Nikki Haley hugs fans after losing South Carolina primary
Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox
Get our free Inside Washington email
Former president Donald Trump has defeated Nikki Haley in the South Carolina GOP primary.
The former president’s win was initially projected at 7pm on Saturday night just as polls closed.
Mr Trump secured the expected victory over Ms Haley in her home state, where she served as governor from 2011 to 2017.
This marks yet another defeat for former UN Ambassador Haley, who vowed to continue fighting Mr Trump despite her many primary losses.
Ms Haley stayed resolute even after losing to the “none of these candidates” box listed on Nevada ballot papers earlier this month.
“I said earlier this week that no matter what happens in South Carolina, I would continue to run ... I’m a woman of my word,” she said on Saturday.
Meanwhile, Mr Trump compared migrants to Hannibal Lecter as he claimed that they are coming from “insane asylums” during his almost 90-minute meandering and ominous speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Maryland.
The former president was speaking about his anti-Biden messaging efforts on Saturday, saying that “migrant crime” is a “new category of crime”.
Trump tells Joe Biden 'You're fired' as he wins South Carolina Republican primary
Trump tells Biden ‘You’re fired’ as he wins South Carolina Republican primary
Donald Trump celebrated his comfortable victory in the South Carolina Republican primary by predicting that he would beat Joe Biden in a likely presidential election rematch in November. The former president claimed his fourth straight primary win on Saturday night (24 February), beating rival Nikki Haley in her home state. “We’re going to be up here on 5 November, and we’re going to look at Joe Biden,” Mr Trump said as the crown loudly cheered him. “He’s destroying our country and we’re gonna say ‘Joe, you’re fired. Get out. Get out, Joe. You’re fired.’” Mr Trump also compared himself to Al Capone during a CPAC speech on Saturday.
In video: Trump compares himself to American gangster Al Capone during CPAC speech
How Trump won in South Carolina
Donald Trump won over South Carolina Republicans as the candidate who voters believe can win in November, keep the country safe and will stand up and fight for them as president.
Mr Trump cruised to victory in the South Carolina primary with the support of an almost unwavering base of loyal voters. AP VoteCast found that Republicans in the state are broadly aligned with his goals: Many question the value of supporting Ukraine’s fight against Russia; and overwhelming majorities see immigrants as hurting the US and suspect that there are nefarious political motives behind Mr Trump’s multiple criminal indictments.
About six in 10 South Carolina voters consider themselves supporters of the “Make America Great Again” movement, the slogan that helped catapult Mr Trump to the White House in 2016. About nine in 10 Trump voters said they were driven by their support for him, not by objections to his opponent. Nikki Haley’s voters were much more divided: About half were motivated by supporting her, but nearly as many turned out to oppose Mr Trump.
AP VoteCast is a survey of more than 2,400 voters taking part in Saturday’s Republican primary in South Carolina, conducted for The Associated Press by NORC at the University of Chicago.
Republican presidential candidate and former US president Donald Trump stands on stage as he hosts a South Carolina Republican presidential primary election night party in Columbia, South Carolina, US, 24 February 2024
Mr Trump’s victory in South Carolina looked remarkably similar to his wins in the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. It’s a sign that regional differences that once existed within the GOP have been supplanted by a national movement that largely revolves around the former president.
Mr Trump, 77, won in South Carolina with voters who are white and do not have a college degree, one of his core constituencies. About two-thirds of his backers in this election fell into that group.
A majority believe Mr Trump is a candidate who can emerge victorious in November’s general election, while only about half say the same of Ms Haley. Voters were also far more likely to view Mr Trump than Ms Haley as someone who would “stand up and fight for people like you” and to say he would keep the country safe. And about seven in 10 say he has the mental capability to serve effectively as president.
Mr Trump’s voters also backed his more nationalist views — they are more likely than Haley’s supporters to have lukewarm views of the Nato alliance or even consider it bad for the US., to say immigrants are hurting the country and to say immigration is the top issue facing the country.
‘Haley needed to prove that this is a real campaign'
Ms Haley needed to prove that this is a real campaign, not just an effort to provide GOP bigwigs with an alternative at a brokered convention.
Haley supporters who piled onto the shore at Patriots Point Naval & Maritime Museum in Mount Pleasant on Friday evening were well aware of this. At least one expressed doubts to The Independent that the GOP would even consider Ms Haley were Mr Trump to be hopelessly sidelined from the presidential race by a criminal conviction, a mountain of legal fees, or some combination of both.
With a picturesque sunset illuminating the silhouette of an aircraft carrier to her back, Nikki Haley’s effort to barnstorm her home state came to an end on Friday. She descended from the steps of her massive tour bus, the “Beast of the Southeast”, after several triumphant honks (and an admission from Congressman Ralph Norman that they had initially missed their turn). Addressing supporters who cheered when she joked that Donald Trump had permanently “banned” them from the Maga movement, Ms Haley made her case once again for the GOP to move on from a 91-times-indicted former president who she fiercely attacked for devaluing the military service of American troops, including her own husband.
South Carolina veterans support Trump
Donald Trump’s win gave him a clean sweep of all five nominating contests so far: Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, the US Virgin Islands and now South Carolina. Saturday’s result has to be especially frustrating for Nikki Haley, who became a political star in the Deep South state where she served as governor for six years.
She invested more time, money and effort in campaigning ahead of the primary, while Mr Trump held just a handful of rallies. At the same time, she watched as much of the state’s political establishment turned their back on her and sided with the former president.
Perhaps most vexing was how poorly Haley did with veterans after she took Mr Trump to task for criticising her husband, an officer in the South Carolina National Guard currently on deployment to Africa, for being absent on the campaign trail. Ms Haley also played up the former president’s past disrespectful comments about the late US senator John McCain, a decorated Vietnam vet.
Republican US presidential candidate Nikki Haley on primary day in Charleston, South Carolina
According to exit polls conducted by Edison Research, Mr Trump won 67 per cent of the vote of those who served in the US Armed Forces compared with just 33 per cent for Ms Haley.
Perhaps it was not surprising given how veterans told Reuters that even though they faulted Mr Trump for his remarks, they were standing by him. Some were concerned Ms Haley’s aggressive foreign policy views could lead the United States into another war.
According to Edison, 47 per cent of Republicans felt the US should take a less active role in world affairs, and Mr Trump won nearly 77 per cent of those voters. But Mr Trump also won the lion’s share of voters (60 per cent) who believed that the US should take a more active role.
If all of that left Ms Haley and her team scratching their heads, you couldn’t blame them.
Trump takes on Haley with border security issues, indicate exit polls
Exit polls also made something else clear: Donald Trump has boxed out Nikki Haley on the issue of immigration and border security.
That mattered in South Carolina, where 37 per cent of voters listed immigration as their top priority. Of those voters, 82 per cent backed Mr Trump and just 18 per cent supported Ms Haley. And of the 66 per cent of voters who believe undocumented immigrants should be deported to their countries of origin, 77 per cent voted for Mr Trump.
At campaign events, Ms Haley has argued that she, too, takes a hard line on immigration, but Republicans don’t seem to be buying it. Mr Trump’s campaign this week released a TV ad titled “Weakness” that claimed Ms Haley opposed the former president’s so-called Muslim “travel ban” during his administration and questioned the need for a wall along the US border with Mexico.
Republican presidential candidate and former president Donald Trump arrives on stage to speak to supporters during an election night watch party at the State Fairgrounds on 24 February 2024 in Columbia, South Carolina
The site FactCheck.org called the ad misleading, noting that Ms Haley has been supportive of a wall, but she would have favored a more narrowly tailored ban than the one Mr Trump instituted.
Regardless, his attacks seem to have stuck, which does not auger well for Ms Haley’s prospects in a party increasingly consumed by the issue of migrants coming across the border.
Ramaswamy and Kristi Noem tie in CPAC vice president straw poll; Nikki Haley and JD Vance get dead last
As if Saturday could not be any more brutal for Nikki Haley as she lost the presidential primary in her home state of South Carolina, the final day of the Conservative Political Action Conference showed movement conservatives do not want her to be Donald Trump’s running mate.
CPAC closed by showing the final results of the CPAC straw poll, which the former Trump adviser said would be to determine who would “ride shotgun” with Mr Trump.
South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, who spoke at the conference on Friday, tied with former presidential candidate and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, who headlined CPAC’s Reagan Dinner on Friday and spoke again on Saturday after Mr Trump, at 15 per cent each.
Former congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, who has touted her exit from the Democratic Party and spoke on Friday, got second place, with nine per cent of attendees at CPAC supporting her to become Mr Trump’s running mate.
South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, a former presidential candidate who has since endorsed Mr Trump, and House Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik, the moderate-turned-MAGA New Yorker, both clocked in at 8 per cent.
But Ms Haley, who spoke at CPAC last year but served as the butt of jokes by many at the conference, only won 2 per cent of the vote, tying her with Ohio Senator JD Vance, who spoke for a sitdown interview at CPAC this year.
McLaughlin & Associates, which serves as Mr Trump’s pollsters, ran the survey, which gives the survey an imprimatur of Trump support, even if it is not exactly scientific.
Trump has work to do despite his win in South Carolina primary
In his victory speech, Donald Trump made it clear that he was looking ahead to a November general election matchup against Democratic president Joe Biden. He didn’t mention Nikki Haley’s name once, apparently in a bid to act as if the primary race is over.
But while it appears increasingly improbable that Ms Haley can wrest the nomination from Mr Trump, his win in South Carolina masked a schism in the party that doesn’t seem to be closing.
Ms Haley was on track to finish with about 40 per cent of the vote, a better performance than polls predicted. Last month in New Hampshire, she took about 43 per cent of the vote.
Republican presidential candidate and former US president Donald Trump walks offstage after his remarks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the Gaylord National Resort Hotel And Convention Center on 24 February 2024 in National Harbor, Maryland
“Forty percent is not some tiny group,” she told her supporters on Saturday. “There are huge numbers of voters in our Republican primaries who are saying they want an alternative.”
In both states, Ms Haley’s numbers may have been bolstered by moderates or Democrats who voted in the Republican primary for the purpose of stopping Mr Trump.
In South Carolina, Ms Haley got the larger share of votes from voters who said they had never participated in a Republican primary before, according to exit polls by Edison Research. And 69 per cent of self-described moderates went for her.
For Mr Trump, it means there remains a solid chunk of the Republican electorate - as well as large share of independent voters - that he likely will need to win over if he is going to defeat Biden. As of yet, there’s little sign the former president is doing much to court them.
‘I have never seen the Republican Party so unified as it is right now'
“I have never seen the Republican Party so unified as it is right now,” Trump declared, taking the stage for his victory speech mere moments after polls closed. He added, “You can celebrate for about 15 minutes, but then we have to get back to work.”
South Carolina’s first-in-the-South primary has historically been a reliable bellwether for Republicans. In all but one primary since 1980, the Republican winner in South Carolina has gone on to be the party’s nominee. The lone exception was Newt Gingrich in 2012.
Haley said in recent days that she would head straight to Michigan for its Tuesday primary, the last major contest before Super Tuesday. She faces questions about where she might be able to win a contest or be competitive.
Trump and Biden are already behaving like they expect to face off in November.
https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMie2h0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmluZGVwZW5kZW50LmNvLnVrL25ld3Mvd29ybGQvYW1lcmljYXMvdXMtcG9saXRpY3MvdHJ1bXAtc291dGgtY2Fyb2xpbmEtcHJpbWFyeS1yZXN1bHRzLWhhbGV5LW5ld3MtYjI1MDIwNzEuaHRtbNIBAA?oc=5
2024-02-25 10:45:22Z
CBMie2h0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmluZGVwZW5kZW50LmNvLnVrL25ld3Mvd29ybGQvYW1lcmljYXMvdXMtcG9saXRpY3MvdHJ1bXAtc291dGgtY2Fyb2xpbmEtcHJpbWFyeS1yZXN1bHRzLWhhbGV5LW5ld3MtYjI1MDIwNzEuaHRtbNIBAA
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar