Trump Too Must Pass the Torch
When you lose Taylor Swift, you have not necessarily lost the presidential election. But when you and your vice-presidential pick descend to a public spat with the internationally adored billionaire songstress, you’ve probably lost suburban women and other purported swing voters. By such unforced errors former President Donald Trump and Senator J.D. Vance (Ohio) have squeezed their path to the needed 270 electoral votes to the width of a needle’s eye.
Trump and Vance sniped at Swift after she endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris. She did so immediately following the former president’s televised tantrum in his debate with the Democrats’ Not Joe Biden nominee.
Thus, Republicans have reached a Lyndon Johnson moment. “If I’ve lost Walter, I’ve lost Middle America,” LBJ lamented after CBS TV news anchor Walter Cronkite—“the most trusted man in America”—called the Vietnam War a hopeless quagmire. Johnson quit his 1968 reelection bid shortly thereafter.
Time is shorter than one of the glittering corsets Ms. Swift wears during performances. Nevertheless, the GOP now must do what Democratic Party leaders and big donors did when President Biden melted into incoherence during his debate with Trump this past summer. That is, Biden’s 13.5 million primary votes be damned, they swapped the incumbent for a WOC—woman of color.
Fortunately, Trump’s 17 million primary votes notwithstanding, Republicans have a WOC ready, one far more qualified than Vice President Harris. That is Nikki Haley.
Like Harris, she’s a child of non-white immigrants. Unlike Harris, she actually won primary votes—more than four million of them, 20 percent of the GOP turnout.
Also recommending her over the Democrats’ last-minute replacement for Biden, Haley possesses relevant experience. Harris slid along California’s well-greased one-party autocracy from prosecutor to attorney general to U.S. senator. Haley battled her way to three terms in the South Carolina legislature and won two more as governor.
Then, again in contrast to the vice president, a stylishly dressed mistress of word salads, Haley was able to articulate and defend U.S. interests. She did this for two years as Trump’s first U.N. ambassador.
GOP leaders—there must be some not named Trump—and big money donors might balk at deposing the king of their right-populist base. But that base appears doomed to minority status like Trump’s approval ratings. Those ratings never reached 50 percent when he occupied the White House.
So, absent a new Republican ticket, say Haley and Sen. Tim Scott (S.C.)—a MOC (man of color) or Gov. Doug Burgum (N.D.), a tech tycoon and investor and therefore a WMOM (white man of means)—an otherwise unthinkable possibility looms. That is that the United States of America could find itself led by arguably its most left-wing senator, Harris and perhaps its furthest left governor, vice presidential pick Tim Walz of Minnesota.
Among other moves, Harris as Senate president cast the deciding vote for Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which actually conduced to nine percent inflation and impelled the Federal Reserve repeatedly to boost interest rates in response. She also helped raise funds to bail out rioters arrested after the murder of George Floyd.
Walz, who repeatedly—as if by nervous tick—labels Republicans as “weird,” himself possesses a weird attraction to Communist China. He has visited dozens of times, described it positively as a place “where everyone is the same and everyone shares” and chose the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre for his wedding date.
A GOP ticket topped by Haley might thump Harris-Walz in November. But with Trump remaining Republicans’ presidential nominee, the party’s otherwise decent chances to win a U.S. Senate majority and strengthen its unworkably narrow House majority grow dim.
The former president did defeat Hillary Clinton in 2016’s Electoral College, though he lost the popular vote to Her Highness by three million votes. And Trump has been as much sinned against as sinning, not to mention targeted by would-be assassins. The fake Steele Dossier, false Russian collusion narrative, intelligence community denigrating the Hunter Biden laptop with its confirmation of presidential family corruption, and hush money show trial in New York on conjured charges reveal how Democrats “protect democracy.”
Nevertheless, Trump’s unpopularity consistently tops his popularity. Democrats regained the House in 2018, Trump lost to Biden in 2020 and he deflated any “red wave” in 2022. Enough is too much. It really is time for a change. When we say “Madam President” in January, let it be Nikki.
Eric Rozenman is author, most recently, of From Elvis to Trump, Eyewitness to the Unraveling: Co-Starring Richard Nixon, Andy Warhol, Bill Clinton, The Supremes and Barack Obama!
