OPINION:
The Never Trump RINO establishment has only two shots to take down The Donald. Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley is its trigger girl in what it hopes will be a fatal double tap on former President Donald Trump.
Backed by a flood of RINO dark money — and a party-switching gambit by Democratic strategists — Mrs. Haley hopes to pull her Trump trigger first in the New Hampshire presidential primary on Jan. 23 and then, on Feb. 24, in South Carolina. These are the first two Republican primaries — Iowa on Jan. 15 is simply a caucus.
The frontloading of New Hampshire is particularly unfortunate for Americans who like their elections free of gamesmanship, as this putatively Republican primary is not exclusively for registered Republicans. Instead, the Granite State also allows “undeclared voters” to vote, and the math heavily favors the Never Trump RINOs.
Consider that a mere 30% of registered voters in New Hampshire are Republicans, while a whopping 40% are unaffiliated. As you read this, the RINO Trump Trappers are pushing independent voters hard to stuff the ballot box in Mrs. Haley’s favor.
Ominously, Bidenite strategists fearful of a Trump juggernaut have also pushed Democratic voters equally hard to change their registration just for the primary election. These crossover Democrats are now eligible to likewise stuff the ballot box with their Never Trump votes in favor of Nikki Haley, and the math for this gambit by Democrats is equally scary.
Indeed, crossover Democrats voting in the Republican primary may reach 10,000 or more in a primary election that may yield less than 200,000 overall votes. These Democratic fifth columnists may be enough to bump up Mrs. Haley’s numbers by as much as 3 to 5 percentage points.
As still a third Trump Trap math problem, New Hampshire is not a winner-take-all state like California, Florida and Ohio. Instead, New Hampshire’s 22 pledged delegates are allocated proportionally by the number of votes each candidate receives.
Thus, if the Haley stalking horse gets a bump from Democratic crossover voters and an even bigger bump from independents voting in the Republican primary, she’ll be able to grab a much bigger share of the 22 delegates up for grabs in New Hampshire.
The strategy of the Haley campaign and RINO Trump Trappers should now be obvious. In the short run, Mrs. Haley seeks to leverage independent and Democratic voters in New Hampshire to pump up her numbers in an effort to show that Mr. Trump has feet of clay. Longer term, Mrs. Haley wants to grab as many of the 22 delegates as she can either to block Mr. Trump’s nomination at the GOP convention or to use these delegates as bargaining chips to get Mrs. Haley on the ticket with Mr. Trump.
The final spring in the New Hampshire Trump Trap involves a RINO dark knight in New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu. Mr. Sununu is that worst of RINOs, a neocon globalist from the Bush-Cheney tree more than happy to send our men and women off to die or lose their limbs or minds in the kind of endless wars that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney got us into — Mr. Sununu’s daddy, John, was George H.W. Bush’s White House chief of staff.
Since early in the election season, Mr. Sununu has played the role of a surrogate favorite son and Trump basher in New Hampshire while positioning himself to endorse the candidate in the strongest position to challenge Mr. Trump. While Mr. Sununu flirted with both Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, he finally took his endorsement vows with Mrs. Haley on Dec. 12.
Mr. Sununu is not only carrying the water for the Trump-hating Bush-Cheney wing of the party. He knows his quickest path to the national spotlight will be a Cabinet-level position, which Mr. Trump would never give this Bushie and Mrs. Haley surely would.
If Mrs. Haley can come out of New Hampshire with momentum, she can then drag Mr. Trump into the other part of the Trump Trap — her home state of South Carolina. As a former governor, Mrs. Haley is running as a favorite daughter and will pick up substantially more votes than she would in any other state. This home-field advantage will greatly inflate her perceived strength and bolster the twin illusions of a Trump weakness and Haley momentum.
To fully understand this RINO-Haley Trump Trap is to understand that there should be no pearl-clutching among the MAGA faithful if Mr. Trump fails to crush the field in New Hampshire and South Carolina. My old boss may well not, for all the reasons mentioned.
Instead, we must not get sucked into all of the Haley hype and Never Trump media spin that will surely be heaped upon us if Mrs. Haley and her RINO backers are able to successfully spring their Trump Trap in New Hampshire and South Carolina.
The reason we can rest easy as we hold fast is that Nikki and the other Keebler elves running in the Republican primary cycle have even worse math problems. Mr. Trump’s MAGA base is as big and solid as the Rock of Gibraltar. He polls nationally as the presumptive nominee, and Mr. Trump will all but lock up the nomination just days after South Carolina on March 5 when the Super Tuesday primaries are held.
You can count on this Super Tuesday Trump triumph just as surely as you can count out the RINOs trying to take down my old boss.
You can likewise count out the possibility that Mr. Trump will ever tap Nikki Haley as his running mate. From my days in the White House, I knew this “lean and hungry Cassius” — if you get my Shakespearean drift — as one the most untrustworthy globalists in the Trump Cabinet. Donald Trump knows it, too.
• Peter Navarro served for four years in the Trump White House as manufacturing czar and chief China hawk. This column originated at http://peternavarro.substack.com.
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