On Tuesday, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley won the coveted endorsement of Americans for Prosperity Action — the primary vehicle that the billionaire Koch family uses to influence electoral politics. They have pledged tens of millions of dollars to help her defeat Donald Trump, the biggest sign yet that Haley is replacing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as the GOP’s moneyed class’s perceived best chance for taking their party back from Trump.
Except Haley has no chance at all.
Currently, Trump is beating Haley by about 50 points in FiveThirtyEight’s national poll average. She’s down 30 points to Trump in Iowa and trails Ron DeSantis there as well. In New Hampshire, the early primary state that’s supposed to be friendlier for Haley, she trails Trump by 26 points. In her home state of South Carolina, she trails Trump by 29 points.
The standard rejoinder is that it’s still a fractured field, and that as also-rans drop out, their supporters will consolidate behind an anti-Trump rival.
But the divided field shouldn’t give Haley any real hope. Trump currently commands support from 59 percent of Republicans, meaning that if every other candidate dropped out, and every supporter of those candidates backed Haley over Trump, she’d still be well behind the frontrunner.
But that’s not what would happen if the field narrowed. Morning Consult’s tracking poll has shown that a plurality of Republicans who don’t currently support Trump would take him as their second choice. For this reason, the polling firm concludes that “the former president’s support could continue to grow if lower-polling contenders drop their bid.”
In short, the only shot for Haley or anyone else to win the nomination is if Trump drops out — or drops dead.
So why are all of these very rich people making such a terrible investment?
To answer that question, we need to move out of the realm of electoral politics and into the domains of ideology and psychology. The quest to…
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