The Iowa Results
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Summary
Trump won the Iowa Caucuses by a historic margin, and NBC News is trying to find a reason why the white Christian evangelicals in the state voted for Donald Trump. Alex Blumberg explains why they voted for him, and why he thinks it was because they're afraid of Donald Trump and want to take back control of the country from him. Plus, a look at why Joe Biden thinks the white evangelicals are a threat to the country and why they should vote for him in 2020. And why they think he s going to win the 2020 presidential election. Guests: Political scientist Robert Kiyosaki; Public Religion Research Institute Director Robert J. Jones; Public Opinion Research Institute Senior Fellow Robbie Jones. Thanks to caller and listener for the questions and the stories they sent in. Thanks also to Rachel Maddow for the question of the day, and for the fact checker, Sarah Downey, for the facts and analysis on the results from CNN's "Iowa caucus" and the results of CNN's post-culling of the results. Thank you, Rachel, for your questions and your analysis. and your questions, and thank you for your support, Sarah for your facts and your facts, and thanks to our sponsor, CNN for making it possible for us to do this podcast and for being kind enough to make it happen. Thank you so much for being a part of the conversation, and making it happen, thank you, Sarah, Sarah! thank you Sarah Good Morning America, and Thank you for being here, Sarah Goodey, and Good Morning Iowa, and Sarah Goodbye, and God bless you, bye bye, bye Bye Bye Byebye, Bye Bye, bye, Bye, Bye. . Sarah and Good Luck, bye. Love ya. - Sarah and Bye, Love, Bye - MURCHEEEEEEEEEE - Ebonie - Love, Blessings, ELLY - MAGA - Kristy Love, Kristy, - Joe Biden - P.S. - EJ & JUICY, EYE - - Thank You, Sarah - OJ & KELLY, MURTERO, MOSCOYELLY & PODCAST - R.B. & JOTTERY, JOSEPH - SONGS - JOSIE AND KENYE, EABY
Transcript
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What would happen if we held an election the way that Americans used to do it just a few
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years ago? We should try that sometime. Here's how it would work. Everyone would vote on the
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same day in person. You would show up and present an ID just like you do at the airport or the
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liquor store. Then you'd mark your preferences on a piece of paper. You do it manually. There
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would be no electronic voting machines. There would be no drop boxes or absentee ballots.
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The poll workers would probably be people that you recognize from your own zip code. They'd be
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your neighbors. They would not be employees of Mark Zuckerberg from California. As for the names
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on the ballot, you would get to choose those yourself as citizens do in a democracy. Judges
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wouldn't be allowed to tell you who you can vote for and who you can't vote for. You'd get to decide.
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And then once you voted, nobody could order a stop to the vote counting. That would be illegal.
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So you would know the results of the election in just a few hours, and you would feel pretty
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confident that they were pretty real. That's how we used to do it in this country. What would happen
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if we tried it again? Well, as it happens, the state of Iowa did that very thing last night. They had
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their caucuses. That's the first contest in the 2024 presidential cycle. It all felt very retro,
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very non-third world. But the results were interesting. Here they are. Donald Trump won 51%
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of the vote. Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida got 21%. Nikki Haley got 19%. In other words, Donald
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Trump won decisively. At this point, it's hard to see how he's not the Republican nominee because he
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didn't just win last night. He triumphed overwhelmingly by a historic margin. Trump won the Iowa caucuses by
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about 30 points. That's more than double the previous record. That was set in 1988 by Bob Dole.
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So last night was not close. It was a shocking blowout. Trump did to Iowa what the Vikings once
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did to the Irish coast. Only smoldering huts remain. Chris Wallace looked like he was going
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to be sick. On the other channels, they cast about looking for an explanation for this unexpected
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calamity. Here was NBC News's quote explanation. This is a state that is overrepresented by white
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Christians that are going to participate in these caucuses, especially tonight. I, today, earlier
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today, reached out to Robert Jones, Robbie Jones, from the Public Religion Research Institute,
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knowing that we were going to talk about Iowa. And this is a hyper-evangelical white state.
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I asked him, what do they get out of supporting Donald Trump? Because he keeps losing, he keeps
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delivering losses and losses and losses. And he said the following. They see themselves as the
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rightful inheritors of this country. And Trump has promised to give it back to them. All the things
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that we think about, about electability, about, you know, what are people gaming out or none of that
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matters when you believe that God has given you this country, that it is yours, and that everyone who
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is not a white conservative Christian is a, is a fraudulent American. Oh, the whites. You can see
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Chris Hayes just repeating himself. I just want to keep my job. I just want to keep my job.
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But they're very upset. And at some point, it'll be interesting after all these many years to
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discover why a certain sort of person fears Donald Trump to the point of hysteria. There's an awful lot
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going on there, much more than we publicly acknowledge. But in the meantime, it is enough to know
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who NBC News believes is at fault for yesterday's history-altering calamity in Iowa. It was the
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whites, the Christian whites. You knew that. And if you're being honest, you can see why NBC is so
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upset. At this hour, millions of devout Christian whites are streaming illegally over our borders,
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toting their blonde children and their prayer books. And in the process, they're wrecking our
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schools and hospitals and cities and raising the cost of living and hiking the crime rate.
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We're watching an invasion by the Christian whites. It's scary.
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But it's not just NBC that feels this way. Joe Biden's entire re-election message is based on
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hating these dangerous Christian whites. You heard it unmistakably in his speech last week to a black
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church in Charleston. You should watch the whole thing online if you'd like a preview of every
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Democratic presidential campaign to come for the next generation. It's the Robert Mugabe strategy.
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The real problem, Joe Biden explained, is the whites. They did it.
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Never mind that white people's life expectancy is dropping faster than any other group in America,
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thanks in large part to suicide, and that they will soon be a minority in the country their
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ancestors founded. If anything, these trends aren't accelerating fast enough, says Mugabe Biden.
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There are too many white people. It's their fault. So Democrats in the media have been saying
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species of this for years, as you know, and they say it both because apparently it works politically
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and because they sincerely believe it. And there's no sign they plan to stop any time
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in our lifetimes. But for now, they have a more pressing problem on their hands. That's how to
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stop Donald Trump and his white Christian campaign. And that's a tough one, and it's made tougher by
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last night's results. Thankfully, they have a plan, and the plan is Nikki Haley. Now, Haley frankly
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underperformed last night. They told us she was surging in Iowa. She was not surging. Nobody really likes
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her. She came in third by a thin margin, and that denies the media the chance to declare her the one
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true alternative to Donald Trump. But don't expect them to give up on Nikki Haley. A Nikki Haley
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presidency is a lot like a war with Iran. It's a terrible idea. No normal person wants it. But
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because a small, well-funded group of extremely enthusiastic activists are determined to have it
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anyway, we are perpetually on the verge of getting it. The next skirmish in this ongoing battle is going to
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take place a week from today in New Hampshire. And hard as it is to believe, Nikki Haley could do
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pretty well there. She could even win the New Hampshire primary. Potentially. How's that
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possible, you ask? Well, it's taken a lot of coordinated effort, and above all, an awful lot
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of money. Judging from available disclosures, Nikki Haley's team is burning through about $3 million a
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week in New Hampshire. By contrast, Ron DeSantis seems to be spending zero there. Now, much of Haley's
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money comes not from Republicans or conservatives, but from committed Democratic partisans.
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Anti-civilization activist Reid Hoffman, for example, is a major Haley supporter.
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Reid Hoffman is the founder of LinkedIn. He's a friend of Jeffrey Epstein's. He was a visitor to Peto
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Island, in fact. He's also the guy who funded E. Gene Carroll's sexual assault case against Donald Trump.
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Reid Hoffman is a Democratic mega-donor. In 2020, he gave a million dollars to David Brock's
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American Bridge PAC. That's a group designed to physically harass Republican candidates.
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Hoffman's money has also helped to prop up the authoritarian governor of California,
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Gavin Newsom, as well as many others on approximately the same team.
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So you know exactly who he is. What's interesting is, this cycle, Reid Hoffman
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is all in on Nikki Haley. His cash is paid for one of the most shameless propaganda operations in memory.
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So the very same people who told you four years ago that Joe Biden was a jovial,
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moderate grandfather is trying to return America to normal.
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Those same people are now trying to sell Nikki Haley as a conservative woman of principle.
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And one of the most enthusiastic peddlers of this absurdity
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is the neoliberal governor of New Hampshire, Chris Sununu.
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He's been stumping for Nikki Haley in multiple states.
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Now, you may not know much about Chris Sununu. He gets relatively little attention outside of New England.
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But his charmlessness makes him a terrible TV guest, so they don't put him on very often.
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But there's probably no Republican officeholder in the country who hates Republicans more than Chris Sununu does.
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At one point a few years ago, he complained that there were just too many whites in New Hampshire.
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Sununu has far more in common with Joe Biden than he does with the residents of, say, Coas County.
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Listen to Chris Sununu explain how Nikki Haley is the natural leader of conservative Republicans
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because she's got her bony finger directly on their pulse.
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When you put all that package together of experience, the fact that she is the wife of a combat veteran,
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the fact that she's a mom, the fact that she brings some humanity to a lot of these very tough issues,
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and most importantly, again, it's not a big government solution out of Washington that were promised.
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She looks at every issue through the eyes of the voters, through the electorate.
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Because the thing about Nikki Haley is she's just totally real.
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She's America's most authentic person who somehow wound up in this phony business of politics,
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But Nikki Haley knows what Republican voters care about because she feels it deeply in her soul.
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Nikki Haley is not a bloodthirsty, power-mad feminist robot
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who takes millions in cash payoffs from the people who make weapons of mass destruction
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Okay, Chris Sununu, you seem like an honest guy.
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But will voters in New Hampshire, Republican voters, believe Chris Sununu?
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Haley's approval numbers among self-described conservatives remain remarkably high.
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Well, because she's been endlessly promoted on the news outlets they watch and read.
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But those outlets are not telling them the truth.
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Nikki Haley is a committed neoliberal, just like her creepy little friend, Chris Sununu.
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For example, how many Republican primary voters support the wave of illegal immigration
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Illegal aliens are not criminals, she once explained to her friends at the Aspen Institute.
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Reid Hoffman agrees with that, and that may explain why he sent her so much money.
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Did Republican primary voters support the rioting and looting and killing that enveloped
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this country after George Floyd died three and a half years ago?
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They didn't seem to support it, but Nikki Haley did support it.
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Nikki Haley wrote that on Twitter as the fires were burning.
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Nikki Haley wanted the rest of us to suffer because some armed robber died of a drug OD
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after passing a counterfeit bill at a convenience store in Minneapolis.
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Nothing in this country has been the same since.
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Then you've got to wonder if normal people, if Republicans, for example, still want to
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spend billions more to the corrupt oligarchs in Ukraine.
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At one time, a lot of Republicans did want to send more money to Ukraine.
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But at this point, now that we have the evidence of what the results are, they probably have
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By the time the Ukraine catastrophe reaches its depressing and inevitable conclusion,
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the United States, its taxpayers, will likely be on the hook for half a trillion dollars
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So it's fair to ask, what did they get in return for all that money?
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Well, we got an entire generation of dead Ukrainians.
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And above all, we got a much weaker and much poorer America.
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We got pointless suffering and death and destruction.
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But it wasn't enough death and destruction for Nikki Haley.
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For reasons that surely have nothing to do with her deep financial ties to the weapons
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industry, Nikki Haley demands that we keep the slaughter going in Ukraine and send billions
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more, more than Congress has appropriated, even if we have to cut current programs to pay
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Nikki Haley didn't just think that or dream it.
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So how is that the reasonable, much less conservative position on foreign policy?
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Nor is establishing a vaccine registry for Americans a conservative idea.
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Nikki Haley tried to do that, too, as a member of the South Carolina legislature.
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And maybe most ominously, Nikki Haley buys into the anti-human, anti-science precepts behind
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Haley has said repeatedly that she accepts the terms of the so-called climate debate, as
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devised by the forces currently trying to destroy the West.
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Haley has declared climate change a, quote, national security issue.
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That's a position that further politicizes the U.S. military, something we very much don't
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Haley has suggested she'd be willing to accept more waves of so-called climate refugees from
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The idea there is we displace these people from their ancestral homes in Africa and the
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Middle East by our selfish use of air conditioning and Chevy Tahoes.
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Therefore, we have a moral obligation to import them here, along with their extended families,
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and immediately give them free housing and health care for generations, because it's only
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Needless to say, most Republican primary voters don't think that's reasonable at all.
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They think it's crazy and destructive, because it is.
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Not that they'll have a chance to complain about any of this if Nikki Haley ever became president.
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As she explained recently, people should not be allowed to express their opinions on the
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internet without first registering with the government.
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That's not exactly the constitutional position on free speech.
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That's the North Korean position on free speech.
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You wonder how many Republican voters could ever fall for something like that.
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Some of them probably will, the ones who haven't bothered to learn the details.
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In New Hampshire, it's not going to take a lot of those.
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New Hampshire has an open primary system, and that means that non-Republicans get to help
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Next week, estimates suggest that 40%, maybe more, of all primary voters in the Republican
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Yeah, I'm still undecided on who I'm voting for.
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I'm a Democrat, but I think Biden's too old to be in office, and I watched the Republican
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debate, and I think Haley, I definitely don't agree with a lot of her platform, but I think
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she has a lot of momentum behind her, and I think she's much more capable than both Trump
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Wow, you mentioned that you're a Democrat, said Joe Biden's a little bit too old.
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If it came down to Nikki Hurley versus Joe Biden, which way would you lean on?
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I definitely agree a lot more with Biden's platform, but I think Haley's more capable
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She'll be embarrassed by that tape at some point.
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But she went on in that video to explain that the issues that she cares most about in the
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And if Nikki Haley wins the primary next week, it will be because of people like the woman
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Now, if Nikki Haley wins or even does very well in New Hampshire, it'll be a big story,
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New Hampshire is just one small, heavily wooded state out of 50.
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Will Republicans in other states back Nikki Haley, too?
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Well, they're not going to vote for her voluntarily.
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Haley can only become the Republican nominee if Republican primary voters have no one else
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Ron DeSantis drops out after losing a few contests in a row.
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He simply runs out of money and has to head back to Florida.
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And at that point, liberal donors swing as a block behind Nikki Haley, giving her bottomless
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And then critically, Donald Trump goes to jail.
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And at that point, bam, Nikki Haley wins the Republican nomination by default.
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Joe Biden is going to have a very hard time getting reelected, much less serving another
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Yet the party cannot replace him because that would leave Kamala Harris, who is even
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Because Harris is a member of the new master race, she cannot be booted off a presidential
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She must be shown maximum respect at all times, no matter what she says or does.
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And so that means the Democratic Party is stuck with two fatally unpopular candidates.
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It's their doing, of course, but it's a massive problem.
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So their only option at this point is to run a Republican who has the same views as Joe
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And that is exactly what they're doing right now, no matter what they tell you.