Haley Pulls 40% in South Carolina, and It Has Some GOP Members Concerned

Nikki Haley finally faced Donald Trump in her home state of South Carolina on Tuesday.

The primary was a massive win for Trump, beating Haley soundly 59.8 to 39.5%.

With polls projecting Trump to have won by 30 points, some pundits are now claiming the GOP should be worried about Trump’s attractiveness to the GOP voters.

GOP Should Be Worried

Alyssa Farah Griffin, former White House communications director under President Trump, and now a full-fledged member of the Never-Trump group, believes the 20-point win was a warning sign for Republicans.

Some say she is being dramatic with her concerns, while others say this is just the media trying to stir things up.

Griffin was on CNN this weekend to discuss the South Carolina primary, where she stated, “Somebody who’s running as virtually an incumbent — Donald Trump — getting 60 percent, and 40 percent being against him? That’s not a mandate.

“Especially with the entire Republican party apparatus behind him, with most elected Republicans behind him.

“Now, it’s unclear what a path could look like for Nikki Haley.

“I think we’re all very open-eyed about that. But she is underscoring the fundamental weakness of Donald Trump, and it should be a five-alarm fire for the party, but for some reason, it is not.”

In a head-to-head race, to me, anything in double digits is a pretty impressive win, but the fact that Haley has no path forward and still managed to stay within 20 points of Trump, well, it is definitely something to track.

Haley, for her part, says she is not dropping out, apparently wanting to wait until after Super Tuesday, which takes place next week.

Haley said this was not a Soviet-style election, where you only have one candidate, insisting that “I have a duty to give them that choice.”

Trump needs Haley gone, and quickly, because he has a fairly busy schedule coming up this spring and summer with lawsuits.

If Haley stays in, Trump will be forced to campaign with time and money quickly running out on him.

If she leaves the race, the primary elections still obviously go on, but Trump will not need to keep a busy campaign schedule, just popping into states where candidates need a boost from him, and that would be on their campaign dime, not his.

Trump knows he cannot afford to have a guilty verdict in any of these federal cases, and that is what he wants to concentrate on before the general election takes place.