S4 Ep13: Nikki’s Narrow Path (with Whit Ayres)

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Focus Group podcast. I’m Sarah Longwell well publisher of the Bulwark. And I know that this week, I had promised we were gonna do sort of a lighthearted holiday cheer episode, but it turns out there just, like, wasn’t that much lightheartedness or cheeriness to mine. And so call it an audible. And, I’m gonna dip my toe back into the Republican potential primary, which I have done not a ton of this fall because there’s only so many episodes you can do about Trump being up forty points, but There has been something semi quasi interesting happening.

Nikki Haley has gone from being the last afterthought candidate to the front runner of the afterthoughts. She has been edging out Ron DeSantis for second place, and so I wanna talk through a, how the Republican primary got this way, and b, what Nikki Haley’s hail Mary play is. A Haley Mary, if you will. My guest today is Witt Ayers, a Republican Ron DeSantis, and one of the smartest guys in Republican politics, Witt, thank you for being here.

Sarah, always good to be with you.

Alright, man. So you and I did a poll at the start of the year for the bulwark that showed Ron DeSantis leading Trump by twenty two points. Remember that?

Along with a number of other polls, like the Wall Street Journal poll that had Ron DeSantis head of Donald Trump, which simply goes to show how much things change in the course of a year?

Yes. I was just thinking this. I’m not sure. I’ve seen a bigger swing in Republican voters where Ron DeSantis was, like, Trump without the baggage and, like, his electability was the thing that people liked about him. To and now, I don’t know if you heard this in some of the groups, but people talk about how he’s not electable anymore.

Like, now Trump is Ron DeSantis without the baggage. Like, He’s just killed himself on the electability front.

Sarah, it all goes to show what you and I have known for years. Candidates matter and campaigns matter. Yeah. Ron DeSantis support has been cut in half since he started campaigning. That tells you something.

Sure does. It does not bode well for his political future. So do you think there’s an alternate universe where Trump still gets indicted and DeSantis or Haley? You know, could have been running a more competitive race. Like, have you been surprised to see this dramatic turn back to Trump after the data showed so early on, right, that there was just this real chunk of voters who were open to an alternative to Trump.

And there’s still a chunk of voters who are all open to an alternative to Trump. They haven’t yet seen a viable alternative, but if a viable alternative emerges, you can imagine a number of those voters going that direction. Am I surprised that Trump got as strong as he did after the horrible performance of Republicans in the midterms in twenty twenty two. Yes. I am, but then I should stop being surprised at Donald Trump and the number of supporters he can gain in the Republican primary.

Yeah. He just sort of can’t beat something with nothing. And like you said, this chunk of voters was available, and you’ve always had this formulation that I love and I steal and riff on all the time, which is that there’s the way that you could sort of put into buckets the Republican electorate just for the sake of categorizing them efficiently is that there are always trumpers. There’s maybe trumpers. My riff on that has always been, then there’s move on from trumpers.

And the move on from trumpers were like a real chunk of the party. They tended to be college educated and suburban. And those were, like, your big DeSantis, curious voters, and I I’ll never understand why he didn’t consolidate that group of people and then start working on the maybe trumpers. And instead, he went right after the always trumpers, and that is why he finds himself now with no constituency. I don’t know if you can explain the thinking there, but that has always been sort of my assessment of what happened.

No.

I think you’re exactly right. I I think he misunderstood the fundamental problem. For a candidate challenging Trump in a Republican primary in twenty twenty four. Always trumpers are always trump for a reason. And they’re not gonna settle for a pillar version of Donald Trump if they can get the real thing.

But Let’s keep in mind that a majority of the party, they’re not never trumpers. Never trumpers are only about ten percent of the party. But a majority of the party voted for Donald Trump twice. They would vote for him again against Joe Biden in a heartbeat, but they’re at least curious and open to considering an alternative. I think there’s a lot of commentary out there that talks about Donald Trump being the inevitable nominee I think that’s overstated.

There’s an awful lot of things that are gonna happen between now and next summer in Milwaukee. He is a strong favorite. But a strong favorite is different from being inevitable. And I think we need to at least leave enough space to be surprised by somebody making a run at him in the early part of twenty twenty four and maybe at the convention.

Okay. This is why I wanted to have you on because I wanna I wanna dig into this optimism. I I am desperate to believe that you are right. In this podcast together, you and me, you are gonna you’re gonna get me there to feeling like I can believe that. The problem is is that I I Polie and seltzer.

She’s a she’s a good one out there. She’s a good pollster. Happy owner to be wrong too often. Yep. In Iowa, she has Trump over fifty percent there in Iowa.

And, you know, Haley’s doing a good job in New Hampshire, but Trump is still up pretty high there. New Hampshire’s beating her by I don’t know. I think if you add up Haley and Ron DeSantis and you double it, he’s still ahead. I don’t know. I get you’re gonna help me imagine this scenario where this where this Bulwark.

I wanna start because I wanna jump into the groups here. Obviously, Nikki’s rise in the polls has been partially driven by her debate performances. I think she’s gotten good headlines. She’s gotten good feedback. People like seeing her smack, Rama Swamy, but I wanna go back a little bit to before the debates.

And the reviews she got in Republican focus groups were middling to bad, which is why I had always been skeptical that she was gonna be a potential alternative. So let’s listen.

I don’t believe she has a shot. I think she has some interesting ideas. I she’s campaigned so much here in Iowa and has held so many women events from that perspective. I’m very interested in her.

We think Nikki Haley’s a rhino, and I also read Mike Pompeo’s book a year ago where he pretty much calls her out on some different things. I don’t know. I there’s just some problems with her. I I would just add that any presidential candidate that thinks that a two state solution for Israel is the way to go along and have my vote. She’s a great successor.

And I like her. Don’t get me wrong. I think she’s great. But let’s not hear it, but we lived on one side of the tracks, and I look different. I don’t wanna hear that anymore.

So that last woman responding to Haley’s announcement where she talks about how the railroad tracks in her town in South Carolina divided the town by race, and the woman talking about a two state solution. She was back in July. So these are, like, kinda older when we were asking about Haley. But since she’s been on the debate stage, I’ve been really struck by how much voters talk about how she seems really competent and well put together. And so this is how Republican voters have sounded in the months since the debate started.

I think she hold herself well. I think she’s very put together especially when Vivec attacked her pretty good there as well as the dates couple weeks ago. So she she didn’t back down with them, but, very professional. I think she could hold her own, but, you know, I don’t know. It’s a whole different thing going from her current position to president of the United States.

She had a strong track record as the governor in South Carolina, and then she was part of Trump’s presidential cabinet. So I just think she has experience compared it to the other candidates where she could potentially be a candidate to be the country.

I like Nicki. Hey. Well, that’s who I’m gonna vote for. I just think he comes across as very professional and knowledgeable and I think she’d be a great choice of Republicans, but she’s conservative, you know, because with Trump, the women went mainly for the Democrats. And since there’s more women than men voting, you know, we need the women come back to the Republican party.

I started getting impressed with her when she was part of Trump’s cabinet, and she really held her own at that point. So She went a lot of credit in my eyes. She hasn’t worn it all away yet. And a lot of the polls, you know, you see Trump within, GOP is killing it, but It’s like the rest he he won’t get a single vote from the center or from the left. And, yeah, he’s definitely taken a stand being bold as he’s making enemies and, you know, to that point.

But in order to govern, You do have to reach across the aisle. You do have to have conversations and have a certain amount of calmness about you, I guess. But so Nikki seems level headed. We’re allowed to do, but She seemed level headed enough that she would attract some of the undecideds, the independence. Being a woman, you might even get some of the left vote because there hasn’t been a woman president yet.

So that might garner some extra votes.

Okay. So, you know, people like Nikki Haley. I hear this a lot. I like her, but here’s the kicker. Those people were mostly from the same focus group of two time trump voters in Iowa and New Hampshire.

And that last guy, he’s the only one in the group who would vote for Haley if the primary was held today. And so this is where you get to shine with Do you think Nikki Haley has a path to victory and what does it look like?

The straight answer is yes. It’s a narrow path, but it’s a path. I was Marco Rubio’s Polster in two thousand sixteen, and we basically had a three two one strategy third in Iowa second in New Hampshire win in South Sarah Longwell. And that was on track until Chris Christie put a knife in his back in the New Hampshire primary.

That guy.

But he was on track to do well. Nicky’s is the similar sort of a path where she comes in the top three in Iowa, the closer to DeSantis, the better, beating DeSantis is even better than that. And then she goes into New Hampshire with some momentum. She already has governor Sununu’s endorsement and he’s a popular guy there. But momentum really matters in these things.

And you had a number of people in your focus groups said I like about it. I just don’t think she can win. Well, they don’t wanna throw their vote away. But if they have some evidence from earlier elections that she could actually possibly win. Then a number of those people are going to be for her.

And if she comes in a close second or maybe even a victory in New Hampshire, then Trump’s inevitability gets punctured in a hurry. I think the more likely prospect is that she comes in second in New Hampshire, but then wins in South Sarah Longwell, and that’s a scenario. For her to make a serious run. She’s got to beat him somewhere, and South Carolina, her home state, is the most likely place. Sarah, I have some history with Nikki Haley, on the losing side.

In two thousand and ten, she ran for governor of South Carolina in a Republican primary. She was a state house member with a tiny constituency. She ran against the incumbent lieutenant governor, the incumbent attorney general, and my client, an incumbent congressman from the most Republican district in the state. In the initial ballot, Nikki Haley got as many votes as the three challengers put together. She got forty eight and a half percent of the vote.

My guy, Gresham Barrett, good man. Gresham got twenty one percent. They went to a runoff because she didn’t quite get to fifty percent, and she beat Gresham sixty five to thirty five. In a conservative Republican primary in a deep south state. What year was this?

This was two thousand ten. Okay. And and this tells you something about her political skill and her political talent. She’s the real deal. She showed some real leadership chops after the Dylan Roof massacre in Charleston.

She is a serious politician with some real talent. Now she’s up against King Kong. And King Kong has done pretty well in Republican primaries. We’ll see if she’s got what it takes to go up against King Kong. But I’m telling you she is a talented politician with a lot of potential to do well and capture attention.

King Khan who’s, like, not even in the debates now. So he’s just, like, dipped out, then she’s got this, like, series of flying monkeys she’s gotta contend with. For these other guys in the debates, this last debate, she got the front runner treatment, from them, which was meant that they were all attacking her in some way except for Chris Christie who, by the way, I would just say from my perspective, delivered the most fatal blow to her, by white knighting for her and coming in and being like, fibik Rana Swamy. He keeps calling this woman an idiot. He keeps talking about how stupid she is.

And he just, like, he was stepping on the criticism of her while acting like he was defending her. And I think she should have been like, Chris, thanks so much. I don’t need your help here. No. Big bully Chris Christie jumped in on her behalf.

I thought that was bad for her. I thought she seemed kind of paralyzed by all the attacks and, didn’t quite know where to go with that. I agree that she’s been really driven. The fact that she is now the person that I think people think will be the alternative to Trump. I’ll be at a a small one.

It is speaks to the fact that she’s had a real run here, but, like, what did you think of that last debate?

I thought that she was in the bull’s eye, which shows you that she has really

been gaining. I don’t think Chris Christie hurt her there,

beating up on Vivek Ramba Swamy. Is sort of easy pickings.

Yeah.

You know, I mean, the guy may be the most obnoxious person to ever set foot on a Republican debate stage, and that’s saying something. Saying something. But Chris Christie can hurt Nikki Haley by sticking around long after he has any realistic chance of winning. We saw that in two thousand and six ski in when John Casey hung around and hung around and hung around and to a lesser extent, Jeb Bush. Far longer than he had any reasonable prospect of winning.

And he cost Marco Rubio, the Virginia primary victory. Donald Trump got thirty five. Marco Rubio got thirty two. And in Virginia, John Casey got nine. All of those nine would have gone to

Marco Rubio had he not been in the race.

Marco Rubio would have had a big victory. This was super Tuesday in the eastern time zone, but John Casey helped Donald Trump win the Virginia. Primary. I had some personal experience with that sitting in a dentist chair in Virginia after the primary. And my dental hygienist was telling me about how she and her husband had never gotten involved in a primary before, but They really didn’t like Trump and they really wanted to stop him.

And I said, so how how do you vote? So, well, I I like Marcos. So I voted for Rubio and My husband liked Casey. So he voted for Casey. And I said, so you canceled each other out in what you were trying to do.

And she said, I never really thought about it like that.

Which was more painful. That little vignette was a

dental one. That vignette was much more painful. I’ve

got But that just shows you people don’t think strategically. Right now Chris Christie is running third in New Hampshire. Somewhere around ten percent of the vote. He says that his primary goal is to keep Donald Trump from being president of the United States. Well, guess what?

By sticking around and maintaining his place in this race, he could do exactly the opposite of what he said he wants, and that is help Donald Trump get the nomination. If he got out, almost all of his vote, and you know from the survey that we did. Almost all of his vote would go to Nikki Haley.

Yeah. It’s worth mentioning, actually, that you and I did a survey together pretty recently. It wasn’t to release. I was trying to get a sense of what’s it look like? What’s the for Nikki, because I’m here for it if I think it can be done.

And one of the things that was clear as day from this survey was the fact that if Chris Christie gets out, his votes go to her.

Yep.

And I felt bad because Chris Christie has been doing the right thing. Right? He’s telling the truth, standing up in front of people who don’t wanna hear it. He’s giving them the tough medicine, and I and I like that. And I’m for it.

And I I’ve supported Christie in the past on this stuff. Don’t hold it against him necessarily about him doing a lot to help Trump back in twenty sixteen. I anybody who’s on-site now is good. When the New York Times called me recently for a story, and it was, like, lots of people are saying Christie should drop out and, like, why don’t you think he is, whatever? And I was, like, I got I was, like, got all mad.

And I was, like, because time is a flat circle. And everybody insists on playing out the twenty sixteen primary, beat for beat, exactly like it was back then. And Chris Christie needs to drop out instead of doing what he did to Marco Rubio as you pointed out. He’s just hurting Nikki now. Anything he does, it’s not helping her.

I don’t know what he thinks he’s doing. It’s time. It’s time, buddy. Good job. I appreciate what you’ve done, but you’ve gotta show now that it is more than your ego at work here, and you are ready to actually be helpful to some of these other candidates.

Well, Chris Christie is running a very different campaign than any of the others. He’s running for that never Trump slice of the party. That’s only ten or maybe twelve percent, maybe a touch higher in New Hampshire. The problem with that, Sarah, is that when you call Donald Trump unfit for office. You essentially insult those millions of Republicans who voted for him in two thousand sixteen and two thousand twenty.

That’s not the way to appeal to those maybe trump voters who supported him in the past. And I know never Trump people get really frustrated, with Haley Ron DeSantis because they haven’t gone Trump more frontally. I’m sorry. That’s not the way to get those people. The way you get them is arguing the same way Nikki Haley is arguing, which is He was a good president for the time, but it’s time we move on.

It’s time to pass the torch to a new generation. It’s time to put aside our grievances about the past and look to the future. All of those are arguments that could appeal to a maybe Trump voter. But calling him unfit for office is not going to appeal. Even if Donald Trump is convicted of a felony and sent to jail, The convention next summer is not gonna turn to Chris Christie and go, you know, you are right all along about this, Chris.

And I’m going to support you now. I’m sorry. That’s not how things work. They will still resent him for saying bad things about their hero and for being so dismissive of him. So he has no path to the nomination.

The only thing he can do having made his point is get out and let someone who has a path to the nomination, pick up his votes and become a more serious alternative to Donald Trump.

Okay. I wasn’t necessarily planning on having this conversation, but, like, I wanna tease this out because this is important. It’s important to me. I know what you’re saying is intellectually and strategically correct. K?

It is intellectually and strategically correct. There is no way to beat Donald Trump in a Republican primary and have a campaign that isn’t just, like, sort of critical of him. The way Chris Christie’s doing it though is he sounds like a never jumper. But with all due respect to your argument, Chris Christie’s negatives are really high because of how his attacks have gone, and he has no path. I agree, and he should get out.

Donald Trump is still beating Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis for that matter by thirty or forty points in just about every poll. And so I just think real opposition to Trump has never been tried. So Nicky Haley’s like a smidgen in a better position than Chris Christie, and I don’t know that the Tepid oh, he’s a good president, but, you know, I don’t know. It’s I don’t think that’s working either. You do have to kinda bigfoot him.

I think. You do have to out alpha him, especially if you’re a woman. When you say never, trumpers get mad that these people don’t attack him, Okay. Well, what I’m mad about is that there is nobody who can beat him in any way. And so, like, right now, I don’t think that the strategy you’re suggesting seems that much better than Chris Christie’s or negatives are less high.

People like her a little more, and I agree She’s the narrowest of narrow past if everything goes right and he chokes on a cheeseburger. But, like, I don’t know that I think There wasn’t a way to be much more aggressive and actually run a campaign against this guy.

The case has been prosecuted. The case has been prosecuted aggressively by a very aggressive and effective prosecutor named Chris Christie. He has gone after him. He’s gone after him frontally. He’s called him unfit for office.

He has gone after him directly and totally ineffectively when it comes to Republican primary voters. Nikki Haley has done better than he has done. And stands in a higher position than he is because she’s run a different kind of campaign that’s a more effective campaign to those maybe trump voters. So let’s not say the case hasn’t been prosecuted because it has. I just think there has to be a more effective way to prosecute this case.

So you work with Marco Rubio. Right? Mar remember Rubio making this flip. And he started to be like, oh, you know what they say about guys with little hands? I can’t even remember.

He basically sunk to Trump’s level there at the end.

And it killed him.

And that was terrible. It didn’t work for him. Nikki Haley, again, rooting for her desperately want somebody to beat Trump so much so that I was willing to go for Santis. I was willing to be there, and I think Ron DeSantis sucks. And I was willing to do it.

Because Trump is the worst. Trump is the absolute worst. But don’t you think there’s something morally problematic about when people look at Nikki Haley, and they think, like, this is a normie, this is a good person, and She raises her hand on the stage and says, yeah, I think it’s okay if he’s president. Forget the political calculation for one second and think about it morally. Doesn’t she just create a permission structure for normies to forgive him for all of the illegal things he’s done?

I think that particular move on her part was a mistake. I don’t know if she and her team think it’s a mistake. I happen to think it was. But I still think that her basic approach to Donald Trump has been far more effective than Chris Christie’s approach to Donald Trump, which is why she has gone up and Chris Christie has not.

She is in a better position. I I certainly agree with that. I just think, like, She’s still down thirty, forty points everywhere.

That’s why Donald Trump is a strong favorite.

Oh, just strong favor.

Donald Trump is not inevitable.

Okay. Okay. But now I’m gonna hit you with some sound. Cause, like you said, as Haley star has risen, she’s also had fiercer detractors than she’s used to and, like, Vivic. And after all this, you know, she’s still down this thirty points.

And so I think when you listen to the Republican voters, these, like, two time Trump voters, like, I think it’s clear why. Let’s listen.

I don’t trust her. She said she wouldn’t run against Trump, and here she is doing it. And she flip flops, and then given the land to the Chinese, and she’s just, not very trustworthy in my opinion.

I was extremely disappointed in her running for cover, and political cover when, you know, the whole January sixth thing happened I was extremely disappointed because I felt like she was kinda hitching her shining star to Trump. And the, you know, first sign of trouble, she jumped ship because She didn’t wanna, you know, die politically. For me, it comes down to integrity and all these people that we’re talking about that aren’t Trump I’m treating them as maybe possibly running Nate, but even that’s a long shot. For me, I don’t think he likes anybody on that stage.

Okay. So the one that I’ve always heard politically wise is if you wanna be present, you gotta be hated by half the country. I don’t think she can do it.

I don’t think she

can say anything to get people to hate her that. That much. So why waste the time?

I like what Vivek says often, and he has the courage to say then what he said about her on the debate, it struck me that, you know, she was, not very well off when she became a politician, and now she’s a multi millionaire and was on the board of, trustees for Boeing. And, yeah, she’s too much of a of a traditional, which is, I say this in a negative way, you know, a traditional politician who I don’t think, you know, has a real core values that she’s gonna stand by. I think she’s gonna which would be the wind blows. But I think she’s from the polls seems to be the most delectable because it looks like people are divided. And there are people that are never gonna vote for Trump.

And there are people that are always gonna vote on the left. And then there’s a small amount in the middle that seems to decide these very close elections we’ve had for, you know, decades now. And she probably attracts most of the middle women and sort of moderates.

One of the things I’m a little eager to hear about is when she left as being governor of South Carolina, she was almost broke. And then when Trump put her in in the UN, all of a sudden, her and her husband passed their local, foreign military contracting business up and running now. So she’s a multimillionaire.

I love those folks who aren’t gonna vote for her because she’s made of money, but they will vote for Donald Trump. Really?

I got news for you about the focus group participants. Just the American public, the littier. It’s not not always there. What I thought was funny is the guy who was, like, literally treating the debates as, who might trump’s running mate be? Like, who might I like enough to be trump’s running mate?

Because he doesn’t actually even look at them as possible presidential candidates. So the last guy I mentioned one of the most important takeaways from this Republican primary, which is, and I’ve seen this now in the groups for a long time. A critical massive Republican voter bristolite candidates who they perceive as traditional politicians. You know, you’re one of the guys who helps candidates message test. Which is one of those things that voters complain about with traditional politicians, like you guys message test and come up with messages And they want them to tell it like it is, man.

They want the truth bombs, and I know someone’s dead in the water with voters when they say, I think they’re an establishment politician or a traditional politician or a regular politician because the Republican primary voters hate regular politicians now. Do you see that?

Sarah, many of those people were always trump voters who are going to be with Trump regardless of what happens in a court case or anything else. We’ve talked before about the devotion that always trump people have to Donald Trump, and they can’t stand anyone criticizing him at all. As I believe I’ve mentioned to you before criticizing Donald Trump among always Trump voters is like criticizing Jesus in a rural evangelical church. You know, you can take a shot at Jesus and say, oh, he’s not all that. He’s cracked up to be.

He’s not gonna hurt Jesus’ reputation at all, but I’m sure to destroy the reputation of the person takes a shot at him. And that’s what the always Trump people are like. I do think it’s thing that one of the guys there at the end said, you know, I think she could attract some people that Republicans haven’t been able to attract. And let me tell you if you believe at all in polls, those polls are saying exactly that when it comes to Joe Biden. Donald Trump is beating Biden by low single digits.

There was one poll I believe that had Nikki Haley beating Biden by seventeen percentage points. Now I don’t think anybody’s gonna win by seventeen, but Nikki Haley, at this point, anyway. Would stop Joe Biden. It wouldn’t even be close. It would be the largest margin of any presidential election in the twenty first century.

If she actually got the nomination. So for people who really, really really wanna be Joe Biden, Nikki Haley is a far better choice. Listen to Donald Trump.

There’s no doubt about it. And in fact, one of the groups that we included in this is like two times Trump voters who are pretty down on Trump. And she’s still I think there was only one person in that group who was willing to vote for her. And so they’re just regular two time Trump voters, and they still want Trump. And also gotta say I don’t know if you noticed this watching the clips, but it always jumps out at me.

The enthusiasm gap between people who really want Trump and people who are like, up for somebody else. People who are up for somebody else are just that. They’re like, yeah. Yeah. I could consider someone else.

I kinda like this. You say, like, who, like, and there was like a girl and one of them has started doing like a dance. Like, she was like, yeah, it’s gonna be trump. You know, like, they just get really pumped for it. And I do think that voters at this point now are resistant to the electability argument in part because they feel like they swallowed Mitt Romney they swallowed, George w Bush and other candidates because they were told that this was the most electable person.

And I think what Donald Trump did was to shatter the idea that they had compromise for an establishment candidate to get the win, that you could take the crazy son of a gun and still do it. But there’s no doubt you’re right that the people who we hear from and the Vocus groups really like her, it’s the Trump to Biden voters. It’s the swing voters. It’s the people who didn’t wanna vote for Trump. And went for Biden.

Let’s listen.

I just think she’s great. First of all, she’s a woman. She’s a woman of color. She, you know, pushed through. A white male dominated field to prove herself when she was at the UN.

She would shut down all the nonsense that the UN would talk. And, to me, she, you know, has Hutzpah, you know, she has the gall that’s needed and the bravery to stand up for it. I think she got trapped within the Magga Ron DeSantis separating it has been, you know, painful and has hurt her. As she should separate for that nonsense.

Nikki Haley probably is the one that I maybe resonate with the most. I think she’s probably a little more moderate than some of her counterparts there. Some of her views on social issues are closer to what I believe in as well. So if I had to choose, I would choose her. I kinda like Nikki Haley.

She’s stood up to Trump. She’s got some decent, you know, foreign experience. I think she’s moving up a little bit. So I’m kinda liking what I hear there. There’s not a lot else from the other candidates that, chew jazzed Ron DeSantis

is dangerous. His wife was going through cancer treatment, but he publicly said we don’t need to wear a mask during the pandemic. So he’s too radical. I like Nikki Haley or Liz Cheney. Could either of them be the top candidate?

Probably not.

I think she’s a good leader and I think we black that the last couple of administrations. I think she is who she is and she hasn’t doesn’t seem like she flip flops to try to appease everyone. Like, she’s not as much of a politician. And I think she would do really good for, you know, like foreign policy. I think she would do the right thing for you, Grant.

So I think it bodes poorly for her that the people who really get enthusiastic about her are people who voted for Biden time. Now they are sort of center right in their orientation often, or they voted for Trump the first time they were Republicans in the past, But that means that they like that old guard of the Republican party. Like me, they were nice moderate squishes before. You know, limited government, free markets, American leadership in the world array. And now they’re not so hot on all this stuff.

And you mentioned this this Wall Street Trump ball of his wild that had Trump leading Biden a general election by four points nationally, and Nikki Haley leading Biden by seventeen points. And I gotta say if Nikki Haley’s actually won the national popular vote by seventeen points, Like, my back in the envelope, Matt says that would mean she’s winning four hundred electoral votes and winning states like New Jersey, Illinois, Colorado, and Oregon. That seems a little out there for to me, but, like, maybe, I don’t know. I think she would do well in a general election. So do you actually think it’s possible to win by seventeen points in a country that’s polarized, that seems implausible.

Probably not. But I will tell you that Joe Biden is the weakest incumbent president since Jimmy harder. And he is weighed down by his job performance, not just Afghanistan, but inflation, an unwillingness to address the border, crime. He is incredibly weak. Now The White House, I think, is in denial about how weak he is, and they say a lot of things can change in the course of a year.

But guess what won’t change, Sarah? He’s not gonna be a year younger, he’s not gonna be any more vigorous physically, and he’s not gonna be any more sharp mentally. Moreover, Kamala Harris is not going to look better and more ready to assume the most difficult office in the world a year from now. He’s got these two giant vulnerabilities, his age, and his vice president, and nothing is gonna happen in the next year to change either one of those. So would a Nikki Haley win by seventeen points?

I don’t think so, but she might win by ten. Which would be a huge change from every other election we’ve had in the twenty first century.

Yeah. I mean, If Nikki Haley were the nominee, something has gone very right with the Republican Party, something that I don’t see happening, and also I’m mad at Nikki. I’m rooting for her, but I’m also mad because she’s done things like raise her hand to help build the permission structure to support Donald Trump. I think she’s been as much part of the problem. I would love to see her be the solution.

And so I I actually when push comes to sub in general, I might have a little trouble of, like, a Sarah Longwell. But, like, she’s not a threat to democracy. And so, like, at that point, like, I’d sort of one of those things where I’m, like, Alright. I’m just gonna do focus groups, and I’m gonna go back to I don’t know. Sippin’ tea and go to the beach because whoever wins, we’re gonna be okay.

Which means I don’t have to live in this catastrophic space of Donald Trump might be the president again. The problem is, as much as I wanna live in your world, I listen to voters, especially the Republican Party has changed so much on foreign policy.

Yes. It’s one

of the things that I have just seen just shift so much with these voters. And the fact that they view Haley as part of the foreign policy establishment and might get us into wars what you hear a lot is a huge knock against her. These are Republican voters, the primary voters, specifically. Let’s hear what they have to say about Nikki on that front.

I think she’s incredibly well spoken. You know, I I think the way she, you know, just talks to people, I think is a a breath of fresh air relative to Trump, you know, people that she disagrees with. You know, but again, my big issue with her is just her position on, I think, Ukraine and, in our involvement at time when financially, I don’t think we can do that.

Personally, not the biggest sneaky Haley fan, because I think that she’s a bit, quick to go to work. That being said, you know, I was surprised that she came out being the quote unquote winner of the debate and when I didn’t see that case at all. I think that the party’s pushing for her very, very strongly.

Actually, just real quick, do you think the party’s pushing for her really strongly?

Of course not.

Party is being taken over by Donald Trump. Why do you think we have so many front loaded primaries with winner take all rules for it? That’s just silly. The fact remains that a substantial majority of Americans think that we ought to help Ukraine confront the butcher of Buka who’s trying to take over their country. And the majority of Americans believe that we’re better off sending money to Ukraine than sending troops to help NATO countries get attacked by Putin.

So I think there is a strong, isolationist element within the Republican Party. There’s always been. Donald Trump expanded that. But I still don’t think it’s a majority view of most Republicans that we should just turn our back and abandon Ukraine to Putin and his minions.

Well, you may be right, but it looks like only by a couple percentage points because in March twenty twenty two, only nine percent of Republican thought we were providing too much aid to Ukraine. In December twenty twenty three, that number is forty eight percent. So you might not be a majority, but it’s getting up there.

It is.

It’s close. It’s bad. It’s bad.

And it’s freight. It’s freight.

Do you think there’s a way to get public opinion to bounce back on Ukraine, I mean, we’re watching right now. This unfold, and it’s pretty alarming how, like, Republicans I mean, Joe Biden, given what they want on immigration, it’ll probably help you politically. Also, it’s wild to me to watch Republicans hold aid to a democracy, like, hostage here and that we have to rely on Democrats to push this through.

Well, they’re playing a card for the border and strengthening the border, which by the way, eighty percent of Americans, including Democrats want to do. Yep. The fact that Joe Biden apparently feels scared of his far left wing is appalling. I mean, he’s supposed to be a politician who makes agreements and gets people together on one side. Give them the border money.

Give them the border money and give Ukraine money and give Israel money. We’ve got enough money to do all three. And I wish he’d get off his stuff and go and make a deal and get that done.

Does it not seem like he’s trying? My impression of this and, admittedly, my strong suit is is different. But is that he’s trying to work with Mitch McConnell and the folks in the Senate. I’m not sure the Republicans and Congress are are trying to do a straight up deal. Because, I mean, he’s asking them, what do you want?

And they don’t have an answer.

I do think that there is room for an agreement on the border and on aid to Ukraine that they could reach, and I’m just hopeful that they will reach it sooner rather than later.

Okay. Before we wrap because that’s all the sound we have. Before we wrap, you think that Nikki Haley can win South Sarah Longwell think she can win her own state?

I think that there’s a path for her winning South Carolina, but she has to do well in Iowa. By well, I mean, top three, and she’s gotta do very well in New Hampshire. Close second or maybe even winning. And then she could win South Carolina. If she gets blown out by two to one in New Hampshire, I don’t think that bodes well for her chances in South Carolina.

So, yes, I think there’s a path as we said at the start. It’s a narrow path. But there is a path. And I I think we’d be foolish to simply ignore that path and crown Donald Trump, the Republican nominee. Let’s keep in mind that it looks like the first week in March He will be on trial for four felony counts that involve jail time.

In a trial in front of a judge, it’s not particularly sympathetic with a jury pool in Washington DC that voted ninety two to five for Joe Biden. I’ve talked to a number of attorneys who think that the chances of him getting convicted of at least one or two or three of those four felony counts are substantially better than even. Talked to one guy who defended one of the January six, insurrectionists who went in the east side of the capitol, did kill anybody, didn’t hurt anybody, didn’t deface anything. But he he was a twenty two year old kid who was called to Washington by Donald Trump to fight for Trump. And he did go in the capitol.

And this attorney said, when you started playing tape of the riot, you could have heard a pin drop. And then when the Capitol Hill Police walked in in their uniforms and talked about the emotional and physical trauma of that day, He said it was all over. The kid was convicted on all seven counts. He said the best I could do for him was get him a suspended sentence. But he was convicted in that courtroom of all seven counts.

So I don’t know how that’s gonna play out. We’ve never been through anything remotely like it before. But what happens if by the first of May, Donald Trump is a convicted felon facing a possible jail term. I don’t know. And neither does anybody else.

His base will stick with him. There’s no question. His base will stick with him. But how about those maybe Trump voters? If they have an alternative, will they go to an alternative?

I don’t know. It might be too late by that.

I was gonna say I could almost lay by this theory if we were just talking about, alright, people start to worry this guy is gonna be in jail and, like, can’t even run against Joe Biden. Like, let’s just say that’s plausible. By May, it’s over. Like, he wins the first four states, and he wraps it up super Tuesday. I mean, somebody used the word.

It was like a He said something like, well, how he’s rigged to the primaries. And I was like, they’re not rigged, but they are front loaded. Chris La Savita and Susie Wiles are not stupid people.

Nope.

And he has got a real team, and they have front loaded this primary, and they are winner take all, winner take most states.

Yep. And

it’s not like he’ll have all the delegates, but, like, don’t know how you get to May without him looking like the whole thing’s wrapped up, basically.

It’s certainly possible. It is certainly possible. And then it puts the Republican Party in a real dilemma if indeed he is convicted. You know, is one of our two major parties seriously gonna nominate a convicted felon facing jail time to be president of the United States and head of the justice department. And with the tools available to him, with the IRS CIA and the FBI?

I don’t know. But I know it’s sort of a frightening prospect for the Republican Party as well as for the country.

Yeah. One last thing, because I wrote it down because I wanted to just go back to it. That argument we were having about Christie attacks versus sort of the tepid way Haley engages them, it seemed to me listening to the voters and the focus groups about her. Like, her running against him was the sin anyway. Like, the fact that she’s running against him is already taken as an affront by the always to quasi always voters.

And so

Always trump voters can’t stand anyone criticizing him and running against him is in effect criticizing.

So tell me what the right way for her to to win this is. Like, what’s the strategy?

The strategy is to present yourself as a capable and realistic alternative to Donald Trump, who doesn’t carry the divisiveness, who doesn’t carry the millions of people who hate Donald Trump, who is capable of doing the job effectively and capable of beating Joe Biden like a drum.

And do you think to do that to basically be like me and not him? What is it? Is is it a gold watch? I’ve always kind of liked the gold watch them to death. Strategy.

I sort of w I wanna see somebody kinda being like, look, the old man was fine four years ago, but the old man does navigate. And I don’t know. I I listened to a lot of these voters, and think they deal in, like, nuance a ton. Like, Donald Trump has the nuance of a sledgehammer, right, a car alarm. So, like, I I think that they have to draw some contrast.

It can’t be nothing. There has to be a real sense of why I can do the job, why on the alpha, why you can trust me, to what are some deeply skeptical voters who who only trust Trump and think the act of running against him, you’ve already offended them.

They’re always trump people are always up for a reason.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

They are going to be always trump. They are not going to change. But they are not at least at this point, a majority of the party that’s locked into Trump. It’s thirty five forty percent maybe, maybe even a little higher depending on the state, but that doesn’t mean that he has the entire Republican Party as an always trump voter. There are still maybe trump voters out there.

And you talk about presenting something different an Asian American woman who has been a successful governor of a deep south state and a successful United Nations Ambassador, by definition looks totally different from Donald Trump.

Yeah. I should blame some of the sound though of people. They both say they don’t think other people Will Saletan a woman. They also do this thing about world leaders won’t respect a woman. Because they’ve never heard of Margaret thatcher.

Will to pay her?

Or

Yeah. No. I know. It’s Well,

Angela Merkel.

Angela Merkel to just name a very recent example, but, it has been a little bit striking to me how many Republican voters women in Republican voters are kinda like, I don’t know. I don’t think I don’t think a woman can do it. It makes me feel bad in my tummy.

No bother. Plenty of plenty of examples around the world. Women being very strong and very influential national leaders.

Agree. Heart agree. Witt heirs. Thank you so much for joining us again.

Always a pleasure.

And thanks to all of you for listening to another episode of the Focus Group podcast. We will be back next year. I hope people get a chance unplug from politics a little bit in order to recharge for twenty twenty four because we are all gonna need to stay motivated for what is coming. Know I’m gonna take a little time, but love you all. You’re the best, and I’ll see you next year in twenty twenty four.