeSantis and Ramaswamy voters like Trump as their second option, not Haley. By leaving the race, DeSantis and Ramaswamy only strengthen Trump’s base.
What went wrong? Political observers will spend months detailing what could have been — rehashing strategy and refining their opinions. The easiest answer is that the Republican base is still a largely pro-Trump base, and the 91 criminal charges he faces only solidified that support. By becoming both a flag-bearer and a martyr, Trump’s popularity only grew. See this graph, where Trump’s lead against DeSantis first widened in March 2023, when Trump was indicted over falsifying business records. His lead only grows from there, ticking higher with each subsequent indictment.
No amount of strategizing or coalescing addresses the root cause: Trump’s base still wants Trump, and that base is the largest unified front within the Republican Party. Could Haley have benefitted by stronger support earlier — more endorsements, more donors, more momentum? Maybe. But we’d be better suited to spend the next several months attempting to understand why Republicans want Trump, not why Haley or Pence or Scott or any number of the one-time hopes of a post-Trump GOP never took hold.
All this could change tonight in New Hampshire, if independents and never-Trumpers band together and offer a surprising victory. But maybe that just delays the inevitable. And the inevitable, it now seems, is Trump.
What I’m reading
What makes a Trump supporter? Perhaps it’s a question best asked to Trump voters directly, without belittling or demonizing. This article is an interesting peek into the worldview held by one Trump supporter, who once backed Burgum and Haley. ‘Our System Needs to Be Broken, and He Is the Man to Do It’ (Michael Kruse, Politico)
Nevada will host the first-in-the-west caucus next month. But Haley won’t be participating, and Trump just scooped up an endorsement from the state’s Republican governor. More on the snoozefest that is the Nevada caucuses: Lombardo to caucus for Trump, vote ‘none of the above’ in state-run primary (Tabitha Mueller, The Nevada Independent)
Is the primary over? Turnout is down. Viewership is down. Even interest at ground-zero — in New Hampshire’s usually-bustling metro centers — is lacking. Is it time to accept the inevitable? Inside the collapsing U.S. political-media-industrial-complex (Max Tani, Semafor)
One last thing — a reminder to follow our new On the Trail 2024 Instagram account!
Have a question for the next Friday mailbag? Drop me a line at onthetrail@deseretnews.com.
See you on the trail.
Editor’s Note: The Deseret News is committed to covering issues of substance in the 2024 presidential race from its unique perspective and editorial values. Our team of political reporters will bring you in-depth coverage of the most relevant news and information to help you make an informed decision. Find our complete coverage of the election here.