Secondary Importance

According to NPR, "[New Hampshire] could be the last stand for Republicans who don't want Donald Trump to be their nominee again. There likely won't be another opportunity with such a moderate Republican electorate."

Personally, I think the Never Trumpers' last stand was likely some months, if not some years, ago. Donald Trump has pretty much had ownership of the Republican electorate since he first won the Republican nomination for President, and those people who felt that he was bad for the party and/or the nation have never mounted a genuinely serious challenge to that ownership. And that includes Nikki Haley's alleged run for the White House. I'm no more convinced (and haven't been, at any point in this process) that her goal was "Haley '24." Rather, like Ron DeSantis and Tim Scott, this was about positioning herself for the presumed post-Trump landscape of 2028. And even that presumes that Trump doesn't simply anoint a "Mini-Me" like Vivek Ramaswamy to carry the baton forward for him.

So the idea that "there likely won't be another opportunity" presumes that New Hampshire is, itself, an opportunity for someone to come across as an actual competitor to Mr. Trump. Given all of the ink that has been spilled on the idea that even when the Republican field was reasonably large, the only candidates who were attempting to make the point that Donald Trump would not be a good President were people like Chris Christie, who were "running" specifically to make that point, this seems predicated on some large, but otherwise quiet, well of anti-Trump sentiment in the party; people who couldn't be bothered to actively support one of the many alternatives who threw their hats into the ring, but are now going to coalesce out of the woodwork to propel Nikki Haley to a primary victory.

I completely understand wanting this to be a story. After all, polls have been reported as saying that voters don't want to relitigate Biden versus Trump. But Democrats are willing to have President Biden be the nominee again (due to their woefully thin bench of other possibilities) and Republicans have been enthusiastic about Donald Trump carrying their grievances forward. Casting any part of primaries as worth the attention requires ignoring those facts.