by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist
At the center of today's Republican Party is a very large subset of white nationalists, religious fundamentalists, and garden-variety good old boys who send love and money to Donald Trump with unswerving loyalty and regularity. Trump has referred to this core group as the 'MAGA Party'. While the MAGA Party has never represented a majority of American voters, it does seem to hold a firm grip majority of the national Republican Party, and politicians who want to rise in the Republican ranks have found that they must first genuflect to Trump and his cadre of crazies.
Trump and the MAGAts are very rigid in their beliefs and they see party purity as a strength. Last January as Nikki Haley was still hectoring Trump in the Republican primaries, the always loud and petulant Florida politician announced that anyone who sent donations to Nikki Haley would not be welcome in the MAGA Party. It was his party and he was going to keep it pure. Haley, who was Trump's former UN Ambassador, held on as long as she could - and then some - before finally dropping out of the race for the GOP presidential nomination on March 6th. As she left the race, Haley said she hoped Trump would go out and "earn" the support of the Republicans who had supported her.
Trump, being Trump, instead voiced antagonism for Haley and her supporters and said that he did not want them. Joe Biden's Democratic campaign was quick to put out the word that Haley supporters would be most welcome in his camp.
Here are a couple of examples of why Trump's scorn of Haley and her supporters is political ignorance:
This week Haley, who had been out of the presidential race for nearly two weeks and was no longer campaigning or spending any money on the race, captured nearly 20% of the vote in the Arizona Republican primary - or somewhere north of one hundred thousand votes. Granted, Arizona has early mail-in voting, and some of those votes were cast before Haley exited the race - but some weren't. Joe Biden beat Trump by just 11,000 votes in Arizona in 2020, so clearly Donald Trump needs all the support he can muster in the Scorpion State, and telling Haley voters to take a hike is just plain stupid.
This past week Haley also pulled in nearly 15% of the vote in Trump's current home state of Florida. Based on the state's recent voting history and the fact that Trump and all of his hard-working adult children live in Florida, he should expect to carry the state in November with relative ease, but 15% of Republican voters in the state just sent him a less-than-subtle message that he should not take their votes for granted.
From this point on, every vote for Nikki Haley (and I suspect there will be plenty of them) is a message from a Republican with a soul and a conscience to Donald Trump telling him that he should not take their vote for granted. The MAGA Party may be pure, but there are still some Republicans who haven't joined the cult or who have been excluded, and those sheep may turn out to be goats who wander off and chart their own trails in life.
Keep purifying your political party, Donald, and spending those campaign donations to pay your criminal attorneys. It sounds like a golden campaign strategy.
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