As the 2024 Republican primary field continues to grow, candidate Nikki Haley said in an interview at the “Roast and Ride” fundraiser in Iowa on Saturday that the media wants a “two-person race” for the GOP nomination, simply for “click and ratings” — but there’s far more at stake than media clicks and ratings.

At the end of the proverbial day, the GOP primary race will come down to simple math.

In an exclusive interview with Breitbart, the former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador under Donald Trump said the American people are “smarter than that.”

I think that the media wants this to be a two-person race. I think that’s the biggest challenge is they want the American people to go with what they want for clicks and ratings, and it’s more than that. That’s why we’re touching as many hands. I think the American people are smarter than that.

“[The American people] get the fact that we have to have someone that will win a general election, and they get the fact that we can’t take four more years of Joe Biden, and so that’s what we’re gonna do. I’m very confident in what we’re doing. This is a marathon. It’s not a sprint. And so we’re gonna go, and we’re in it to win it.

Hold the campaign bus.

Haley was undeniably right about one thing: The American people can’t take four more years of the most disastrous presidency in modern history. Moreover, the country can’t take another four years of any Democrat in the White House, which makes the 2024 presidential election one of the most important elections in this country’s history. Again, it’s about the math — which we’ll get to.

Haley continued:

I think the first thing is I’ll put my results up against anybody. I’ve been a two-term governor that took a double-digit unemployment state and turned it into an economic powerhouse. I was at the United Nations; I didn’t deal with one country; I dealt with 193.

It is time for a new generational leader. We need to leave the chaos and the negativity behind; we’ve got a country to save. And so I’m out here all over Iowa, making sure that they know that we’re in it to win it. We’re not taking any shortcuts. We’re answering every question.

We’re touching every hand, and we’re gonna keep coming back until we earn the people of Iowa’s support. And we’re doing the same thing in New Hampshire, South Carolina, and we’ll do it across the country.

Again, Haley was right in much of what she said — including her reference to a new generational leader and leaving the chaos and negativity [a thinly-veiled shot at Trump] behind. However, both of those issues can be solved by someone other than Nikki Haley, for whom I have the utmost respect. So much so that I see Haley as a viable option for the two-spot on the 2024 GOP presidential ticket.

One Iowan summed up what untold numbers of Republican voters across the country think about Haley:

Well, I like Nikki Haley the best, personally. I have always liked her

So here’s the thing: Liking a particular candidate and believing that candidate has the best chance of winning and kicking Joe Biden and the Democrats the hell out of the White House are not mutually inclusive. I didn’t vote for Donald Trump — twice — because I liked him; I voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020 because he was the Republican candidate. Truth is, I’d vote for a blind, conservative squirrel rather than any nominee the so-called “progressive” party puts at the head of the Democrat ticket.

But here’s the other thing — actually a couple of critical things: Barring any unseen circumstance, there’s nary an objective Republican voter in America who doesn’t believe the 2024 nominee with be either Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis, and this is where the simple, mathematical logic comes into play.

The “Trump vote” is baked in — and it mostly has remained so since 2016. Running 42 Republican candidates (embellished, for illustrative purposes) against that substantial baked-in voter bloc will only favor Trump — and he knows it.

So, yeah — the longer Republican candidates not named Ron DeSantis remain in the primary race, the more Trump benefits. Now, if Trump’s your guy, you love that reality.

However, if your guy is DeSantis, you hate it. Again, simple math.

The Bottom Line

Needless to say, most if not all candidates not named Trump must believe they can win the nomination, or why would they waste boatloads of money and countless tiring campaign hours running? Other than for the VP slot, that is.

So the Republican song remains the same. And ironically, the very guy that the other GOP candidates want to knock out of the race because they don’t believe he can win the presidential election is Donald Trump, yet the longer they stay in the primary race, the better chance Trump has of winning.

Republican politics — never boring, and usually maddening.