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Donald Trump's enthusiasm problem persisted in ruby-red Indiana this week, where nearly 22% of Republican primary voters cast a ballot for a onetime presidential hopeful who dropped out of the race two full months ago: zombie candidate Nikki Haley.
While it's easy to frame this persistent trend as a "Haley problem" for Trump, The Dispatch reporter David Drucker painted the pattern as a sign of something much bigger as he spoke to Greg Sargent on “The Daily Blast” podcast. What he described suggested the GOP coalition may be in the process of splintering under Trump.
Drucker a veteran political journalist who has spoken to Republican voters in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, said the Haley backers have largely lost their kinship with the Republican Party.
"They no longer feel at home in the party," Drucker explained. "It wasn't just about Trump, it was about the new people he had attracted to the party—the populist right, which has ascended within the Republican coalition."
In essence, the MAGA contingent’s hostile takeover of the GOP and what it now means to be a "Republican" is truly settling in—and it's not sitting well with Haley voters, who are more traditional Reagan-era conservatives.
