Confident DeSantis and rattled Haley slog it out for second place
In the final debate before critical Iowa caucuses next week, the Florida governor appeared to prevail.
If Donald Trump doesn’t win the Iowa caucuses next Monday night (Tuesday AEDT) it will be a political earthquake, given poll after poll has given him well over 50 per cent support among the Republican voters who’ll likely brave the expected arctic conditions to register their choice.
No wonder the former president looked calm and relaxed in his parallel one-on-one on Fox News town hall, claiming DeSantis, whom he promoted while president, would be “working in a pizza shop or perhaps a law firm” without his help.
But second matters more than usual, given a health event or perhaps even jail could beset the 77-year-old former president sometime before the November election.
And it showed in Des Moines on Wednesday night (Thursday AEDT), as Trump’s two chief challengers — former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley and Florida governor Ron DeSantis, level pegging on around 16 per cent support according to most polls — ripped into each other for two hours in a last-ditch effort to secure second prize.
DeSantis won the night easily, on style and substance, being more naturally in tune with the values and priorities of a conservative state, where having the United Nations on your CV, as Haley does, isn’t a plus.
Frank Luntz, a pollster, said DeSantis gave “the best performance of his career”.
Against DeSantis’s confidence Haley appeared rattled and snarky, continually referring the audience to her new website www.DeSantisLies.com, which however laudable an effort to encourage accountability, didn’t work.
Her mood was understandable, given former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who bowed out of the race only hours earlier, in a shockingly bad “hot mic’’ moment said Haley was “going to get smoked” in the campaign, and that she “wasn’t up to it”. Christie was her political ally.
Haley’s chief problem is the Republican Party nationally, and especially in Iowa, has moved away from the sort of conservatism she represents. She’s a George W Bush-style Republican, fond of Wall Street, big business, an interventionist US foreign policy, and not so troubled by the surging immigration across the southern border that has the Republican base irate.
DeSantis called her out for killing a bill as governor that would have stopped transgender bathrooms, and virtue signalling on social media about the May 2020 murder of George Floyd, who many Republicans don’t believe deserves national reverence.
DeSantis, meanwhile was the governor who rose to prominence nationally pushing back against years of Covid restrictions, making him a hero among the sort of Republicans who will venture out in minus 22C temperatures next Monday night. He’s a junior, more principled Trump without the latter’s immense legal and political baggage.
That said, in her closing remarks Haley played her best card: in national polls she beats Joe Biden by far more than either Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis. Will that be enough to sway Republican voters?
Perhaps it will, in the second primary contest in New Hampshire to be held the following week, where Haley will be preaching to a richer, more establishment Republican audience, far away from MAGA country.
In conclusion neither could think of anything nice to say about the other. That DeSantis had been “good governor” was all Haley could muster, when prompted. DeSantis praised South Carolina the state. If Trump’s campaign should suddenly implode, it appears they’ll be looking for vice-presidential running mates elsewhere.
If it doesn’t, perhaps there’s a role for Haley. Trump joked about Christie’s prospects as his number two, saying “I don’t see it”, while praising his grim assessment of Haley’s chances.
But Trump may think he needs both wings of the Republican Party to take the fight to Biden for a second time.
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