NOTE: THE FOLLOWING ACCOUNT IS FICTIONAL, BUT IT NEED NOT BE.
In a well-lit tunnel in a meeting hall in North Charleston, S.C., Betsy Ankney is scrolling fiercely on her iPhone.
Something has caught her eye. She is reading it over and over again. Scrolling up. Scrolling down. Up. Down.
She draws the phone close to her eyes and focuses hard.
“My god,” she whispers to herself.
Two staffers arrive and spy Ankney.
“She’s here,” says one of them.
“OK, bring her in,” Ankney says. “I need a room where I can talk to her in private before she goes on stage.”
The two staffers lead the candidate into a maintenance room just off the tunnel. Her face bespeaks a natural calm, a quality she has developed over years of crisis management in the governor’s office and at home with kids.
Ankney walks in and closes the door.
“What’s up?” says Nikki Haley.
“I need to know something from you,” says Ankney, her campaign manager, speaking with a voice more serious and more determined than Haley had ever heard from her before.
“What is it?”
“Are you ready to go to war?”
Haley’s eyes narrow. “I think you know the answer to that.”
“OK. We need to go to Arizona. NOW,” Ankney says.
“What are you talking about?” says Haley. “What’s in Arizona?”
“It’s not what’s in Arizona,” says Ankney. “It’s who's not in Arizona.”
“I don’t get it,” says Haley.
“Trump,” says Ankney. “I’m talking about Trump.”
Ankney then explains.
The news has broken that Donald Trump has canceled a flight to Arizona to speak at a Phoenix megachurch the following day. His campaign says he canceled because he’ll be in court that day.
“Perhaps that's it,” Ankney says. "But I think there's another reason."
“What's that?” says Haley.
“I think he canceled because the Arizona Republican Party is imploding. And here’s the gist: The Arizona Republican Party is the party Trump built. There is no state party in........