It was embarrassing enough to watch when Nikki Haley was promising a strong performance in New Hampshire and then got thoroughly pummeled by Donald Trump. At least that was somebody — a former president, no less.
However, as a sort of object lesson that things can always get worse, take Tuesday’s GOP primary in Nevada primary. There, Haley lost by roughly 30 points … to nobody.
No, I’m not saying she beat everybody by 30 points. I’m not saying she won. I’m saying she lost to nobody. This isn’t an Abbott and Costello sketch. (“Third base!”) Instead, it’s the sad reality of Haley’s ridiculous, quixotic belief that she still has some kind of chance in this primary fight.
So, let me explain the sequence of events. Two weeks ago, after finally getting what she wanted and every other GOP candidate aside from herself and front-runner Trump out of the race, Haley was hoping for a strong performance in New Hampshire.
It’s a a state with electoral quirks that allows independents — and there are a lot of them in New Hampshire — to vote in whichever primary they choose.
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She lost by 11 points.
Nevertheless, she promised to persist: “This race is far from over,” she told supporters. “There are dozens of states left to go, and the next one is my sweet state of South Carolina,” which votes on Feb. 24.
“This race is far from over,” Nikki Haley says after losing to Donald Trump in the New Hampshire Republican primary.
“There are dozens of states left to go…and the next one is my sweet state of South Carolina.” pic.twitter.com/Smbkoq3Z8D
— MSNBC (@MSNBC) January 24, 2024
That wasn’t quite true, though. Nevada actually votes this week — and if New Hampshire was complicated, Nevada is all sorts of bananas.
As the Las Vegas Review-Journal notes, Nevada has a state-mandated primary, passed thanks to Democratic legislators in 2021. Except, that doesn’t award any delegates, at least for the Republican Party. The party-run caucuses scheduled for Thursday do — but Haley isn’t participating in those.
(Shockingly, the Review-Journal report seemed to only be able to find anti-Trump voters to talk to. Even more shockingly, they felt that the caucus “process has been rigged for Trump.”)
Trump’s opposition in the caucuses, such as it is, comes from long-shot candidate Ryan Binkley. Binkley is a pastor, CEO of a financial consultancy group, and has a last name that sounds like a magical cartoon bear.
According to his website, his slogan is “Believe,” which sounds like what Binkley the Magical Cartoon Bear would say to activate his special star power and thwart the evil designs of the Dark Wizard Calabazas.
So, Haley was running, essentially, against nobody. Former Vice President Mike Pence and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott were on the ballot, since they had planned to participate before they suspended their campaigns, but nobody but Haley was still actually running.
And nobody won. By over 30 points, according to CNN results election results as of early Wednesday morning.
(Well, technically, “None of these candidates” won. As The Hill noted, voters were given a choice to select that box instead of a candidate, but were not ablte to write a candidate’s name in.)
Nikki Haley basically doubled up in the Nevada primary on a ballot that didn’t have Trump on it.
She was defeated by someone named “None of these candidates” by 29 points… pic.twitter.com/nqJmFSKOwx
— Joe Concha (@JoeConchaTV) February 7, 2024
Las Vegas-based conservative radio talk show host Wayne Allyn Root, who encouraged his listeners to vote for “none of the above,” took some of the credit for Haley’s loss.
Hilarious, I told all of my listeners in Las Vegas to vote “none of the above” vs Nikki. We won! “None of above” kicked Nikki’s ass by almost 2 to 1. Thank you Nevada. Biggest humiliation in history! We ended Nikki. https://t.co/1RfznGnuJb
— Wayne Root – Wayne Allyn Root – TV & Radio Host (@RealWayneRoot) February 7, 2024
Did he have any influence? Maybe, maybe not — probably not 30 points worth, anyway. He had some of the night’s funnier takes about Haley’s loss, however:
Did Nikki call “None of the above” to concede?
— Wayne Root – Wayne Allyn Root – TV & Radio Host (@RealWayneRoot) February 7, 2024
I hear Nikki Haley will accept VP position for “None of the Above” Party. https://t.co/1RfznGnuJb
— Wayne Root – Wayne Allyn Root – TV & Radio Host (@RealWayneRoot) February 7, 2024
According to Review-Journal report on the results of the primary, Nevada Republican Party Chairman Michael McDonald also got in an amusing jab, congratulating “none of the above” for his win and the wonderful job his campaign did.
“I think the Republican voters spoke, and there will be more to come Thursday night,” he added.
Keep in mind, too, that the kind of person that was going to show up to vote at all on Tuesday was probably going to be, as the Review-Journal noted, the type that was “accusing the Nevada Republican Party of rigging the caucuses for Trump. Some said they would participate in the primary to show support, knowing [Haley] will not receive delegates.”
“I’ll vote for anybody but Mr. Trump,” 77-year-old Roger Smith told the paper, adding that “the Republican Party is no longer the party of the people. It’s a small group of people who are following a demagogue.”
A small group of people following … “none of these candidates,” to the tune of 60 percent. And it isn’t even as if Trump was trying hard to get out the vote for “none of these candidates.”
“Your primary vote doesn’t mean anything. It’s your caucus vote,” he told Nevadans last month.
Now, obviously, there’s an argument to be made that those who were voting for “nobody” were in reality expressing their preference for Trump. It’s a sign of how little support Haley has that, in a race with no delegates at stake, Trump’s name not even on the ballot and Trump himself saying the race didn’t matter, she lost by a whopping 30 points.
Should Nikki Haley quit the race?
And as for her “sweet state of South Carolina?” She’s running against somebody there — Trump — and doing just about as well, according to the RealClearPolitics polling aggregate. The running average has the former president up by 27 points, 53.7 percent to 26.7 percent, as of Wednesday morning.
Forget about “sweet” South Carolina, however. When you go to Nevada and bet on yourself to win the primary — given that you’re the only active candidate with a following still in it — and lose, it’s time to stop rolling the dice.
As a prominent GOP donor told Nikki after her New Hampshire embarrassment, she should take Kenny Rogers’ timeless advice: “Know when to fold ’em.”
In a state dominated by casinos, where she ended up losing to “none of these candidates,” that counsel couldn’t be more literal.
