On Saturday night, after it was clear that there was no miracle coming in from the ballot count, Haley said: “I know 40 percent is not 50 percent, but I also know 40 percent is not some tiny group. There are huge numbers of voters in our Republican primaries who are saying they want an alternative.” She won three big counties and lost all the rest. She beat Trump 62-38% in Charleston and in Richland (Columbia) 58-41%. She also won coastal Beaufort County, south of Charleston, by 11 points. It was the real evangelical, MAGA, redneck counties where she got crushed, like in Cherokee (14%), Union (15%), Dillon (15%), Marlboro (17%), Williamsburg (20%), Chester (21%), Marion (22%), Laurens (23%), Abbeville (23%), Edgefield (25%), Darlington (26%), Chesterfield (28%), Spartanburg (29%), Florence (29%)…
An analysis of Saturday’s South Carolina exit polling shows Haley’s strengths, which are also Trump’s weaknesses. She did better with women (41%) than with men (35%). She did better with non-white voters (44%) than with white voters (38%). She actually beat him with college graduates (53%) but did badly with his strongest demographic— non-college graduates (27%). With Trump, as with all fascist and authoritarian leaders, the less education, the greater the support. Similarly, the wealthier the voter the more likely they were to vote for Haley. Voters making under $50,000 gave her 26% of their vote while those making over $100,000 have her 48%. She also beat him among self-identified independents (60%), but got clobbered among Republicans (29%). The quarter of Saturday’s electorate who identified as “moderates” or “liberals” gave her 73%, while those who described themselves as “very conservative” (because of poor media practices, a confusion with fascist) only gave Haley 15%. White evangelicals gave her 27% while non-evangelicals gave her 54%. Among those who think abortion or foreign policy are the most important issues, Haley won, respectively, 57% and 74%. Trump’s biggest strengths were among folks who think immigration is most important (27% of voters)— giving Haley just 19%.
Aaron Blake took this further, noting that the “exit polls again show reluctance about Trump,” with 31% of Saturday’s voters saying that “Trump wouldn’t be fit to serve as president if he’s convicted of a crime. South Carolina becomes the third early state to show that at least 3 in 10 voters said a convicted Trump wouldn’t be fit. Just because these voters say he wouldn’t be fit doesn’t mean they wouldn’t vote for him, but it would surely be a hurdle for at least some voters to get over.”
He noted that “Another exit poll finding is that a large chunk of Haley’s support was expressly anti-Trump. While about 20 percent of voters picked her and said it was mainly an affirmative vote for her, well more than 1 in 10 voted for her while saying the vote was mostly against her opponent (Trump). The NORC analysis showed that 35 percent of voters said they would be dissatisfied with Trump as the nominee, and 21 percent said they wouldn’t vote for him in the general election. At least 20 percent of [Republican primary] voters in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina have now said they will not vote for Trump in November. A major unknown from there is how many of these voters actually mean it— and would otherwise be in the GOP camp. South Carolina allows any voter to participate in the Republican primary. But just 4 percent of voters Saturday identified as Democrats.”
“Haley,” he wrote, “is now a stand-in for the anti-Trump contingent [and she] noted that nearly half of voters in both Iowa and New Hampshire had voted for someone not named Trump. She suggested that was ‘not good’ since Trump is a ‘de facto incumbent.’ ‘It spells disaster in November,’ she said.”
If the whole electorate was as white, old, evangelical (shorthand for someone filled with hatred, bigotry, anger, confusion, superstition and fear), male and ignorant as the South Carolina GOP primary is, Trump would win the general election in a landslide, but it isn’t and he won’t. Oh, he’ll win state’s like Oklahoma, Wyoming, the Dakotas, West Virginia, Idaho and other states that description applies to… but not the states filled with real Americans 2024. As Ron Brownstein concluded, “[F]or all the evidence of Trump’s strength within the party, the South Carolina results again showed that a meaningful floor of GOP voters remain uneasy with returning him to leadership.”
And speaking of evangelicals, Ruth Ben-Ghiat wrote last month that “For those familiar with authoritarian history, it is no wonder that the talking point of Trump's holiness has become prominent as more of his malfeasance and illegal behavior has been made public. Nor is it surprising that Trump would share a depiction of himself as Jesus-adjacent during his Oct. 2023 civil fraud trial. The image implies that Jesus is with him on his righteous path and that, even in court, Trump thinks holy thoughts. And how typical that Trump declared that he would govern as God's direct emissary just when the news hit that he received millions from at least 20 foreign governments while he was president, including over $5 million from entities linked to the Communist regime of China.”
The notion of the strongman as both savior and victim— the leader as a man of the people and a man above all other men— surrounds depraved and corrupt individuals with an aura of holiness. "I am the Jesus Christ of Italian politics," Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi liked to say as he navigated dozens of corruption trials and over twenty indictments with the help of his "right-hand man" Marcello Dell'Utri, a Senator from his party and his link to both the Mafia and Opus Dei.
Appearing as a figure tinged with the divine assists the reception of strongman propaganda campaigns, since any legal troubles must have been manufactured by godless Communist prosecutors, judges, and journalists.
This alternate universe of blind belief, and the use of religious rhetoric for political purposes, is how we arrive at a majority of Republicans polled at Iowa's caucus believing that Trump will be fit for the presidency even if he is convicted of a crime. Those crimes are invented by his enemies, and the legal process that produced the conviction tainted: it is all a machination meant to stop Trump from fulfilling his destiny and returning to the office to wage spiritual warfare and ultimately deliver divine justice for America.
Both Trump and Berlusconi built formidable personality cults within functioning democracies that blend sacred and secular images and notions of power. Berlusconi owned private television networks and television advertising agencies while he was Prime Minister, giving him a control of the information environment unheard of since the days of Il Duce. So saturated was Italy with Berlusconi's image that a woman interviewed in the early 2000s by Italian psychologists studying dementia could no longer recognize her family’s faces but knew those of three public figures: Berlusconi, Jesus Christ and the Pope.
History is full of lessons about the dangers of deifying strongmen who, counter to the precepts of all religions, exploit and plunder those they govern and care only about accumulating personal glory, money, and power. As Allied bombs rained on the territory of the Third Reich in 1944, one German had this to say about the outcome of his dictator's designs for the greatness of his country.” The Führer was sent to us from God, though not in order to save Germany, but to ruin it.”