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! I’m absolutely serious:

The draft resolution, obtained by the Dispatch Thursday morning, was proposed by David Bossie, an RNC committeeman from Maryland and close Trump ally. His effort to put the national party on a general election footing behind Trump follows RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel saying after the former president defeated Haley in Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary that it was time for Republicans to unite behind the frontrunner and focus on defeating President Joe Biden.

“RESOLVED that the Republican National Committee hereby declares President Trump as our presumptive 2024 nominee for the office of president of the United States and from this moment forward moves into full general election mode welcoming supporters of all candidates as valued members of Team Trump 2024,” reads a key portion of the draft resolution.

Under current RNC rules, Trump still has to win the requisite number of nominating convention delegates — 1,215 — to become the party’s unchallenged presumptive nominee. After the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, Trump leads Haley in the race for delegates thirty-two to seventeen. 

But passage of this resolution, possibly next week at the RNC winter meeting in Las Vegas, could begin a preemptive process of the national party working with the former president as if he had already done so. And under RNC rules, that is permissible. This resolution, even in draft form, also functions as another sign that the GOP establishment is anxious to coalesce behind Trump and put an end to a presidential primary that, after his victories in Iowa and New Hampshire, the former president looks poised to win.

See the draft resolution here. The RNC declined to comment for this story, and the Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Let’s just imagine for one second if this were a situation with the DNC and, say, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, or Joe Biden and… also Bernie Sanders, or Joe Biden and even Dean Phillips! How would Trump react to such a step? STOP THE COUNT! It’s such a weaksauce attitude. A good word for it might be, I don’t know, cuck?

If you’re confident in Trump’s ability to curb-stomp Nikki Haley in her home state in four weeks, why on earth would you do something like this? Trump doesn’t have to debate, he doesn’t have to campaign, he doesn’t have to spend a dime on the state according to his supporters. And to be clear: I think all that is true, he’ll have, at worst, the same margin of victory he had in New Hampshire. And unlike that state, South Carolina is winner-take-all (though it is not a closed primary — a certain political expert said that on camera with me the other night and it raised an eyebrow, and then I heard it in the airport from a commentator on CNN and MSNBC! Who is feeding these experts such fake news?), so his delegate count will be boosted significantly.

Why would you be afraid of Nikki Haley at this point? Well, because her continued presence reveals the central problem for the Trump effort: his weakness among independent voters so critical to his success in 2016 and to his failure in 2020. But deploying his associates, including even the chairwoman of the RNC who had previously promised neutrality in the party (oops), to try to push Nikki out just isn’t what the people want.

What they should want, and what Donald Trump should do, is go out and defeat her once and for all. If she truly represents the neocon agenda, the warmongering open borders globalist agenda he claims to hate so much, why not debate her at this point? Why not put her in the ground for good? Turn it into an exercise in proving your own capacity (against Nikki’s ageist attacks) and your own future-focused ideological rightness (against her backwards appeals). What do you have to fear from this former governor? Your entire supporter set will back you in this — they love to see you dominate on the debate stage. Why not give the people what they want?

Unless, of course, you’re afraid.

On this week’s episode of the podcast, the guys discuss the fallout from New Hampshire’s results and what Nikki Haley gains or loses by staying in the GOP presidential race. Listen here!

Quite the scene in New Hampshire

For more of our coverage of New Hampshire at The Spectator, read my coverage from a voting spot, reaction to the Haley speech, Amber Duke on the Trump triumph, Cockburn on the Trump camp’s war against Haley donors, Freddy Gray on Dean Phillips, Charles Lipson on Haley’s aims and Cockburn from the Trump victory party:

Trump spoke for around twenty minutes, mostly criticizing his remaining primary opponent Nikki Haley, who had spoken up in Concord just before. “She was talking about most winnability, ‘who’s going to win,’” he said. “And I had one put up. I don’t know if you see them, but I had one put up. We’ve won almost every single poll in the last three months against Crooked Joe Biden… Let’s not have somebody take a victory when she had a very bad night.”

He also took a pop at New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu, who had endorsed her: “He’s gotta be on something, I’ve never seen that kind of energy.”

“Just a little note to Nikki,” Trump said later. “She’s not going to win… but if she did, she would be under investigation by those people in fifteen minutes. And I could tell you five reasons why already. Not big reasons, but it is stuff that she doesn’t want to talk about. But she will be under investigation within minutes.”

“I find in life, you can’t let people get away with bullshit, OK?” Trump said of his opponent’s speech. “And when I watched her in a fancy dress, that probably wasn’t so fancy, come up, I said, ‘what’s she doing?’”

What’s the plan in Nevada?

Just for clarification purposes:

In 2021, Nevada’s legislature passed a law that requires the state to hold presidential primaries, which inform the nomination process of the Democratic and Republican parties. The law was a response to reporting issues during the 2020 Democratic caucus that led to a recount.

Caucuses are run by political parties, while primary elections are run by state and local governments.

Under the Nevada law, there must be a Republican and Democratic primary. However, each party is not bound to the results and can choose other methods to assign the state’s delegates.

The Republican Party in Nevada has decided to stick with the caucus system. In May 2023, the party sued the state about the primary election law. Nevada’s GOP then passed a rule barring any candidate who signed up for the state’s primary from participating in its caucus and, therefore, receiving delegates.

There are two separate ballots for the Republican primary and caucus. The Nevada Republican primary has no impact on who receives the national nomination.

Registered Republicans in Nevada can legally vote in both the primary and caucus.

Candidates on the Democratic primary ballot include Biden and author Marianne Williamson. Phillips will not be on the Democratic ballot in Nevada because he missed the filing deadline.

For the Republicans, Haley is the only top candidate on the Republican primary’s ballot. Meanwhile, Trump is participating in the Republican caucus. This means Haley is not included on the caucus ballot, and vice versa for Trump on the primary ballot.

SC politicians line up behind Trump

Will Nikki be able to overcome united opposition? It’s possible, but the odds are much longer.

Haley supporters see, in her decision to continue in the primary, a certain homegrown logic. Haley has been the long shot in South Carolina Republican primaries before, persevered and won. In her first run in 2004, Haley challenged the state’s longest serving legislator in the Republican primary, ousting him in a runoff election.

Six years later, she ran for governor as an underdog Tea Party candidate, again forcing a primary runoff after a late surge and winning.

This time, however, the challenge appears far more difficult. It’s not just the Republican establishment in Columbia out to stop her. Following her defeat in New Hampshire, and just as Haley got the head-to-head contest with Trump that she had long hoped for, some of the most powerful voices of the GOP called for the primary to come to an end, saying conservatives should simply get behind Trump. That includes the Republican National Committee’s chair, Ronna McDaniel, who said on Tuesday she saw no path forward for Haley. On Wednesday, the Trump campaign said it picked up fifty new endorsements from current and former Republican officials in South Carolina over the past two weeks.

In a longer-than-usual, forty-minute campaign speech here Wednesday night, Haley appealed to her history with the state’s electorate, reminding voters “you have been with me before.”

“Join with me again,” she said. “One last time.”

Then she asked her supporters to take yard signs, and to tell ten people each to vote for her in the state’s primary on February 24.

In her first stop back in South Carolina, Haley did nothing to suggest a change in posture toward Trump, despite his popularity here. She had become increasingly critical of the former president while campaigning in New Hampshire, and in her speech on Wednesday, she recycled many of the comments she has made previously about his age, mental acuity and electability in November. She leaned into public dissatisfaction with the idea of a rematch between Trump and President Joe Biden.

One more thing

Ron DeSantis was the erstwhile juggernaut in the 2024 primary field. But his exit has been ignominious and without much remarking because it was so predictable. But did you predict he’d be going viral already with a suitably autistic hardcore conservative take on the Constitution, theFederalist Papers and immigration?  As commentator Inez Stepman noted: “Ah, there’s the slightly autistic killer I was hoping for.” Perhaps the Florida governor should get T-shirts printed for the GOP convention this summer saying: Miss Me Yet?