'This is the Achilles heel': Experts say Trump’s 'undisciplined' rage could doom campaign
Former President Donald Trump's advisers want him to stop attacking former UN ambassador Nikki Haley and focus on the November general election. But Trump's apparent inability to do so may jeopardize his campaign, according to a political expert.
Trump managed to come away from New Hampshire's first-in-the nation primary with a double-digit win over Haley, and has effectively cemented his status as the GOP nominee given those states' influence in predicting the eventual Republican nominee. According to CBS News, no GOP candidate has failed to capture their party's nomination after winning both contests. Still, Trump began his victory speech with a tirade against his rival. Brown University political scientist Wendy Schiller told the Guardian that Trump's tendency to bully his opponents could be his undoing.
"[The victory speech] was essentially a train wreck and exhibited all the worst tendencies of Donald Trump. It was an undisciplined Trump and this is what turns off independent voters," Schiller said. "This is the Achilles heel for the Trump campaign and they know it."
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"The sooner this gets wrapped up then he doesn’t have any more of those impromptu late night speeches," she added. "Their worry is not that they’re not going to win the nomination; their worry is the damage that Trump having to respond to Haley will do in the general election with independent voters."
Schiller's assessment of Trump's key weakness is shared by top GOP allies, with former House speaker and 2012 presidential candidate Newt Gingrich telling the Guardian that "Trump’s best strategy is to assume he is the nominee and go straight at Biden and ignore Haley," and that the former president should "let her flounder around until she either runs out of money or realizes that there is no future." Larry Sabato, who is the director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics, opined that Haley's donors want the former South Carolina governor to stay in "to put Trump through his paces."
"They don’t put it on the record but they think there’s a reasonable chance that something will happen to Trump, either health-wise or conviction to the extent that he can no longer be the nominee," Sabato said.
Haley has an uphill battle in her home state of South Carolina, where the former governor is polling roughly 30 points behind the 45th president of the United States in the February 24 winner-take-all contest according to RealClearPolitics data. Polling shows her getting trounced by nearly 60 points in Nevada, the last of the early state primaries and caucuses.
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