“Many conservatives feel that even though she’s a good governor, she probably got some of her talking points from the establishment,” said Kellyanne Conway, an adviser to a Cruz-allied super PAC. “It was an attempt to undercut Ted Cruz and Donald Trump.”
During Haley’s speech, a focus group of general-election voters assembled by Republican pollster Frank Luntz responded positively — more so, he said, than for any State of the Union response in a decade.
“She did exactly what the average voter would want from her,” Luntz said. “She was magnanimous and responsible. But neither attribute plays well in a right-wing Republican primary. . . . The danger for the Republicans is that they are caught between an uncompromisable base and an unforgiving general electorate.”
This tension was on display throughout the evening. As members of Congress assembled for the State of the Union, Trump was rallying his faithful inside a college gymnasium in Cedar Falls, Iowa. He warned of the dangers posed by illegal immigrants and foreign refugees. Putting on his glasses, he gave a dramatic reading of a song about a woman who invited a snake into her home, only to be bitten.
Publicly, party leaders are reluctant to fully reject Trump and Cruz’s brand of politics. Privately, however, they are in nearly universal agreement that Haley’s compassion represents the right approach, both politically and morally.
“You can’t begin to imagine how many moods were lifted as a result of listening to her remarks,” said Al Cardenas, a former chairman of the American Conservative Union and a longtime Jeb Bush ally. “People went, ‘Yeah, that’s who we are.’ It was uplifting, it was timely, and it was very well delivered.”
