The primaries are mere formalities. Trump is Republicans’ once and future king
On Tuesday night, Donald Trump emerged the winner of New Hampshire’s Republican primary and presumptive Republican presidential nominee, handily defeating Nikki Haley. He is the first non-incumbent Republican to win both Iowa and New Hampshire. South Carolina’s contest next month and those that follow are formalities on the road to coronation.
The Republican party belongs to him. “It has to be Trump as long as … he can fog a mirror,” Steve Bannon told Jonathan Karl of ABC News. Haley has pledged to remain in the race, but the fall campaign has begun. As the polls closed in New Hampshire, the Biden White House announced a campaign shakeup. This is not a well-oiled machine.
For the third time, Trump is his party’s standard bearer. Maybe this run will be a charm, so to speak. Maybe for the first time he will garner a plurality, if not outright majority, of the popular vote, a feat that has previously eluded him.
By those metrics, Hillary Clinton bested him in 2016 and Joe Biden did the same four years later. To put a point on it, no non-incumbent Republican since George HW Bush in 1988 has garnered that level of national support. Rather, like George W Bush in 2000, Trump owes his........
© The Guardian
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