Nikki Haley should point out the Trump wasteland — at Arizona's Meteor Crater

NOTE: THE FOLLOWING ACCOUNT IS FICTIONAL, BUT IT NEED NOT BE.

In a well-lit tunnel in a meeting hall in North Charleston, S.C., Betsy Ankney is scrolling fiercely on her iPhone.

Something has caught her eye. She is reading it over and over again. Scrolling up. Scrolling down. Up. Down.

She draws the phone close to her eyes and focuses hard.

“My god,” she whispers to herself.

Two staffers arrive and spy Ankney.

“She’s here,” says one of them.

Haley clearly wants to battle Trump

“OK, bring her in,” Ankney says. “I need a room where I can talk to her in private before she goes on stage.”

The two staffers lead the candidate into a maintenance room just off the tunnel. Her face bespeaks a natural calm, a quality she has developed over years of crisis management in the governor’s office and at home with kids.

Ankney walks in and closes the door.

“What’s up?” says Nikki Haley.

“I need to know something from you,” says Ankney, her campaign manager, speaking with a voice more serious and more determined than Haley had ever heard from her before.

“What is it?”

“Are you ready to go to war?”

Haley’s eyes narrow. “I think you know the answer to that.”

“OK. We need to go to Arizona. NOW,” Ankney says.

It's not what's in Arizona, but who's not

“What are you talking about?” says Haley. “What’s in Arizona?”

“It’s not what’s in Arizona,” says Ankney. “It’s who's not in Arizona.”

“I don’t get it,” says Haley.

“Trump,” says Ankney. “I’m talking about Trump.”

Ankney then explains.

The news has broken that Donald Trump has canceled a flight to Arizona to speak at a Phoenix megachurch the following day. His campaign says he canceled because he’ll be in court that day.

“Perhaps that's it,” Ankney says. "But I think there's another reason."

“What's that?” says Haley.

Trump's AZ GOP is burning to the ground

“I think he canceled because the Arizona Republican Party is imploding. And here’s the gist: The Arizona Republican Party is the party Trump built. There is no state party in America that is more Trump than Arizona's.”

Ankney explains that almost immediately after Trump descended that golden escalator at Trump Tower in Manhattan in 2015 to announce he was running for president, he went to Arizona.

He loved it. After that, Arizona became his home away from home, she explains, the place he came for succor — to recharge when the campaign trail turned cold.

In the years that followed, the Arizona GOP became his second self, the living, breathing embodiment of Donald Trump. The Arizona Republican Party had become MAGA personified. MAGA in its most distilled essence.

Phoenix was his first huge crowd on the hustings after speaking to some smaller private and public gatherings in L.A. and Vegas, she explains. In Phoenix, he had thousands of people waiting for him and people standing in 100-degree heat to get into the Phoenix Convention Center.

No wonder Trump canceled his visit

“And you know what,” says Ankney. “It’s burning. It’s burning to the ground. Right now. This week.”

“They told you about Kari Lake, right?” Ankney says.

“I saw some headlines,” says Haley.

“Kari Lake blew up her own state party and her own campaign by leaking a 10-month old tape of the chairman of the Arizona GOP trying to bribe her to sit out the 2024 U.S. Senate race.”

“Yes, I did read that.”

New evidence: Arizona GOP takedown was orchestrated

“The state party chair has now resigned, and he’s taking her down with him,” Ankney continues. “She says she’s fighting the corruption in her own state, which might have been credible had she released the tape 10 months ago when this all happened. But she’s been sitting on that tape all this time as a supposedly corrupt man has been running her state party.

“The big picture is that the Arizona Republican Party has become scorched earth. Trump’s people saw that and didn’t dare fly him into Apocalypse Now. So they canceled Arizona.”

Trump can't win independents. Haley can

“OK, then why should we go there?” asks Haley.

“Because it is the essential message of this campaign,” says Ankney. “Donald Trump is going to lose this fall, and the Republicans don’t know it. Not yet.

“They’re looking at meaningless polls of Trump up by a point-and-a-half over Biden and they don’t realize the ground is crumbling beneath them.

“We were going over the returns again last night. Trump may have won Iowa and New Hampshire, but he is dying in the suburbs and independents are an absolute s--- show. Four out of 10 in the exit polls were motivated to vote because they want him gone. They hate him.

“Nikki, have you looked at the national voter registration numbers? The smart conservatives over at Commentary magazine are talking about this. Some 36 million Americans identify as Republican. You know how many identify as Democrats?”

“I’ve forgotten,” Haley says, her eyes curious.

“Forty-eight million.”

“That’s the fundamental disadvantage any Republican begins with. You have to win independents,” says Ankney. “But Arizona is different. Arizona is actually the opposite of that. There are more Republicans than Democrats registered in Arizona and have been for decades.

“And since the Arizona Republican Party went MAGA, this is what they’ve done with that advantage.”

Ankney pulls out her phone and swipes. She draws it close to her eyes and reads:

“They’ve lost the governor’s office. The secretary of state. The attorney general. Their two U.S. Senate seats. And their GOP majorities in the Legislature are now razor thin. Both chambers could flip to the Democrats in the next election.”

Haley must visit now, but not Phoenix

“Wow, that’s bad,” says Haley.

“Yes, really bad. Arizona is the Republican wasteland. Arizona is what happens when you follow Donald Trump to his logical conclusion — utter devastation.

“And we need to make sure every Republican in America knows it.”

“So we go to Phoenix?” asks Haley.

“Well, no. We’ve got very little time and almost no paths to victory. We need to do something big. We need to make Republicans see this in the most dramatic way — to see what’s coming.”

“What are you thinking?” Haley asks.

“Brace yourself,” says Ankney.

“Uh oh, I’ve seen that look before,” says Haley.

Meteor Crater is the perfect backdrop

“I’ve been doing some research,” says Ankney. “We can keep most of the logistics simple. We don’t need a hall. We don’t need an audience. We just need Wi-Fi and a microphone and portable podium ...”

“Anddddd,” says Haley.

“And a backdrop,” says Ankney. “A dramatic, stunning visual.”

“What are you talking about? The Grand Canyon?”

“Well, no.”

“It’s a little more remote than that. There’s this place in Arizona called Meteor Crater — it’s a massive hole in the ground, in the Arizona desert — about 4,000 feet in diameter and 600 feet deep.

“About 50,000 years ago, a meteor hit the earth there. It was a violent crash. It shattered the ecosphere.

“It is the perfect visualization of what Trump has done to Arizona — he has cratered the place. It is the metaphor that awaits the national Republican Party if we send this guy again into the general election.

Either Haley throws long, or she loses

“You’ve been watching him, Nikki. He is pure madness now. He’s winning the primary and does he celebrate? NO! He’s snarling at you. He makes cracks about your name, about your dress, about your intelligence. He calls you ‘birdbrain.’

“He’s about to lose his fourth election cycle in a row and he’s older and more adrift than ever.

“We need to go to Meteor Crater, Arizona, and tell Republicans that the only thing standing between them and that crater is you.

“I know it’s crazy, Nikki. I know it’s a hail Mary. But we either throw long or we lose.”

“It is crazy, I’ll grant you that,” says Haley.

“Look,” says Ankney. “I’ll tell the networks this will be the most important speech of your campaign, of your life. I’ll tell them the visuals will be stunning.”

Haley thinks for a moment. Her eyes brighten.

“Tell them to bring their drones.”

Phil Boas is an editorial columnist for The Arizona Republic. Email him at phil.boas@arizonarepublic.com.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Nikki Haley could beat Donald Trump, if she visits Arizona now