In South Carolina, Pro-Haley Groups Seek a Big Tent

Plus: The Trump-shaped hole in Republican fundraising.

A woman leaves a campaign event for US Republican Presidential hopeful and former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley in North Augusta, South Carolina, on February 21, 2024. (Photo by JULIA NIKHINSON/AFP via Getty Images)

It’s starting to sound like moving the White House dogs offsite was a very good idea.

Happy Thursday.

The Pro-Democracy Big Tent

If you live in the great state of South Carolina, here’s how this morning might have gone.

You wake up and turn on the TV. There on the screen is a new ad from SFA Fund Inc., the main super PAC supporting Nikki Haley. It’s a defense of Haley from attacks by Donald Trump on her allegedly liberal record on immigration.

“Donald Trump's latest attack, a big fat lie,” the narrator says. “The truth? Donald Trump donated to Kamala Harris the very same year Nikki Haley passed the toughest immigration law in America. President Obama even sued Nikki over it. But Nikki fought him and won.”

If you’re a conservative Republican in South Carolina, that’s something to think about: You’re reassured that Nikki is tough on immigration, and you discover that Donald Trump was once nice to—horrors!—Kamala Harris! 

Time to go to work! You get in your car and flip on the radio. You hear this new radio ad from the independent pro-Nikki super PAC Primary Pivot, which launched this morning:

“I might be a Democrat, but I am also an American. Donald Trump is a unique threat to our democracy,” one black woman says to another in the conversational spot. “Voting for Nikki Haley will keep the pressure on Trump and get under his skin. The more he is exposed, the sloppier he’ll get.”

If you’re a left-of-center South Carolinian, you’re told that it’s ok to vote for Nikki—indeed, that it’s a good way to help our fine Democratic president, Joe Biden!

Now of course the ads are intended for different audiences. So the actual number of South Carolinian heads that will be set spinning by these very different messages may be limited.

And even if each ad effectively reaches its intended audience, the total number of voters persuaded almost certainly won’t be enough to defeat Donald Trump.

Still. I find the co-existence of the two ads striking—even oddly moving. Because it’s a snapshot of the coalition that’s come together, for different reasons and from very different places, to try to help Nikki Haley. To try to stop or weaken Donald Trump.

You could say: “Well, it’s just a marriage of convenience, Bill. Don’t go waxing too rhapsodic about it.”

Fair enough. I’ll restrain my rhapsodic waxing.

I’ll even restrain my contrarian temptation to argue that history suggests that perhaps marriages of convenience are underrated, that they can mature into relationships of respect and affection. My political advisers are telling me, “Don’t go there!”

OK. But I will say that I’m impressed and heartened by what the marriage of convenience in opposition to a second Donald Trump term has wrought: A big tent, small-d democratic coalition in defense of . . . democracy.

A couple of weeks before the 2016 election, Ben Wittes wrote an essay calling for a coalition of all democratic forces in light of the extraordinary challenge Trump’s candidacy presented.

The political defense of America’s fundamental democratic institutions, norms, and modes of political engagement cumulatively requires sustained attention from across the political spectrum. And that defense is far more important than the advancement of any particular conventional political agenda by any particular faction along that spectrum. . . . I want to suggest that whether one is a liberal or a conservative or a centrist, one needs to see oneself first as a member of the country’s democratic forces, and for these forces to prevail, they need to be in coalition—if not in agreement—with one another.

That coalition of democratic forces did come together in 2016. It’s had its ups and downs, but it has mostly stayed together since then. It did pretty well in 2018 and 2020 and 2022, and now seems to be back together in the face of the threat of a Trump second term in 2024.

And that’s cause for celebration. A modest celebration—the kind that’s perhaps appropriate at an arranged marriage. But a celebration nonetheless.

—William Kristol

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Breaking the Bank

We’ve all gotten more or less used to Donald Trump’s robbing his supporters blind with deceptive, aggressive fundraising tactics and using the millions he raises for self-serving purposes—it’s been going on for years now, after all, and the supporters don’t appear to mind. Is there a limit to their tolerance? We may get to find out. 

Campaign finance reports filed with the Federal Election Commission this week show Joe Biden is in a far stronger financial position than Trump at this point in the race. After raising an eye-popping $42 million in January, Biden’s campaign and its associated committees reported that they entered February with $130 million cash on hand. Team Trump, by contrast, has just $65 million in the bank across its committees going into February.

At this point in the cycle, a certain amount of financial lag from Trump would be expected: The GOP primary hasn’t exactly been competitive to date, but he’s been obliged to spend millions campaigning to make sure it stays that way. Biden hasn’t had those same expenses, and he’s been able to fundraise like crazy off each of Trump’s primary victories: None of the pain, all of the gain.

But the biggest hole in Team Trump’s balance sheets isn’t the primary. It’s the eye-watering amount of money his PACs have pumped into covering his legal bills: nearly $50 million in 2023 alone.

It’s a remarkable split-screen: A billionaire politician using his small-dollar donors to foot his personal legal bills rather than dipping into his own pockets, falling farther and farther behind his likely opponent in campaign funds as he does so.

The picture may get starker still. Next month, Trump plans to stage a takeover of the Republican National Committee, whose current chair, Ronna McDaniel, is expected to resign after the South Carolina primary this weekend. The RNC, of course, is already deeply pro-Trump, but the next core leadership group will likely be a cadre of truly hardcore loyalists: Trump has endorsed North Carolina GOP Chair Michael Watley as McDaniel’s replacement; his own daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, as party co-chair; and his top campaign adviser, Chris LaCivita, as the party’s chief operating officer.

It’s perfectly ordinary for a national party to function as an arm of its presidential nominee’s campaign in an election year. But many state-level members of the RNC are worried this level of direct control will permit Trump to tap into RNC funds for his legal bills as well.

“The RNC should not be raising the money to pay his debts,” one RNC member vented to The Bulwark this week. “I mean, so many of those debts have nothing to do with politics. They have more to do with him being a dirty old man.”

Team Trump has tried to tamp down some of these concerns. One senior Trump campaign adviser told ABC News this week that “absolutely none” of Trump’s legal bills would be paid by the RNC. But Lara Trump herself was more noncommittal Wednesday, saying that, while she didn’t know whether chipping into Trump’s legal defense would be allowed under RNC rules, she believed their donors would want to help.

“I think that is a big interest to people, absolutely,” she told reporters at a Wednesday event in South Carolina. “They feel like it’s an attack not just on Donald Trump but on this country.”

Will rank-and-file MAGA voters ever get sick of their money getting thrown around like this? It’s difficult to say. But here’s one data point in the other direction: A GoFundMe set up to “fund” the $355 million civil-fraud penalty handed to Trump by a New York court last week has already pulled in more than $900,000 from 17,000 donors.

“This is a call to all business owners and entrepreneurs to rally in defense of all businesses and for a man who has never hesitated to stand in defense of us,” the GoFundMe page reads. “We stand with him, shoulder to shoulder, ready to support, defend, and fight back against a system that threatens to undermine the very foundations of our republic.”

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Catching up . . .

• Haley bashes Trump on Russia as she seeks to gain ground in GOP primary: Politico

• Are Ukraine’s defenses starting to crumble? Vox

• Trump’s union win: GOP snags first major Teamsters donation in years: Axios

• AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile customers hit by widespread cellular outages in U.S.: NBC News

• Will Biden’s Gaza stance hurt him in 2024? Michigan is the first test: New York Times

• DeSantis, in private call, sounds off on Trump and conservative news media: New York Times

• House China committee meets leaders in Taiwan amid rising tensions: Axios

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Quick Hits

A cornucopia of great pieces up on the site today:

• Cathy Young on Alexei Navalny’s martyrdom and legacy, and how “Putin’s victory over his dead opponents may turn out to be pyrrhic”

• Will Selber on Ukraine spending and the “bipartisan affair” of American untrustworthiness to allies around the world

• Kim Wehle on how Fani Willis should have known better

And don’t miss Tim’s interview with Katie Couric on yesterday’s Bulwark podcast!