Schadenfreude: Nikki Haley defeated by 'none of these candidates' in Nevada
Is it time for Nikki Haley to pack up her campaign baggage and get the heck home?
Sure looks like it.
Because out in Nevada, the primary results came out like this:
Nikki Haley suffered an embarrassing loss in the Republican presidential primary in Nevada on Tuesday, receiving far fewer votes than the "none of these candidates" option, according to the Associated Press.
With 86% of the votes counted, Haley received less than half (20,799, or 30.8%) of the 42,534 garnered by "none of these candidates."
It was a contest that former President Donald Trump did not compete in and which the state party tried to have canceled. Nonetheless, a combination of intense support for Trump and distaste for Haley among Republican voters in the state combined to deal her an unusual humiliation.
That's bad. That's like being defeated by a dead guy.
Because even though President Trump was not on that ballot -- he was on the ballot, he was "none of these candidates" and voters knew it. Haley probably thought she had a 'gimme' with the Nevada contest with no Trump in the picture, but in reality, she was competing against President Trump same as she was everywhere else and will continue to compete against him.
And well, Nikki was in for a surprise.
The voter cohesion that made that result possible was pretty impressive, like a write-in candidate winning an election. Yet with Trump, that was possible.
Which pretty well tells us the primaries are over -- the voters want Trump and Trump is going to be the nominee, and as for Haley, she's wasting her time.
You'd think this would be clear to her, what with the results in Iowa, which is conservative, New Hampshire, which is moderate and allows Democrats to vote in the primary, and now Nevada, which effectively let an invisible candidate named Trump run away with it.
But it's not -- and she's off to the South Carolina races, where she served as governor, to be dealt another certain round of punishment from voters.
Does she like this stuff? We know that Ron DeSantis didn't, and bailed out before things got ugly. Is she convinced Trump will be knocked out of the race by the establishment and leave the remains to her? Or that money from Trump-hating billionaires talks loudest? Is she still on a failing mission to hurt Trump in the race? Perhaps she can clarify that for the media but we have a remarkably incurious media, so it probably won't happen, and in any case, she doesn't take many questions from the press, being one to rely on robotic scripts so I won't hold my breath..
But what's happening is obvious. She's not the top candidate for Republican voters, and she will be dealt drubbing after drubbing until she stops coming back for more.
How loud do voters have to get to get her to go home? She doesn't seem to hear anything from them because she isn't listening. Now she can't even win against a none-of-the-above competitor.
Image: Twitter screen shot