With a brand new endorsement from New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu in hand, former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley is poised to become the candidate of Republican moderates and the main alternative to Donald Trump in the GOP presidential primaries — or so claims one report after another. It's an easy way to think about the race and the axis of disagreement within the Republican Party: the hard-right Trump on one side, the moderate Haley on the other.
Some more moderate GOP voters will indeed be drawn to Haley, if only because she is not Trump. But this is not an ideological contest; the fact that multiple news outlets are framing it that way shows how misleading it is to fall back on old categories when trying to understand today's Republican Party.
This is a preview of Paul Waldman's latest article. Read the full column here.
