GOP primary

Saturday

Cockburn

Trump defeats Haley in South Carolina primary

In an outcome that will surprise no one, Trump has secured a resounding victory in South Carolina over his last opponent standing in the race for the GOP nomination. As the votes are counted, it looks like Trump will end up with a twenty-point gap between him and his former ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley. Haley's loss in her home state makes her path to the nomination even less likely (not that Cockburn believes it ever was). Though the final gap will end up being large, Haley was able to close the gap considerably from where she was polling at just a few weeks ago, when many polls showed Trump with a forty-point lead. Super Tuesday now looks to be her final stand as she tries make her case.

donald trump nato

Thursday

Ben Domenech

Who’s afraid of Nikki Haley?

Welcome to Thunderdome, fresh from New Hampshire, tired as all get-out and ready to rumble on to South Carolina and its welcoming warmth and palmetto-framed cobblestone streets, as opposed to the watery coffee and stained fingers of the Northeast. The strangest thing seems to be happening, though: with Nikki Haley’s insistence on staying in the race, and the apparent flood of donations she’s received since overperforming against Donald Trump, the people around the former president are taking on a newly aggressive tone — even to the point of trying to anoint him the nominee before anyone else votes!

Tuesday

Ben Domenech

Will New Hampshire matter after this primary?

The big question that every New Hampshire personality is ready to answer, expecting it before each conversation with an out-of-state journalist, is some form of “will your state still matter after this?” The absence of a truly competitive primary nags at them, and local officials bristle at the notion that in this new era of celebrity politics, where approaches are measured in virality and meme potential, the old skills of glad-handing at small-town gatherings is declining into a memory.  “They’ll be back,” Chris Ager, the New Hampshire Republican Party chairman, tells me. “This is a special place, and it’s not going anywhere.

new hampshire

Monday

The Spectator

On the ground at the New Hampshire primary

New Hampshire votes tomorrow in the 2024 presidential primaries — and it seems no one is expecting an upset. The Spectator team dispatched to Manchester and has observed a significantly quieter scene than that of the 2020 Democratic primary contest. News coverage is scanter than expected, the bars and restaurants are empty and there is plenty of parking, even as temperatures creeped above freezing today.The only quasi-surprise so far is that Florida governor Ron DeSantis has suspended his campaign already, although that seemed more a question of when not if, considering his poor showing in Iowa after spending more than $100 million campaigning.

Monday

The Spectator

The poll that sent Democrats running

We’re almost exactly one year out from what increasingly looks like another Trump v. Biden showdown. Former president Donald Trump leads his second-place opponent by more than forty percentage points nationally, and has a thirty-point advantage in Iowa. President Joe Biden avoided a primary challenge from RFK Jr., who is now running as an Independent, and no one thinks Representative Dean Phillips’s campaign is serious, especially considering his refusal to acknowledge the objective reality that he’s even running against Biden. Although Phillips doesn’t seem to be the guy for the job, more Democrats are waking up to the idea that Biden doesn’t have what it takes to win a second term. Polls have consistently shown that a majority of Democrats don’t want Biden to run again.