LOWCOUNTRY, S.C. — To be at a Nikki Haley rally at this moment in the GOP presidential primary is an exercise in suspending reality.
For an hour you have to imagine that Haley’s candidacy has proven to be desirable for Republican voters outside of these very niche events — filled mostly with committed Haley supporters who tend to visibly recoil at the mention of Donald Trump and Joe Biden. And you have to pretend that her supporters, corralled into blandly interchangeable event spaces, represent anything but a small, exhausted faction of the Republican Party. And you have to believe, as Haley seems to, that a competitive primary is still underway for the nomination, and that a path to that nomination exists for her with Trump still in the race.
But Haley makes it easy to take a vacation from reality, if only for an afternoon in South Carolina.
On Thursday, just two days from South Carolina’s primary election day, Haley drew a crowd of mostly older and almost exclusively white retirees to the dockside patio of a new boutique hotel in the quaint downtown of Georgetown, South Carolina, about an hour’s drive up the coast from Charleston, along a highway dotted with tiny ramshackle structures belonging to the region’s celebrated basket-weaving artisans.
Haley supporters — several of whom said they had already cast early ballots her in Saturday’s primary — wandered in and saddled up to the cash bar, sampled passed hors d’oeuvres (gratis), and took in the crisp ocean breeze under an overcast sky. Many wore Haley’s nautical-navy campaign tees under their windbreakers and sipped plastic cups of chardonnay. A border collie named Ralphie (also in a tee) roamed the premises off-leash.
The chill vibes, however, belied the very serious concerns of the people who believe that no less than the fate of democracy is on the ballot in November. This was Jimmy Buffet’s “Margaritaville” for a politically engaged group of Never Trumpers and Never Bideners…
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