Nikki Haley's Primary Campaign Results Further Illuminate the Extent to Which We are Already Living Under Fascism

Her vote totals verify diversity in the GOP, so why do we not see any other evidence of it in the party?

Remember when House Republicans were voting for their Speaker of the House nominee last fall, and they a hard time settling on someone? They went through several intra-party votes, before finally settling on a candidate, Tom Emmert….who swiftly withdrew his candidacy a couple hours after winning, apparently because Donald Trump publicly attacked and humiliated him.

Remember right before that, when Jim Jordan was attempting, but losing, his candidacy for Speaker? Jordan had Donald Trump’s enthusiastic full-throated endorsement. He got three rounds of House floor votes, and lost each time due to 20-25 defections from Republicans that voted for other GOP House members. Jordan’s nomination process was marred by party infighting largely because of his strong-arming and intimidation tactics, and grass-roots supporters’ threats of violence. These House floor votes were public and on the record, and thanks mostly to a campaign by Jordan to motivate GOP voters to contact the Republican representative defectors, voters knew who to threaten. Several Representatives complained that they got threatening texts and messages that unsettled them, and pleaded with Jordan to call off his army of supporters.

As a result, it was decided to do a secret intra-party up-or-down vote nomination process. In the first secret ballot, focused solely on Jordan being the nominee, he notably lost with many multiples of his previous “no” votes. The final vote tally in this secret ballot was 86-112; many more “no” votes from Republicans than the 20-25 that voted against him in the floor votes.

These events indicated some powerful forces within the party. One force was exerted by Donald Trump and MAGA. The other force was the exact opposite—it was anti-Donald Trump and anti-MAGA. They both existed at the same time, but you could only see the “anti” forces when they were out of the spotlight, ironically highlighted only when there was the total darkness of a secret ballot.

Fast forward to today, and we have seen something similar play out. One of the benefits of Nikki Haley staying in the race for the Republican Party presidential nomination despite not having a realistic chance at winning was that we were able to analyze to some degree the state of the Republican party through their voting behavior and corresponding attitudes through exit polling. Basically, it provided lots of data that we would otherwise not have had.

Similarly to the secret ballots of the later-stage Speaker races, primary voting is also done by secret ballot. And what did we see? Reliably, the vote totals showed that Donald Trump, far from completely taking over the party, has a sizeable opposition faction to contend with. There were consistently anywhere from 20-40% of Republicans who voted for Nikki Haley.

On the other hand, there were also a few caucuses held, which are generally not secret ballots. Participants usually have to physically gather in a specific place with other like-minded individuals, in front of their local peers, to show support for a particular candidate. This opens the door for humiliation and ridicule, and potentially threats, should the majority be so inclined to inflict such sentiments on the minority. In Missouri, some Haley caucus voters were subjected to this harassment and felt “intimidated” by it. This type of behavior causes a tendency for any Trump opposition to either not show up or be intimidated to switch their vote at the last minute. Not surprisingly, Trump won the Missouri caucus handily, winning 100% of the delegates, with little recorded evidence of any opposition at all, outside of a few news reports of Haley voters feeling intimidated.

In fact, all the caucuses had similar inflated results for Trump, when compared with the primary results. Michigan, which holds both primaries and caucuses, depending on the district, had split results, depending on the style of voting. Trump won the MI primaries 68% to 26.6% for Haley, but won the MI caucuses 97.8% to 2.2%. Nevada, which held both a primary and caucus due to state party infighting infused with some rigging by Trump-friendly officials, had caucus results where Trump won 99.1% of the vote (the other major candidates, including Haley, were not included in the caucus due to the confusing internal politicking). Trump won the Idaho and North Dakota caucuses with 85% of the vote as well.

There were two exceptions to the caucus effect, Iowa and Utah, both of which had significant opposition numbers over 40%. But this is 2 out of 7 caucuses, a 28% clip. For our purposes here, let’s say 20% of the vote or more is “significant” opposition, meaning there’s a significant portion of your party that should cause some behavior change on the part of the major candidates or leaders of the party, for the sake of unity or inclusion. Therefore, anything over 20% can be considered “oppositional” in nature. There were 13 out of 16 primaries that were “oppositional”, an 81% rate. I understand these are low sample sizes, but there seems to be a pattern here. In secret ballots, an opposition force made themselves known. In a more public voting method, the opposition tended to be quashed. (For these figures I focused only on all of the primary and caucus elections through Super Tuesday when Haley dropped out of the race, as the ones after she dropped out were likely skewed because of that development).

It can be extrapolated from these results that there is some force in the Republican Party that does not favor Trump. It does not mean they are necessarily anti-Trump or never-Trumpers; it just means there is a faction of voters that have non-Trump and/or non-MAGA sentiments. This would be expected in America; how often is a political party or movement ever really 90-100% on anything?

Of course, this opposition is small enough for Trump to dominate the primaries and become the runaway nominee for president, but should be large enough for him to have to give consideration to in order to win the general election. A normal candidate for a normal party in normal times would have to figure out a way to secure these voters. He or she would throw them a policy bone or at least include some rhetoric in their speeches that gives them something to hope for, much as Biden did recently with the pro-Gaza forces in the Democratic Party. Trump did the most he was probably capable of, an awkward half-hearted attempt to woo Haley voters back, but by calling for party unity, not by offering them anything they can feel heard or understood with.

This non-Trump force would normally show itself somehow, either through a House or Senate caucus, like the House Freedom Caucus or the Congressional Black Caucus, where like-minded congressmen and congresswomen congregate to help shape policy and legislation, or influence the party platform. Or even minimally, with an individual Representative, or Senator, or two. Democrats have Rashida Tlaib and Ilan Omar to make noise on the left and not allow their tiny constituencies to be fully forgotten, and they haven’t really changed much with shifting political tides. Is there anyone on the right like this? Any traditional moderates that are still around, steadfastly resisting the changing political currents in their party? Even if you can name one or two, like Mitt Romney for instance, how many of those are retiring? That pretty much leaves no one, doesn’t it?

And just in the last week, the Republican National Committee (RNC) has been taken over by Trump and his ardent supporters, and those deemed not loyal enough to Trump have been purged from the party apparatus. With Lara Trump in a prominent role of power, the organization will now be apparently functioning solely as a source of cash for Trump and his legal bills, as opposed to supporting any and all electable Republican candidates, to the extent that there are any. This is actually good news for Democrats, as the electoral viability of the Republican party is even more diminished without the support of the RNC. But Trump and MAGA simply don’t care.

And why is this? What other strategies might be available to them? What’s the difference between Democrats and Republicans? The most obvious answer is the role in which violence and the threat of violence is playing in our politics today, or at least in the Republican Party. As the right has become more and more extreme—more fascist—violence has taken a more prominent role in their “persuasion” tactics. This is obvious anytime one examines news events that affect Trump, MAGA, or sensitive political issues. Judges, witnesses, politicians, and election officials have been vilified, threatened, and publicly doxed.

So far, Trump and MAGA public figures have walked a fine line between communicating grievances and calling for outright violence. But it’s apparent so far, from the events of January 6, 2021 to the intimidation tactics of today, that violence is the result of some of this rhetoric. Therefore, it is an understood tool for Trump and his MAGA minions to exploit. That’s why he’s constantly posting on his social media platform highly charged complaints and vilification of the human obstacles that stand in his way. While there’s been little actual violence, there have been many threats of violence, to the point where prosecutors and judges have had to take steps to protect themselves.

This bodes poorly for the upcoming election, as the groundwork appears to be in the process of being laid for more Jan 6-type violence. Rhetoric about a rigged election, cheating by Democrats, and illegal migrants voting is already in high gear on social media. If Trump loses the election, there will be attempts to call the election into question and lawsuits galore will be filed, giving undue hope once again to the MAGA faithful that the results will miraculously be reversed. And when their dreams are dashed? Look no further than Jan. 6 for a possible outcome. This time, security will be upgraded at the Capitol to the point that a complete replication of those events is impossible, but something somewhere else could take its place among Jan. 6 in our history as a dark day for democracy.

On the other hand, it’s hard to know for sure at this time how much actual violence will occur. The simple act of threatening violence has had some effect on public officials’ behavior and could be the extent of it, and there has likely been some deterrence from all of the prosecutions of the Jan. 6 offenders. Therefore, where the strategy of violence goes from here is difficult to predict. But if there’s one thing that the Haley campaign has shown us, it’s that for a large segment of our population, fascism and the use of threats of violence has spread recently and is effective to this day. The consolidation of the party around Trump and MAGA loyalists, with little to no intra-party alternative options available out in the open, proves this.