[Politico] BEDFORD, N.H. — "This," Ted Johnson told me, "is what I hope." We were here the other day at a bar not far from his house, and we were talking about Donald Trump and the possibility he could be the president again by this time next year. "He breaks the system," he said, "he exposes the deep state, and it’s going to be a miserable four years for everybody."
"For everybody?" I said.
"Everybody."
"For you?"
"I think his policies are going to be good," he said, "but it’s going to be hard to watch this happen to our country. He’s going to pull it apart."
The notion that somebody might wish for the country’s dismantling would have sounded shocking coming from anybody, but it was especially jarring coming from Johnson. Because I was at a Nikki Haley town hall at the VFW in nearby Merrimack in the first week of September when Johnson stood up and asked her a question. He introduced himself as an independent voter and a retired soldier and said it felt like the nation was "in a civil war" and that some of his neighbors would hate him if he so much as put up a sign for her in his yard. On his mind, too, was his estrangement from his older brother — a rift the former president had done nothing but widen. He wanted to hear Haley’s plan "to pull us all back together."
Haley at that moment was beginning to become the top non-Trump pick in the Republican primary process, slowly, steadily replacing Gov. Ron DeSantis. She pitched conservative policies with a more moderate mien, a split-the-difference escape hatch for MAGA movables to not have to outright denounce Trump but still turn the page. Could she finish second in Iowa? Could she win New Hampshire? Could she actually topple Trump? To do any of that, though, she needed a mix of GOP-leaning independents, Trump-averse Republicans and at-all-open-minded Trump voters. She needed Ted Johnson. And Ted Johnson was listening.
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