Pablo PardoWashington Correspondent

Washington Correspondent

Updated Tuesday, January 23, 2024-20:37

"This has always been a marathon, it has never been a sprint."

Nikki Haley only needed to resort to the cliché "let's go game by game" this Tuesday in New Hampshire to indicate that, despite the fact that it seems likely that she will lose by 10 points - or more - to Donald Trump in the primaries that are being held in the state,

she will not do

like the former president's other great rival,

Ron DeSantis

, who dropped out of the race for the White House on Sunday.

Haley knows that the only doubt in these elections is the magnitude of her defeat.

Anything that means

losing by less than 10 points

to Trump will be considered

a success

, not so much because it gives him some chance of winning the primaries, but because

it will allow him to take in electoral and financial oxygen

- and that is more important - to at least hold on.

one more month

.

Haley's team agrees that although the two major candidates who have withdrawn, Vivek Ramaswamy and Ron DeSantis, have supported Trump, which in theory gives the former president more votes, it also

gives her more freedom of action

.

The primaries are divided

between Trump and the hard core of him MAGA

(the acronym in English for 'Make America Great Again') and

Haley

.

To know more

Analysis.

The collapse of DeSantis: without Trump, MAGA does not exist

  • Editor: PABLO PARDO (Correspondent)Washington

The collapse of DeSantis: without Trump, MAGA does not exist

And that allowed the former governor on Sunday to openly criticize Trump, for the first time since she launched her campaign on Valentine's Day last year.

He began

by criticizing the possible loss of cognitive faculties

of the former president, who in the last week has had a series of mistakes and mistakes that rival those of his rival, President

Joe Biden

, whom the majority of Americans think is too old. for the position.

"If you have an 80-year-old person in public office,

their mental stability is going to continue to decline

. It's human nature," said Haley, who turned 52 on Saturday.

She thus put Biden, 80, and Trump, 77, on the same level. But, in case there was any doubt about who she was referring to, the candidate quickly clarified it: "He

is not at the same level as in 2016.

I think that we are seeing a certain decline," he added, in the classic attack that deeply upsets the former president who, in general, has a very thin skin when it comes to tolerating criticism.

Haley made these statements on the political program par excellence,

Meet the Press

, on the NBC television network, whose audience is made up of equal parts journalists and politicians.

But soon afterward she brought them to a more general audience by repeating them at a rally.

There, the candidate went to draw blood, by repeating some of Trump's most glorious blunders in recent months and, above all, in recent days.

Nikki Haley in Salem, New Hampshire.CJ GUNTHEREFE

Trump has said that Joe Biden will start World War II (he would like to say "World War III"), he has confused the current president with Barack Obama, Barack Obama with Hillary Clinton, and Hungary with Turkey.

And last Friday, in the mistake that sparked Haley's attacks, he confused his rival with former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi four times in three minutes.

Until now, during the 11 and a half months of the campaign, Haley had exquisitely avoided messing with Trump, even though he has put her on the back foot, laughing at her Indian name (Nimarata), and inventing the same conspiracy theory used by Republicans to try to delegitimize Obama's presidency, meaning that she cannot be elected president.

These

racist attacks sit well in a Republican Party

in which approximately 50% of voters agree with Trump that

"immigrants are poisoning the blood of our nation

. "

But they also free Haley from the need to continually submit to the far-right wing of the party.

His electorate, thus, is much clearer: Republicans less inclined to the right and centrists.

The problem is that this can help you reduce distances.

But not to win.

And reducing distances is even a concept of questionable validity.

Haley lost to Trump in Iowa by 32 points

on Monday last week, so any result is going to be better than that.

The former governor of

South Carolina

and former ambassador with Trump in the White House says she will continue, at least, until the Republican primaries are held in that state, on February 24.

Her big problem is that this is her state, in which she was born and forged her political career.

And there, again, everything indicates that

Trump is going to win

.

Next, Haley will presumably retire, and on March 5 the former president will achieve the number of delegates necessary to win the Republican nomination at the Convention to be held in Milwaukee, the capital of Wisconsin, one of the states that will decide who will live at the White House starting next January 20.

In American politics, a candidate's

failure to win in his or her own state is practically lethal

.

Therefore, everything indicates that Haley is going to die politically where he was born: in southern, evangelical and conservative South Carolina.

If he were a fish - a salmon or an eel, for example, looking for the place where they were born to reproduce and then die - it would even be romantic.

But Haley doesn't have scales and can control her temperature, so that's little consolation.

Furthermore,

he leaves no political heirs

.

His disappearance from the political scene will simply be the

death certificate of the Republican Party

and his replacement by the party of Trump, whose only ideology is obedience to the supreme leader.