At Public Notice, Noah Berlatsky writes: Why Republicans are (still) humiliating themselves for Trump.

With close to 90 percent of the vote counted early Wednesday morning evening, Donald Trump had beaten Nikki Haley by just over 10 points in the New Hampshire Republican presidential primary.

For Haley, that margin is a victory of sorts, since she was further behind in polls and finished a weak third in Iowa. But a moral victory isn’t enough….

Trump has long had a commanding lead in the polls. But even with Haley still in the race, prominent Republicans are rushing to anoint him and remove all doubt about who leads the party.

Melissa Anne Miller, View from the Studio after a Light Snow

Primary rivals entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott— the last actually appointed by Haley — all endorsed Trump. So did Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, a think tank which had been one of the big conservative institutions backing DeSantis. Texas Sen. John Cornyn immediately endorsed Trump following his New Hampshire victory.

“I have seen enough,” Cornyn tweeted, hopping on the MAGA bandwagon before it becomes too late to get credit for it. Even Republican National Committee (NRC) Chair Ronna McDaniel went on Fox News late Tuesday and all but endorsed Trump by urging Haley to get out of the race.

Trump’s consolidation of Republican support isn’t exactly a surprise. But it’s a chilling reaffirmation that the GOP is his party, and stands for what he stands for — authoritarianism, cruelty, election denial, corruption, criminality, conspiracy theories, and mob-style threats like the one Trump made against Haley during his unhinged New Hampshire victory speech.

Since Trump’s ascent in 2015, Republican rivals and critics have repeatedly been forced to come crawling back to him on their bellies, begging forgiveness and humiliating themselves.

During the 2016 campaign, Trump suggested that Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s wife was ugly and (utterly without evidence of any kind) accused Cruz’s father of being involved in JFK’s assassination. Cruz said then that Trump was a “bully” and “pathological liar.” Yet, this year he “enthusiastically” endorsed Trump.

Cornyn, Ohio Sen. JD Vance (who once called Trump “America’s Hitler”) and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham have all performed similar reversals.

Even Haley, who has sharpened her rhetoric against Trump in recent weeks as he’s crudely insulted her and hit her with birther smears, has indicated she’ll support Trump if he’s the Republican nominee.

Read more at the PN link.

From Mark Alesia and Alexandria Jacobson at Raw Story: Racism, fascism and cruelty: Donald Trump’s New Hampshire performance in nine quotes.

Even by the standards of Donald Trump, the former president spent the past week in New Hampshire unloading extreme rhetoric against Nikki Haley.

And even though Trump managed to spew racism, fascism and cruelty in his remarks and social media posts, New Hampshire didn’t punish him, giving him a convincing victory over Haley in Tuesday’s primary.

Here’s some of what Trump said in New Hampshire:

— After a man at a Trump rally Monday shouted, “12 years of Trump”: “You’re right. Don’t say that too loud. … You know they love to call me a fascist.”

— Widely seen as a racist dog whistle, Trump referred to Haley’s birth name of Nimarata as “Nimrada.”

— “You know I’ve been indicted more than Al Capone. You ever heard of Al Capone? Probably the greatest mobster of them all.”

— Speaking about former President Jimmy Carter, 99, who is in hospice care: “He’s happy because his presidency is now considered brilliant in comparison to Joe Biden.”

— On the media: “These are sick people. We have to straighten out our free press.”

— Trump’s reaction to the notion that Haley would be stronger in the general election against President Joe Biden: “BIRDBRAIN HAS BEEN LYING ABOUT THIS, AND MANY OTHER THINGS, FOR WEEKS. SHE CAN’T BEAT THE DEMS.”

— “Nikki Haley, I know well. Sadly, she’s made an unholy alliance with the RHINOS, the never-Trumpers … the globalists, the radical left communists.”

— “Nikki Haley is using radical Democrat money to fund the radical Democrat campaign operation that she’s running.”

— Reacting to a person who said, “Free the J6ers”: “We will.” He also referred to the jailed lawbreakers from the January 6 insurrection as “hostages.”

A couple of journalists wrote about growing red flags for Trump.

Sam Stein and Natalie Allison at Politico: Donald Trump has a big problem ahead.

Donald Trump has a problem no matter what happens in New Hampshire on Tuesday night: There’s a whole swath of the Republican electorate and a good chunk of independents who appear firmly committed to not voting for him in November if he becomes the nominee.

It’s an issue that became starkly apparent in polling ahead of the Iowa caucuses, when an NBC News/Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll of voters in that state found that fully 43 percent of Nikki Haley supporters said they would back President Joe Biden over Trump. And it’s a dynamic that has been on vivid display as the campaign shifted this week to New Hampshire.

“I can’t vote for Trump. He’s a crook. He’s too corrupt,” said Scott Simeone, 64, an independent voter from Amherst, who backed Trump in 2016 and 2020. “I voted for him, and I didn’t realize he’s as corrupt as he is.”

Primary elections can create intra-party divisions that, in the moment, seem impossible to heal. In 2008, a bloc of Hillary Clinton supporters started the PUMA (Party Unity My Ass) movement as a threat to never back Barack Obama after that bruising primary. Bernie Sanders’ supporters vowed to never support Clinton eight years later. In 2016, Trump himself faced pushback to his nomination all the way up to the convention floor.

But 2024 is different. Trump is not making his pitch to voters as a first time candidate. He is a known quantity who is being judged by the electorate not for the conduct of his current campaign so much as his time in office. And that, political veterans warn, makes it much harder for him to win back the people he’s alienated, including those once willing to vote Republican.

The data supports the idea that there are problems ahead for the former president. Even before the Iowa survey, a New York Times/Siena College poll found that — including independents who say they lean toward one party over the other — Biden had slightly more support among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents (91 percent) than Trump did among Republicans and GOP-leaning independents (86 percent).

That’s far from a majority of Republicans preparing to pass on Trump in November. But in a close election, it could be enough to tip the scales for Democrats. At a minimum, it is a major liability for the GOP should the party, as expected, push Trump through as its nominee.