Educated Republicans Chose Haley Over Trump, but He Won Anyway

Which should not be a surprise to anyone

Trump won, but smart Republicans voted for anyone but Donald Trump in the 2024 primaries. (Shutterstock photo by Alberto Andrei Rosu)

Destiny has been fulfilled. Donald Trump swept (sort of) the Republican Primary. Nikki Haley quit the race. Trump will be the next POTUS and we’re all gonna die.

Or maybe not.

Republican primaries are for voters who register with the Republican Party as their choice … until they aren’t.

Vermont is one of the most Democratic states in the U.S., and it has open primaries. This means Democrats can vote for their favorite Republican if they so choose, and they didn't choose Donald Trump.

They chose Nikki Haley and she won the state’s primary.

I’m not surprised. Anyone with half a brain, maybe even a quarter of a brain, would do the same thing. And that’s why I still hold out hope that even in these days of an uneducated populace, sanity may win out.

Political pundits have made much of Trump’s “crushing” Ms. Haley on the campaign trail. Frankly, I find it a bit bizarre that everyone waited to declare victory until hard-core Republicans kicked Haley right out of the race.

Yet, what they fail to mention is that only the most Republican of the Republicans come out to vote in primaries. Underdogs winning these elections is almost unheard of because of what used to be called the “Party Machine”. That means party regulars doing all the supporting work for the frontrunner a.k.a. Trump. It’s the work that wins elections that challengers (generally) don't know how to do. It’s all accomplished by the staunch party members who know how to get out the vote and who are most likely to vote the way party leaders want them to.

These voters are the most likely to participate in their party’s primary. But remember, minorities aren’t the only ones who are afraid to participate in the voting process. Dissenting party members who aren’t following the strict party line (and I include both Republicans and Democrats in this assessment) are often treated badly in local voting places and by their neighbors when they try to vote in primaries. Consequently, a lot of them stay home.

Is this a surprise to anyone?

Yes, Nikki hasn't fared well and has dropped out of the race. But that doesn’t mean that the voters who supported her on rational grounds are going to suddenly decide to embrace Trumpism and start paying dues to the local Nazi Bund.

This is important when you realize that 49% of the vote in Iowa went to someone other than Donald Trump. And, Ms. Haley got over 43% in New Hampshire.

In the next big test, she got screwed royally in her home state of South Carolina, but again I ask that you put it in perspective. These are the great-grandsons and daughters of people who thought slavery was an important enough issue to fire cannons on Fort Sumter and start a Civil War back in 1861.

These aren’t normal people.

The real “normal” folks voted for Haley. On Super Tuesday, not only did seven counties in Vermont give her 56% of the vote she won in University towns across the country where smart and politically engaged people live. And, surprisingly, inside the Washington D.C. Beltway, she mopped up 61%.

I’m not surprised when I hear she lost in places like Northern Colorado. Really? Have you ever been there? Even if it has great trout fishing, it’s in the middle of nowhere and may not have the brightest bulbs in the Republican Party.

I’m still not convinced that Trump will win in November. There are still eight months till the election and a lot could happen. Especially when you have two octogenarians running for office. The average life expectancy in the good ole U.S. of A. is 73.1 years. That’s way down the list of life expectancy throughout the world. In fact, we’re so far down the list that males in Albania, Kosovo, and Czechia — wherever the hell that is, all live longer than men in the U.S.

Both these guys are well past the average maximum age and can be blown over by a stiff breeze. Well, maybe not Trump, he weighed in at a dainty 245 lbs at his last official white house physical, but you know what I mean.

A lot could happen, but one thing is sure. Of the two, I’m betting Trump has a better chance of seeing the inside of a jail cell than does Biden. And if that ain’t enough for a U.S. Voter with an average IQ of 97.4 to figure out, then perhaps we really ARE in trouble.

By the way, Vermont ranks 4th highest in IQ of the 50 states.

Florida on the other hand, ranks just a little over 10th from the bottom. They used to fare better in the most southern of all our United States, but then Trump and all his supporters moved in putting downward pressure on the numbers.

So things seem bad, depending on how you look at it. But here’s some good news.

It’s amazing, but somehow, the same apparatus that botched the Presidential Election in 2020 has managed to run the Republican Primaries without a single glitch.

Funny thing but not one voice has been raised about stealing the election. Not one recount has been called for. Not one voter, nor elected official, nor Secretary of State, nor one Republican has raised the slightest notion that something was rotten in the election booth.

Not even Nikki Haley who was massacred on Super Tuesday has made a single complaint about the honesty of the election returns.

Not a peep.

So when Donald Trump loses the November election, as I believe he will, and starts to whine about election fraud, we should all remind him that those same people who ran the general election are the same ones who ran the primaries that put him in the running in the first place.

Politics in 2024 is going to be interesting if nothing else.