Does MAGA want Trump or does MAGA want to win?

If the polls are right, Donald Trump will win the Iowa caucus next week and the New Hampshire primary a week after that — and then, barring some huge unforeseen event, he likely will go on to win the Republican presidential nomination.

Trump’s most loyal voters believe Joe Biden is a doddering old fool, that he’s the worst president ever, and that he — not Donald Trump — is the real threat to democracy. And even though they’ve made Trump the odds-on favorite to win the GOP nomination, there’s at least one other candidate with what looks like a much better chance of beating Biden.

So how much do Trump voters, especially the MAGA wing of the party, really want to win? That’s not as crazy a question as you might think. Stay with me.

It’s no secret that Biden would rather run against Trump than just about anyone else. It’s his best shot at winning. No one energizes the Democratic base more than Donald Trump. And even though Trump is beating Biden in more than a few polls, it’s not by much. A Wall Street Journal poll from December had Trump leading Biden by four points — while Nikki Haley beat Biden by a staggering 17 points. Ron DeSantis is tied with Biden in that poll.

Polls change, of course, and who knows what the next batch will turn up. But hang on before you take out a second mortgage on your house or raid your kids’ college fund to bet on Donald Trump winning next year.

If Biden ran on his record, he’d almost certainly lose. Gallup says his approval rating is only 39 percent as 2023 came to an end. He’s underwater when it comes to inflation, the crisis on the southern border and just about everything else voters care about.

His only shot at winning is to convince voters that Donald Trump is a white supremacist neo-Nazi who will impose something that looks like a Fourth Reich on America. Biden and his allies will say that democracy as we know it will die under a second Trump presidency. They’ll talk nonstop about how Trump led an insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021.

And, to top it off, Biden and his surrogates may very well tell voters that if Trump wins, the president might have to carry out the nation’s business not from the Oval Office but from a cell at Club Fed.

Attack ads matter even when they’re way over the top. And so, over time, they’ll likely put a dent into whatever lead Trump has over the current president. And then there’s something else that will diminish Trump’s lead. And that something would be Donald Trump himself.

There’s a good chance Trump will focus on the past, claiming yet again that he’s the victim of a “stolen election.” He has said of the Jan. 6 rioters, “These were peaceful people, these were great people,” and he’ll likely say some version of that on the campaign trail. He will hurl childish insults at Biden and anyone else who gets in his way.

In other words, Trump will be Trump — with all the chaos and divisiveness that follow him wherever he goes.

Moderate voters and independents don’t like that kind of stuff. If it comes down to a choice between old and frail Joe Biden and a mean and vulgar Donald Trump, don’t be too sure which of them will emerge from the swamp wearing a crown — especially when the so-called objective mainstream media jumps on board the Biden bandwagon.

But Nikki Haley can win over those moderate and independent voters, who may not be fans of Joe Biden but loathe Donald Trump. “Those are the voters who tell pollsters they’d vote for Nikki Haley over Biden. But if the 2024 election is a rematch of 2020, they would back Biden over Trump,” according to a piece in Politico.

So why won’t Trump voters say, “We want to win and we’ll have a better chance with Haley”? It could be because they’re convinced Trump will win, so why abandon him now? But maybe it’s also because they’d rather lose with Trump than win with Haley — or DeSantis or anyone else? So, one more time — stay with me.

Let’s remember who Donald Trump is. He’s crude. He holds grudges. He doesn’t have political opponents — he has enemies. He behaves like a schoolyard bully. In other words, he’s everything Nikki Haley isn’t. Which is precisely why MAGA Republicans wouldn’t abandon their dear leader in favor of Haley (or anyone else), even if he did shoot someone on Fifth Avenue.

You could make the case that for these voters the election of 2024 isn’t about winning as much as it is about loyalty to the only candidate they believe really cares about them and understands their lives. The only one who doesn’t believe that civility and compromise are virtues. 

“The political right has convinced itself that winning is a sign of failure,” says Jonah Goldberg in the Dispatch. “The system is so rigged against ‘us’ that if you win, it must be the result of some sinful capitulation. Losing is proof that you are pure, that you stuck to your principles. Winning is appeasement. Success is proof you sold out.”

So, if that’s who MAGA Republicans are, if they would rather remain “pure” and “principled” — even if it means losing with Donald Trump than winning with Nikki Haley — you know what? They just might.

Bernard Goldberg is an Emmy and an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University award-winning writer and journalist. He was a correspondent with HBO’s “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel” for 22 years and previously worked as a reporter for CBS News and as an analyst for Fox News. He is the author of five books and publishes exclusive weekly columns, audio commentaries and Q&As on his Substack page. Follow him @BernardGoldberg.