Pun Salad

You can’t feel disillusioned by politics if you weren’t under illusions to begin with.

Whichever other words one might choose to describe the aftermath of Super Tuesday’s Republican primaries (my favorites are unprintable), “disillusioned” isn’t apt. For the readers of this site especially, the nature of the modern right was laid bare long ago. Yesterday’s outcome represented the last few wheezing breaths of a patient who plainly had been terminally ill since at least 2015 and probably long before.

It’s fine and proper to feel strong emotions at such a moment. But no one who watched that patient waste away would describe themselves as “disillusioned” upon seeing them succumb.

The time of death for the conservative movement was 10 a.m. ET on Wednesday morning.

Haley, a former South Carolina governor who also served as ambassador to the United Nations under Trump, entered the race in February 2023. She was the first candidate to do so after Trump—an awkward position after saying explicitly in 2021 that "I would not run if President Trump ran" and that she would support his reelection bid.

Ultimately, awkward characterized much of Haley's campaign positioning, as she tried to simultaneously appeal to both MAGA diehards and Never-Trump conservatives. She was never as forcefully anti-Trump as New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, nor as vociferously pro-Trump as Vivek Ramaswamy.

Haley spoke of the need for "a new generation of leadership"—an implicit shot at both Trump and President Joe Biden, who would respectively be 78 and 82 years old on Inauguration Day 2025. She characterized the former president less as unfit for office than just unsuited for the current moment: "Eight years ago, it was good to have a leader who broke things," Haley said in October. "But right now, we need to have a leader who also knows how to put things back together."

But going easy on Trump didn't endear her to his supporters: Ahead of the Iowa caucus in January, Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) posted a video on X (formerly Twitter) in which he declared himself "Never Nikki," effectively offering his endorsement to any Republican or Independent candidate except Haley. Trump himself mocked Haley in clear racist overtones—first by suggesting that despite being born in South Carolina, she was not qualified for office because her parents were Indian immigrants, and then by simply making fun of her first name, Nimarata.

So, yeah. If there had been an electorate consisting only of moderate Republican voters — including, in several of these states, independents and Democrats who crossed over to vote on the GOP side — Haley, despite being a former Tea Party star and [far?] from a true moderate herself, would be the frontrunner for the nomination. But she’s winning very little support from self-described conservative Republicans — just 14 percent in California, for instance, and only 29 percent in South Carolina, the state where she was once governor. This is a contrast to McCain, who actually narrowly edged out Bush (within the margin of error) 37-36 among conservative voters in the New Hampshire primary in 2000.

I’m less hung up on what the term “conservative” means than I am about “liberal”. Liberal has a much more specific historical origin, one that was vital in the founding of the United States and other liberal democracies, and which is obscured by the American tendency to use “liberal” as a synonym for “left”. True liberals can have a healthy amount of respect for a strain of conservatism that upholds certain of these traditions, like individual liberty and the rule of law, even if they hope to discard others.

I am not prone to hyperbole about Trump, but he very much is not in that tradition, obviously. January 6 was a dangerous, radical insurrection that undermined the rule of law and the democratic process. A second Trump term would at the very least almost certainly entail a massive expansion of executive powers and — although I’m more optimistic about the checks-and-balances of the American system and particularly the role of the courts than some commentators — potentially even push the Republic to the brink.