Successful political movements build coalitions by addition, but one trait of today’s MAGA leaders is that they focus on subtraction.
Donald Trump regularly trashes anyone who doesn’t support him for the GOP nomination as a “RINO,” or Republican in name only, or much worse. And now his son, Donald Trump Jr., has cast out Nikki Haley.
Trump Junior declared this week that he won’t allow the Ambassador to the United Nations in his father’s Administration to be his vice presidential nominee. “I wouldn’t have her on. I would go to great lengths to make sure that that doesn’t happen,” Trump Jr. told Newsmax, a cable news outlet. Ms. Haley is “a puppet of the establishment,” he said, “no different than academia and Harvard.”
That’s dumb, but apparently Trump Jr. doesn’t think his father will need to unite the party if his old man wins the nomination. Ms. Haley may be too smart to accept a VP nod given what happened to Mike Pence.
But perhaps the Trump campaign has begun to think it has the GOP nomination in the bag and that it can’t possibly lose to President Biden. So it can afford to banish anyone who doesn’t wear a MAGA hat.
That could mean alienating millions of voters who may not like Mr. Biden’s record but have doubts about returning Mr. Trump’s chaotic governance to the Oval Office. Before Mr. Biden came along, Mr. Trump’s approval rating never rose above 50% in office, and the man from Mar-a-Lago’s popularity isn’t much better now. Ms. Haley has been gaining in the polls in New Hampshire of late, and that may explain Junior’s bile. But if Trump senior does beat her, he’ll need her voters more than she needs to be his running mate.
The Wall St Journal
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