When Nikki Haley took the podium Saturday night, the bravery she embodied after her loss in New Hampshire a month earlier was gone. Her expression was sombre and for a moment she seemed on the verge of withdrawing from the race for the Republican nomination.
“Our country will fall apart if we make the wrong decisions. It was never about me or my political future. “We have to beat Joe Biden in November,” she said as her audience held their breath.
Finally, she turned around: “I don’t think Donald Trump can beat Joe Biden.”
It was a notable correction from Jan. 23, when she turned her 43 percent of the vote in New Hampshire from a defeat into something of a victory and vowed to beat Mr. Trump in her home state of South Carolina.
And although Ms. Haley had also decided to stay in the race on Saturday, her fortitude now seemed more like dogged courage and determination than optimistic confidence.
Mr. Trump delivered his own corrective on Saturday evening. In New Hampshire, his victory speech had displayed all the grace and decency of a professional wrestling show, right down to mocking Ms. Haley’s dress and mocking her defeat. And he threatened that from now on anyone who donated to her campaign would be “permanently banned from MAGA,” referring to his “Make America Great Again” movement as if it were one of his private golf clubs.
In Columbia, South Carolina, Mr. Trump didn’t even mention the name of Ms. Haley, his last major opponent — not exactly gracious, but not insulting either. Instead, he thanked his allies and came only close to insulting when he urged Sen. Lindsey Graham to say a few words, noting that he was standing “a little to the left” of the crowd while his supporters booed their state’s senior senator .
At this point in his political career, no one would consider Mr. Trump a unifying force, but in Columbia he appeared willing to at least try to unite the Republican Party behind his nomination. He did not denigrate Ms. Haley’s constituents or threaten her political donors.
Ms. Haley viewed her performance more realistically than in the Granite State. She said she won “about” 40 percent of the vote, adding that that was “about” what she got in New Hampshire. “About” has done a lot of work in this claim; 40 percent is not 43 percent, and early in the South Carolina campaign, the super PAC that supported her said she needed to surpass her results in New Hampshire to prove she was making progress. She did not.
Still, Ms. Haley used her own phrase, “hard truth,” when she was level with her supporters — even if that hard truth didn’t end with her withdrawal from the presidential campaign.
“I am a bookkeeper. I know that 40 percent is not 50 percent,” she told the crowd. “But I also know that 40 percent is not a small group.”
“Today is not the end of our story,” she concluded. That left a lot of options for tomorrow.
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2024-02-25 03:39:01
www.nytimes.com
