Nikki Haley’s last-ditch New Hampshire effort at neocon relevancy
Let the RINOs and state-run media have their fun for the next couple of days.
But if Nikki Haley can’t somehow pull off a major upset in New Hampshire Tuesday, it may be time for all the well-manicured GOP consultants and courtiers to flee back to their think tanks, their gated communities, their News Corp. sinecures and their Sea Island retreats with the other Koch-funded operatives.
George W. Bush ain’t walking through that door. Neither is Willard M. Romney or John McCain.
This primary could be the last gasp of the GOP’s neo-cons. Somehow, the traditional Dick Cheney platform of open borders, out-of-control inflation and unlimited billions for the Bidens’ paymasters in Ukraine is just not resonating among New Hampshire Republicans.
For the last three days, in the Suffolk University-Boston Globe tracking poll, Donald Trump is up three points, to 53 percent. Nikki Haley is flat at 36 percent.
Which is why the bow-tied bum kissers are burying their own tracking poll in smaller and smaller type every day – the Globe’s hemorrhaging enough of John Henry’s trophy wife’s millions every month without paying big bucks for that kind of bad news.
Even the Rupert Murdoch empire seems disheartened about Haley’s fading chances. Yesterday’s front-page headline in the Journal promoted independents as her “last-ditch hope.” A columnist mentioned her “incoherence” on the stump.
And now Sen. Tim Scott has endorsed Trump. Not that Scott has a huge base of support in the Granite State, but like Haley he is from South Carolina. And as governor she did appoint him to the US Senate back in 2012 after Jim DeMint resigned.
And this is the thanks Nikki gets! Now she knows how Trump feels about Ron DeSanctimonious.
Of course, theoretically, Trump could still lose. The other night, in Portsmouth, he was scanning the SRO crowd, looking for one of his top local supporters, Al Baldasaro, the ex-state rep from Londonderry.
Baldasaro, by the way, just happens to be the grandson of the late Al Vellucci, one of the last normal Americans elected to political office in Cambridge.
“I don’t see Al,” Trump shouted. “Where is Al Baldasaro?”
A guy in the back yelled back, “He’s in Florida!”
So there it is. At least part of Trump’s New Hampshire base has taken it on the lam to the Sunshine State until spring.
Meanwhile, Nikki is counting on that 40 percent of “unaffiliated” voters in New Hampshire to pull over the finish line, polls be damned.
Only one problem. The Democrats are also trying to turn those pantywaist voters out, to write in Joe Biden.
Don’t laugh – it’s a real thing, not having the incumbent president on the first primary ballot, but instead running a write-in campaign, like he’s some dopey incumbent state rep from Somerville or the South End who “forgot” to file his nomination signatures in time to get on the ballot.
Seriously, who in their right mind, even a Democrat, is going to go out in the cold on Tuesday to… write in Dementia Joe’s name?
Also on the Democrat ballot is Minnesota Cong. Dean Phillips. His TV ad poses a good question to New Hampshire Democrats about Brandon:
“He’s written you off. Why should write him in?”
Who knows how long it will take the Democrats to count the “write-in” votes. Plus, the party’s local Nazi sympathizers are promoting a write-in for “Ceasefire,” to try to stop Israel’s elimination of the genocidal raping Muslim terrorists of Hamas.
Maybe Biden can still eke out a win , if the Democrats revert to the party’s traditional election-night strategy, as spelled out by Edward G. Robinson as a Chicago Democrat gangster in the 1946 movie Key Largo:
“Count the votes over and over again, ‘til they add up right.”
Worked so well for them in 2020, after all.
The fact that both deep-state candidates, Biden and Haley, seem to be floundering likely means that the results will be dismissed Tuesday night by the corrupt corporate media. They’ve already started writing off New Hampshire. Nothing to see here folks, let’s talk some more about… Jan. 6.
As for Haley, one demographic group she should not count on breaking her way is postmen. Her campaign and its related super PAC’s have flooded every mailbox in New Hampshire with scores of expensive fliers.
On the text line for my radio show, I hear from New Hampshire listeners who are getting anywhere from three to six pamphlets every day, just from Haley. Trump sends them out occasionally, too, as does DeSantis, although he’s pretty much thrown in the towel. (He was at 7 percent in yesterday’s tracking poll.)
But what exactly is the strategy of junk-mailing every registered GOP voter, many of whom live in the same households with other registered Republicans who are getting the exact same letters.
Is the theory that, you know, maybe the first 19 Haley mailings in the last three days didn’t convince them, but the 20th… could be the charm.
Then there are Nikki’s texts. They’re exasperating as well, but somehow they seem to bother young voters even more than old-timers, maybe because millennials and Gen Zers text so much more than their elders.
Everyone knows how to halt the messages from, say, your local pizza shop. You just text back “STOP.” The problem in New Hampshire is, as soon as you “STOP” Nikki on one of her text lines, she hits you on a different one.
“My son was screaming at his phone last night,” a woman from the 603 area code texted me last week. “He may end up voting for Trump just to teach Nikki a lesson.”
At least it’ll soon be over, ma’am. Which leaves us with one unanswered question.
Did Al Baldasaro get an absentee ballot before he left for Florida?
