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Gov. Haley to Endorse Rubio
Big news out of South Carolina. Popular Gov. Nikki Haley will endorse Sen. Marco Rubio in the GOP presidential race:
U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio will win South Carolina’s most Republican coveted endorsement of the 2016 presidential race when Gov. Nikki Haley announces her support at a Chapin rally on Wednesday evening, a source with knowledge of the governor’s decision told The State.
Haley, the state’s most popular GOP politician in polls, has decided to back the establishment candidate considered to be in best position to challenge Republican front-runners Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who has shared advice on education issues with the governor and helped her raise money for her re-election bid in 2014, also was considered a top contender to win Haley’s endorsement.
But he has lagged in recent S.C. polls, falling to fifth in the six-candidate GOP field. Rubio sits third.
According to a recent statewide poll, Haley has a remarkable 80 percent approval rating among South Carolina’s likely Republican primary voters, and is often mentioned as a possible vice presidential pick. Haley joins fellow Palmetto State conservatives Sen. Tim Scott and Rep. Trey Gowdy in endorsing Rubio.
Do you think this will help Marco’s fortunes in SC’s crucial vote — and does it make Haley a front-runner for his potential veep spot?
Update: C-SPAN is running a live feed of the endorsement.
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No, but he can’t bypass or forgive a perceived slight. It’s not in his nature.
If he is smart, he will ignore it. Unlikely.
Governor Haley’s response to the State of the Union included a veiled insult to Trump. Trump lost nothing in the SC polling. Gov. Branstad actively campaigned against Cruz in Iowa. Cruz won. I think the impact of Governor’s on Presidential primaries might be over stated.
I am trying to picture the primary voter who is breathlessly awaiting who Haley is endorsing by this time. I expect this would have been more meaningful two weeks ago.
General election, yes, but primary voters? nope. The Iowa and NH voters always put on a media show about being undecided, but that’s a gag to keep the rubes (Media) coming and spending money.
You certainly have more local knowledge than I. Since the polling currently seems to be stable in SC, I suppose we’ll have a decent sense of the influence (or lack thereof) of this endorsement by Sunday.
Haley has been anti-Trump for months, Trump still leads the polls in South Carolina. I am not saying Rubio shouldn’t be happy, I just don’t see the evidence that this will be a game changer.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/nikki-haley-takes-on-donald-trump/2015/09/02/0ba0dbb0-51b2-11e5-8c19-0b6825aa4a3a_story.html
I’ve said it before, this Election seems to be a repudiation of conventional wisdom and politics as usual. I doubt these endorsements will do much for Rubio but it will be interesting to see the results and reactions afterwards, especially by those who haven’t figured out that the system is changing.
Haley’s endorsement is not going to change someone who was going to vote for Trump (or even Cruz). It may help lure those who were going to vote for the others (Jeb!, Carson, Kasich) to move to Rubio. I think it will help him to a strong second.
Do you think that in general elections there are no swing voters whatsoever? There are, of course, plenty of people who’d vote for a Democratic Jim Webb/ Someone even manlier than Jim Webb ticket over Rubio/ Haley, despite a preference for women. There are some people for whom gender is decisive in voting, and it has to be the woman on the top of the ticket. There are also some people for whom the female identity thing is important, but just a part of the mix, and for whom the question about which party to vote for is a close one.
This is the same as for every other policy and electoral factor. Do you think a Bush supporter in 2000 would have voted for Gore if he’d come out strong for gun rights? Probably not; most voters made their decisions on other grounds. Still, it would certainly have made *some* difference and might even have been decisive.
And now I look at comment #20 and see that Jim already answered this better than me.
Is it really your view that there were no last minute shifts in New Hampshire or Iowa? As someone who talked to quite a lot of New Hampshire voters, that was not my impression.
But the conventional thinking is conventional for a reason. It can be wrong, but it would be foolish to dismiss something just because it’s what everyone already believes.
Human nature hasn’t changed. Rubio would be facing a conventional candidate with some pretty serious conventional weaknesses. The polls showing him consistently just a little stronger are at least a hint of real data. One would presume he’d run the kind of campaign that worked for him in Florida.
I don’t pretend to know it’s a done deal. But am prepared to say that I do really believe he would be strongest. Not just because of his raw ability — which is real — but because he just fits better than the rest the profile of the kind of conservative candidate I’ve seen perform well in the purple states I’ve lived in.
Ignoring things doesn’t seem to be one of his strong points. lol
What would be the risk? Does it seem likely that people will widely cast him as a puppet of Haley’s? Would that be a problem? Rubio, like Walker, has been happy to give credit and power to others. I don’t think that it would be likely that she would be a Cheney to him (his most impressive area is his deep foreign policy expertise; there may be areas where she’s deeper in policy, but it’s not as if South Carolina’s undergone the sort of transformation that Florida did while Rubio was there). There are candidates dominated by ego, but Rubio isn’t really one of them.
In terms of winning elections, I’d have thought that you’d want the best team you could get. If that meant that the media talked about her dominating the ticket, so much the better for responding to Max’s concern. I don’t think it’s true that she’s better spoken, although I do think that she’s a little to his left. So long as she’s with him on all the important issues, though, that doesn’t seem like a huge general election problem. It’s helpful, from that perspective, that they’re both southern, but not too southern. The key swing states of Ohio, Virginia, and Florida all have southern friendly and southern unfriendly parts to them, and that’s a difficult needle to thread.
No idea what the Haley endorsement does — whether it sways votes or not. But it’s interesting since she’d evidently indicated she was staying out. My guess was that she’d do it if she thought Rubio could win (the nomination, not necessarily the primary).
It might mean primarily that someone very plugged in to SC is getting a sense of momentum on the ground.
Probably more potential swing voters this year. Hillary is a preposterously bad candidate. Somewhat batty. The dog woofing and the bad Butterfly McQueen are just the beginning.
Sad but true: there are a staggering number of November voters who aren’t considering any votes right now apart from their franchise for American Idol, The Voice and the Major League Baseball All-Star game.
Rubio and Haley would be an ideal political couple for that demographic.
The SC primary is open to Democrats, which makes it a hard place to beat Trump. I think this is more about getting a viable candidate into second place than going for gold.
America has had Pat Buchanans and the like before. It hasn’t had the stronger versions, like France’s National Front. Still, there’s a pretty consistent pattern the world over of these sorts of candidacies doing well at the “sending a message” stage with early rounds of elections and doing less well at the “no, really, is this what we want” stages later. This is all the stronger when there’s a reasonable alternative to move to. If Cruz’s unfavorables continue to stay above Trump’s, it may be that Trump would win even in a two horse race, something that doesn’t appear plausible for any other candidate. As noted in another thread, Carson may be an exception; who knows what that race would look like?
If Marco comes second in South Carolina, Haley will have earned herself a sentence in any history book that devotes more than a couple of paragraphs to the primary.
You’re right! A Romney would never pick a Ryan to run with…oh, wait a minute.
Anyone who doesn’t endorse Marco Rubio, even as a second choice, eats crackers in bed.
(sarcasm)
I doubt that a single endorsement does much. However, cumulatively I think they may have an effect. When your senator and your governor endorse the same candidate, assuming you like and respect them, that may give you pause. Again, like others have said, probably not if you were planning to vote for Trump or Cruz, but certainly those Bush and Kasich voters.
The people who know all of them the best… pick Rubio.
In a year like this, that matters.
About a quarter in SC haven’t decided yet.
I hope this matters, it should.
True, no sarcasm… ;)
Definitely. Many people vote for shallow reasons and I could see some women who wanted to vote for a woman but didn’t like Hillary voting for Rubio/female VP. It’s probably not a huge number but could be 1-2% of the electorate.
And like it or not, that is who determines elections.
I like that ticket. A lot. Because we must beat Hillary.
Rubio doesn’t have both senators — Lindsey Graham endorsed Bush. For what that’s worth. But he does have Trey Gowdy, and Gowdy plus Scott plus Haley equals something close to consensus in the state’s conservative leadership.
I’m seeing plenty of undecided/soft Cruz/Rubio supporters on my FB feed. Wouldn’t rule out endorsements having as much impact there as with Bush or Kasich. But wouldn’t necessarily expect that much impact overall.
Oh yeah, how could I forget that! I guess I was thinking of Tim Scott and wishing he were Senator instead of Graham.
For what it’s worth I’ve talked to some Texas precinct chairs today (since I’m from Texas, that’s who I would talk to) and they flat out loathe Rubio because of “the people who know all of them the best.”
They hate Trump too but they’d rather see Trump get the nomination because of the perception that Rubio is the establishment candidate and the establishment has ignored everyone else for too long.
And these are precinct chairs, phone bank callers of multiple campaigns, bundlers who collected for McCain and Romney, people who walk door to door to get out the vote in the general.
Rubio’s endorsements are a double edged sword at best, although I do expect them to help immensely in South Carolina.
Tim Scott is the other senator — Haley appointed him to replace DeMint after DeMint stepped down to go to Heritage (and then he won election convincingly). Would’ve loved to see him or somebody take Graham out, but not happening it seems.
Well then they are morons…..oh yeah I’m not supposed to insult them because we need the moron vote right? Mo…..Rons
This drives me crazy, the notion of Rubio, one of the most conservative politicians we have, as the establishment candidate. Bush was the establishment candidate – he failed. (Even if he hasn’t realized it yet.)
Perhaps the current zeitgeist requires an establishment candidate. Having vanquished one, we must forcibly coronate another. If Rubio fails, does that make Trump the establishment candidate?
I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.
Argh! Then I guess I mean Trey Gowdy. Geez, I have covered myself in shame.