The only excitement of the South Carolina primary elections, held this Saturday, was to see by how many points former President Donald Trump beat Nikki Haley, the last rival standing in the race for the Republican nomination. There was the added twist that Haley was playing at home; she was born here and served as the state’s governor from 2011 to 2017, but even despite that, she couldn’t hope for anything more than a humiliating defeat. It took less than a minute from the closing of the polls for the US media to grant the victory to the former president, according to the first count, with more than 60% of the votes.
The winner gave his victory speech five minutes past 19.00, the time at which the polls closed. He did it in the capital, Columbia, and the appearance was pure Trump. He began with a racist barrage against immigrants arriving at the southern border with Mexico, before jumping without apparent connection to the next statement: “I just want to say that I have never seen the Republican Party so unified as it is right now.”
He then threatened President Joe Biden with his withering dismissal, in a nod to his past as a reality TV star: “You’re fired!” And then he gave way to some of the men who have shown him blind loyalty, perhaps the attribute he most admires in others: the state’s governor, Henry McMaster, and the two South Carolina senators, Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott, spoke. The latter was one of the 14 contenders for the Republican nomination and since throwing in the towel he seems bent to the point of embarrassment on currying favor with Trump to pick him as his vice presidential nominee.
Trump already won in the Iowa caucuses, in the New Hampshire primary and in the hybrid caucus/primary vote in Nevada. South Carolina closes the quartet of early contests in the long presidential campaign, culminating with the vote on November 5, in which everything indicates that the Republican candidate will face President Joe Biden, the Democratic Party’s bet. There is no record of such a resounding triumph of any candidate, who doesn’t start with the advantage of being the incumbent, in those first four encounters with the polls.
It also happens to be the case that this Saturday’s primaries are not only the “first in the South”, they also function as a sensational crystal ball for the Republican Party. Since they began to be held in 1980, the chosen one here has ended up being the candidate for the general election, except on one occasion. That was when in 2012 they opted for Newt Gingrich over Mitt Romney, the man who was ultimately chosen to face (and lose) to then-President Barack Obama.
Last Tuesday, Haley summoned the press, also in Columbia, for one of the most unusual appearances in recent American politics. She wanted to announce that she didn’t plan on going anywhere no matter how hard she fell in South Carolina, and that she would hold on at least until Super Tuesday. That includes next week’s primary in Michigan. Super Tuesday falls this leap year on March 5. It is the day that coincides with a flurry of voting across the country (15 states decide 874 of 2,429 Republican delegates). It is also the date that usually settles the ballots of both parties. In that sense, this 2024, the year of the great electoral déjà vu in the United States, it does not seem risky to write that it won’t be necessary to wait until then to start preparing for a reedition of the Trump-Biden face-off.
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