One reason the MAGA faithful are so difficult to peel away is that they love the way their guy’s political career has been built on giving the establishment his middle finger. That’s what they want to do, too. The loss of good jobs, the flood of immigrants at the border, all that fentanyl killing their kids—they have grievances. And they blame the political establishment. Which is why they’re willing to ignore—or justify—Trump’s indictments, his instigation of the January 6 attack, and even his promise to be a dictator (at least on “day one”).

The reason they’ll never warm to Nikki Haley is that, in their eyes, she is the political establishment. A politician who talks about the need for the nation to heal, or the value of compromise, or the importance of gaining support from Democrats—that kind of pre-Trump, old-school sentiment makes them want to puke. …

As the week went on, with the gap between her and Trump still in double digits, she seemed to have given up trying to sweet-talk his supporters. When, at one appearance, Trump kept using her name instead of Nancy Pelosi’s, Haley saw her opening. “When you’re dealing with the pressures of a presidency, we can’t have someone else that we question whether they’re mentally fit to do this—we can’t,” she said in the town of Keene on Saturday. She also started criticizing—finally—his coddling of dictators. “You don’t praise dictators and thugs who want to kill us,” she said in Nashua. “It’s not good for us.”

Better late than never, I suppose. But it still raises the question: In the face of Trump’s unmovable base, where on God’s earth is she going to get enough votes?

[That’s the question. Now that it’s down to two realistic choices, Haley likely expects to run closely with Trump the rest of the way, but that seems unrealistic. As Michael Lind wrote at UnHerd, half of the half that opposed Trump still wanted Trumpism, only with a new leader of the movement. Those voters will either revert back to Trump or just opt out of the following primaries. Haley’s running closest to Trump in New Hampshire, but she trails by 30 points in her own state, South Carolina. — Ed]