TRUMP WINS WEST HAMPSHIRE PRIMARY

by Vijaya Chandrasoma

Florida Governor, Ron DeSantis dropped out of the presidential race before the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday, January 23, after an unexpectedly poor showing in the Iowa caucus and a subsequent drop in national polls. He made the announcement of the suspension of his campaign with a stirring quote he mistakenly attributed to Winston Churchill: “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts”. Words Churchill never spoke, but did appear, strangely enough, in a 1938 Budweiser beer commercial.

DeSantis joined other Republican challengers like Senator Tim Scott and Indian descent entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who also suspended their campaigns and immediately endorsed Trump for the Republican nomination.

This is Trump’s Superpower. He has lost every election since the 2016 presidential election. His Party lost the House and the Senate in the 2018 midterms. He lost the 2020 presidential election to President Biden by a record seven million votes and an Electoral College landslide. The Party again lost the Senate and suffered a setback in the House in the 2022 midterms, which they had expected to win big in a Red Tsunami, but finally held with a wafer-thin majority. Almost every candidate endorsed by Trump for either House has been defeated. In spite of all these losses, Trump remains the undisputed leader of the Republican Party.

The Superpower transforms previous Republican rivals with leadership aspirations, who had excoriated Trump in the past and had in turn been roundly insulted, even humiliated by him – the classic example being Senator Ted Cruz, the 2016 presidential hopeful, whose wife was described by Trump as being “ugly” and his father falsely accused of involvement in the JFK assassination – into the most unctuous of Trump sycophants.

This Superpower also amazingly empowers him to commit the most heinous of crimes – sexual, fraudulent, seditious, even treasonous, with his guilt beyond doubt – and still ensures that no damage is caused to the loyalty of his Party, and even provides an enhancement in his poll numbers and fundraising capabilities.

The Kryptonite, the ultimate weapon against this Superpower, is the Truth. The Republicans’ refusal to acknowledge and accept the truth staring them in the face indicates that Trump has not changed the Party, he has merely revealed its seething underbelly of white supremacism and authoritarianism. A cult immune to Kryptonite.

The most significant and unexpected Republican to withdraw his candidacy last week and endorse Trump was Tim Scott, the “nice guy” moderate Senator from South Carolina. African-American Scott was appointed to the Senate in 2015 by then South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, Trump’s only remaining challenger for the 2024 Republican nomination.

At an interview at CNN’s The State of the Union with Dana Bash last Sunday, Scott said, “All I want is four more years of Donald Trump”, who “does not see White from Black!” and “will unite the country”. At a time that the country has been polarized as never before, entirely by Trump’s racist, anti-immigrant policies and rants about vermin poisoning the pure white blood of America.

Asked why he endorsed Trump for the nomination, instead of his erstwhile South Carolina sponsor, Nikki Haley, Scott said he was thinking of the country as a whole and not just his home state. He danced around several issues, shamelessly twisting his earlier criticisms of Trump playing the permanent victim and whining about grievances and witch hunts. He said what he really meant was that Trump had indeed been “aggrieved” by the Biden administration, which had “weaponized the Department of Justice” to unfairly prosecute him. A blatant lie, the Trump Superpower in action.

Scott refused to answer Dana Bash’s question whether he agreed with Trump’s description of those domestic terrorists convicted and imprisoned for their part in the January 6 insurrection as “hostages”. He said he would rather let “Lady Justice get back her blindfolds”. A performance of brown-nosing (metaphorically, for a black man), reminiscent of the glory lickspittle days of Ted Cruz and Lindsay Graham.

The campaign slogan of the last woman, Nikki Haley, standing between Trump and the Republican nomination was: “I am the last best hope of avoiding a rematch between two old men, a contest 75% of Americans don’t want”. She has, on the advice of her powerful sponsor, West Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu, finally stepped up from her previously tepid rebukes of Trump to a tougher approach, calling him a bully and a liar, and going after him for his disastrous first term, his electoral losses since his election to the presidency in 2016 and his criminal behavior after his electoral defeat in 2020.

At recent campaign speeches, Trump has continued to make even more outrageously false statements than usual. He said that he beat President Obama in a landslide in 2016, when his presidential rival was Hillary Clinton. He complained that it was Nikki Haley (repeating her name numerous times), who was in charge of security during January 6, 2021 and had failed to summon federal troops to quell the insurrection, confusing Nikki Haley with Speaker Nancy Pelosi. A trifecta of hallucinations. Only Trump had the power to summon federal troops, which he chose to ignore as he was rooting for the insurrectionists in their violent attempt to prevent the constitutional transfer of presidential power. An insurrection he had planned and incited. And Nikki Haley was a private citizen who was not even in Washington D.C. on that day of infamy.

There are numerous recent gaffes and losses of memory which indicate that Trump’s mind has turned into a cesspit of hallucinatory delusion. The fact that he still brags about acing a test designed to identify incipient dementia, as he did during his presidency, is proof that he is on the cusp of that disease, which is becoming more transparent at every passing rant.

New Hampshire is a more liberal, New England state, which, unlike Iowa, where only registered Republicans have the right to vote, allows Independents to vote in its Republican primary.

Trump went on to register a win over Haley by double digits, finally garnering 54.5% of the votes to Haley’s 43.2%. Trump won by 11% points, when the polls had projected that he would win by over 30%. The New Hampshire primary showed that the polls, which projected a huge win for Trump, were highly exaggerated, and sowed doubt about the authenticity of even the national polls.

Trump was at his usual ego maniacal worst during his victory speech, flanked by his brand-new sycophants, Tim Scott and Vivek Ramaswamy, who made worshipful speeches about “the greatest American leader in history”. He showed his ire at Haley for refusing to suspend her campaign, and even showed his complete lack of class, even insulting the beautiful dress she wore.

Haley made a gracious but defiant concession speech, congratulating Trump on his victory. However, she did say that she had no intention of dropping out of the race. The best lines in her speech were that “Trump was the right president at the right time….not any more”, “Chaos follows Donald Trump” and “New Hampshire is the first in the nation. It is not the last in the nation. This race is far from over”.

Nikki Haley acted as if she had won the primary, which drove Trump crazy. He was expecting Haley, like DeSantis and the other sycophants, to fold her tent, bow out of the race, kiss the ring and beg for the Vice-President position.

Haley proved she has more balls than all the Republicans who had vied for the Republican nomination, only to tamely and prematurely throw in the towel. She will be in Trump’s face at least till the primary in her home state of South Carolina, in a month. She is gaining more support from Independents and moderate Republicans, who are getting sick and tired of his mean-spirited, mendacious, and whining “permanent victim” posture.

At her announcement that she was staying in the race, Haley said, “What a great night. God is so good. Donald Trump just threw a temper tantrum. He pitched a fit. He was insulting, but I know that’s what he does when he is insecure”. She ended her speech, taunting Trump: “Come on, Donald. Show us what you got!”

Perhaps she has little chance of winning the nomination, but she certainly has got under Trump’s skin, by refusing to quit the campaign and preventing him from claiming the Republican nomination outright after New Hampshire.

Trump was also too obtuse to understand the irony when he branded Haley “an impostor” because she did not concede that she had lost the fight (in his opinion) for the Republican nomination. Strange comment from a man who hasn’t yet conceded an election he lost over three years ago. He has stated that “anybody who contributes to the Haley campaign will be permanently banned from the MAGA camp” (cult?).

Trump may have won the Republican New Hampshire primary, but the real winners last Tuesday were the Democrats, who saw Independent voters, exasperated with the chaos that accompanies Trump, turning up in droves to vote against him. And Independents hold the key to electoral victory in November.

There is a chance that the course of Republican leadership, indeed the whole national election storyline, might undergo an upheaval if one or both of these two protagonist octogenarians suffer mental or physical breakdowns, or worse, before November. Not as unlikely an event as you might think. Believe me, ten months represent a long time in the life of old folks who have long passed the BEST BY date. Especially as both the current principal presidential candidates are already showing distinct signs of decrepitude, with a series of stumbles, falls, gaffes and losses of memory. Aneurysms, dementia, even death can’t be too far away on the horizon.

Also, in an already confused election scenario, the likely entry of Third-Party candidate/s into the presidential race will further complicate calculations to an extent where anything would be possible. Add to this Pandora’s Box the global problems caused by the Israel/Palestine and Russia/Ukraine wars, and we are surely looking at a most unpredictable, even cataclysmic, 2024.

The 2024 Oscar nominations were announced last Tuesday. As expected, Trump secured a nomination in the Best Actor category for his sterling performance as James Bond in the remake of Ian Flemings’s classic, From Russia With Love.

Asked for comment, Trump said, “I am not surprised. That role was made for me. I already have a License to Kill, we call it Presidential Immunity. Besides, I make a much better-looking Bond than the late Sean Connery. My friend, Vladimir Putin, was an excellent Director of the movie. We will do many more great things together in the future”.