Nikki Haley is going after the normies.
Forget about Making America Great Again. Ms. Haley says she wants to Make America Normal Again.
So MANA, not MAGA.
The former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and former South Carolina governor has turned to the tagline following her second-place finish in the New Hampshire primary and is driving home that message as she looks to chase down former President Donald Trump with the support of moderate Republicans and independents.
“Our campaign has been flooded with notes and emails from folks across the country who want to make America normal again,” Ms. Haley said this week on social media. “They know that we can do better than two 80-year-old names from the past. I’m fighting every day to make you proud — let’s go!”
The choice in the nomination race, the Haley campaign says, is a clear-cut “choice between two diametrically opposed visions: Make America Unhinged Again or Make America Normal Again.”
Ms. Haley’s next best chance of tripping up Mr. Trump will be in the Feb. 24 South Carolina primary where the former president sits atop a wide lead in the polls. She’s not participating in the Nevada caucuses next week and won’t be eligible to win any of the Silver State’s delegates.
The primary in South Carolina — where she cut her political teeth as state lawmaker and governor — could make or break her campaign, which has turned up the volume on bashing Mr. Trump.
Ms. Haley has warned voters that Mr. Trump is showing signs of mental decline and lacking a moral compass. She says a vote for the former president is a vote for Vice President Kamala Harris because Mr. Biden is too old to serve out another four-year term and Mr. Trump is “too toxic” to win a general election.
She also has aligned herself with many Americans who don’t want a Trump-Biden rematch, likening the experience to “Groundhog Day,” the 1993 movie starring Bill Murray as Phil Connors.
“Like Connors who is forced to relive Groundhog Day over and over again, Americans want to smash their alarm clocks and dunk their toasters in the bathtub thinking about a Trump-Biden rematch and all the chaos and pettiness it will bring,” she said in a press release Friday. “America, we feel you.”
The campaign also circulated a recent column from George Will, a conservative anti-Trumper, who wrote that Mr. Trump’s “weirdness” and “erratic behavior under the pressure of his legal difficulties” require Ms. Haley “to run a MANA campaign: Make America Normal Again.”
“She is wagering that Trump cannot keep his composure for four weeks,” Mr. Will wrote. “And that a majority of voters, already embarrassed and exhausted by Trump, will be more so if he has a testosterone spill when she relentlessly needles him about being afraid to debate someone with two X chromosomes.”
Ms. Haley hopes enough MANA voters will fuel her comeback. Mr. Trump’s sizable victories in Iowa and New Hampshire showed he has broad appeal across the GOP.
Just under half of Iowa Republicans, 46%, said they were part of the MAGA movement, compared with 50% who said they were not, according to entrance polls.
Mr. Trump captured nearly 80% of those MAGA voters versus Ms. Haley’s 3%. Yet she was the top pick of non-MAGA voters, winning 35% of that crowd compared with 25% for Mr. Trump.
MAGA voters comprised a third of the electorate in the New Hampshire GOP primary and 94% of them went with Mr. Trump. More than six in 10 voters did not consider themselves part of the MAGA movement.
Ms. Haley won 63% of those voters, compared to 34% for Mr. Trump.
In South Carolina, Ms. Haley has a steep hill to climb, according to a Washington Post-Monmouth University poll released this week that showed Mr. Trump has a 58 % to 32% lead over her.
Ms. Haley’s favorability numbers have dropped since September and she is viewed as a far weaker candidate against Mr Biden.
“Polls continue to show the more voters get to know who the real Nikki Haley is, the more they despise her,” said Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung. “When she finally drops out, she’ll be asking herself if all of this was worth it.”
• Seth McLaughlin can be reached at smclaughlin@washingtontimes.com.
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