Research.
See:
Republican Group Running Anti-Trump Ads Finds Little Is Working
If you attack Don, you end up like Chris Christie. If you don’t, you end up like DeSantis. There’s no clear path to victory.
Yeah, Haley’s problem (and every other non-Trump candidate’s problem) isn’t that they refused to take on Trump or made some other strategic mistake. It’s that Republican primary voters really, really like Donald Trump.
You can listen to research too much. If research tells me most people can’t hit Garret Cole’s fastball, does that mean I shouldn’t bother swinging a bat? To paraphrase Gretzky, 100% of the shots you don’t take never go in the net. If you can’t win over the MAGA vote, why bother sucking up to them?
Haley needs to take a page from Bernie Sanders and Teddy Kennedy’s playbooks and fight until the very end.
Frank Bruni in the NY Times (gift link) has a good, if depressing, opinion piece today entitled: “Nikki Haley Was an Illusion. It Just Shattered.” Some choice quotes:
Nikki Haley was made for New Hampshire. New Hampshire was made for her.
I kept hearing that, kept reading that, as various political observers turned a myth into a mantra, persuading themselves of her potency and Donald Trump’s vulnerability not only in the Granite State but also beyond it. They wanted so much to believe that Trump’s grip on the Republican Party might be loosening. They were desperate for assurance that he wouldn’t return to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
So a wishful narrative took shape: New Hampshire’s quirky voters would buck Iowans and back Haley. Independents would overwhelm the MAGA minions. She’d notch an upset victory and then, all across a Trump-pummeled land, voters would suddenly realize that they had an alternative, suddenly recognize polls that showed Haley with a better chance in a one-on-one contest against President Biden than Trump had. They would come to their senses. And on the far side of that epiphany gleamed Haley, her youth, ethnic background and gender giving the Republican Party a new vitality. A new image. A fresh start.
What a lovely illusion. It just shattered.
The scenario in which she was supposed to topple Trump can now be seen for what it always was: the latest of many fictions in which those of us who rightly fear American democracy’s ability to survive Trump sought consolation.
Haley flourished in the context of those calming tales. She was a vessel for our hopes. As a result, we upgraded her debate performances from decent to dazzling. We sometimes put as much emphasis on her rise in the polls as on how fatally far behind Trump she remained. The difficulty of accepting Trump’s continued hold on Republican voters became a readiness to accept that voters secretly hankered for the likes of her.
But the evidence never held up.
I tend to agree that Haley’s candidacy was a fever dream (as was pretty much everyone’s candidacy in the GOP primary). It is maddeningly clear that the GOP electorate - for the most part - wants Trump, Trump, and only Trump. Sure, there are some who don’t, but they are few and weak in the face of the fervor of Trump True Believers.
The one semi-positive thing that Bruni pulls from the NH results is this:
But while New Hampshire may well guarantee that Trump carries his party’s banner in the general election, it also gave him reason to worry about how well he’ll fare then. The intensity of the anti-Trump vote was clear in that turnout. And the undeclared voters who favored Haley are arguably proxies for the swing voters who can sway a general election.
I hope he’s right about that! Personally, I am concerned that a contingent of the left (who are actually calling Joe Biden “Genocide Joe” for his support of Israel’s war against Hamas) will create a similar effect to the Bernie Bros of 2016. But I guess that’s another thread.
Back to Haley, I’m with those who predict she’ll stick it out through South Carolina, and then bail when she gets creamed there.
What did it get them?
My issue with that article is that nobody was betting on Haley winning as the most likely scenario.
We had fingers-crossed that the polls – which were saying trump would win by 20%* – would be proven wrong in a state that often plays spoiler. And they were. No illusion was shattered.
* Of course, there was one poll, which was a far outlier, that it would be a tie. This poll was considered so out there that I’m not aware of any commentators that took it seriously. And yet: that’s the one that proved to be the closest to reality.
Nothing for them, but it wasn’t good for Carter or Clinton.
My issue with your issue 
is that Bruni doesn’t say anything about “most likely,” just that “a wishful narrative took shape.”
But what “shattered”, considering she did so much better than the polls? I would say that this outcome belongs to the set of wishful narratives in this case.
Anyway, it’s not worth debating I guess. She still has virtually no shot.
The illusion that she would come out of NH with some kind of “momentum shift” or upset that would make the primary competitive and give her a chance to win.
She should stay in the race just to annoy Trump… And it seems to be working already. I expect he’ll start calling her a “nasty woman” any day now.
The thing is, we can’t tell if there’s a “momentum shift” until the next primary. A lot of people were expecting a Trump blow-out, and she came close to a tie. The question is, will some voters in other states take that into consideration, and possibly switch their support?
Did she? My understanding is that she lost 54 -43%, or an 11% gap.
Now sure, 11% is a lot less than the 20% gap some polls showed, so yay. But that’s not what I would personally call close to a tie.
But you’re right that we won’t know for sure if this result helps her in the next primary until we get there, (assuming she lasts that long) but I’m personally not optimistic about her chances to turn this result into any meaningful progress toward beating Trump.
Bill Clinton was able to spin a stronger-than-expected second place finish in NH into the story that he was the “Comeback Kid.” But Haley doesn’t have nearly his talent for defining the media narrative.
I strongly disagree with this. The anti-Trump side should be the adults in the room. Voter who can be swayed by childish insults and playground taunts are firmly in team Trump. He’s better at it and like the old joke says “the pig enjoys it”.
To be fair, Clinton’s stronger-than-expected second-place finish in New Hampshire was to a guy who hadn’t just won in Iowa; someone else won in Iowa. So he had a head start on Haley on spinning the story that, hey, this race with no clear front-runner is just now getting interesting, what with my comeback and all…
But Haley can spin this as, “I picked up almost all of DeSantis’ supporters!” Trump went from 51% in Iowa to 54% in NH, while Haley went from 19% to 43%. Spin the story that she’d have gotten even more if those few confused DeSantis supporters who voted for Trump had just realized that he’s yesterday’s news. “Stagnant Donald has peaked! There’s no where for him to go but down!”
I mean, if you can’t spin more than doubling your support into a positive story, you shouldn’t be President in the first place!
AFAICT, if she had picked up every DeSantis supporter, she still would’ve lost to the front runner in New Hampshire just like how she and DeSantis put together lost to that front runner in Iowa.
Whether she fell short of even that isn’t the part she’d need to spin.