Most people break into a sprint when they spy the finish line. With the Iowa caucuses right around the corner, Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley are barely stumbling towards Des Moines.
You’d think that Donald Trump’s top Republican adversaries would be using this time to present their closing arguments, and, daresay, go negative. Instead, we are seeing more of what defined the Republican primary race in 2023: a staunch refusal to be too mean to dear old Mr. Trump.
In the last week alone, DeSantis and Haley both pledged to pardon Trump if they are elected president. “I think we’ve got to move on as a country,” the Florida governor explained late last week in Iowa, “because the divisions are just not in the country’s interest.”
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“What’s in the best interest of the country is not to have an 80-year-old man sitting in jail that continues to divide our country,” Haley said just one day earlier in New Hampshire. “What’s in the best interest of our country is to pardon him so that we can move on as a country and no longer talk about him.”
Excuse me, but Trump was indicted in four jurisdictions on 91 counts. Are we to assume that all of these counts were politically motivated, or otherwise not worth our time?
At the very least, wouldn’t it be “in the best interest of our country” to wait until all the evidence is presented—and see whether a jury convicts Trump—before promising to pardon him? Wouldn’t justice be in the best interest? Wouldn’t sending the message that no man is above the law be in the best interest?
In his answer, DeSantis referenced Gerald Ford’s decision to pardon Richard Nixon. But this is a false equivalency (Trump’s sins, in my opinion, are worse than Watergate—both qualitatively and quantitatively). Additionally, Nixon had resigned in shame, and there was zero chance Nixon would run for president again. That’s obviously not the case with Trump.
In her answer, Haley got in a jab about Trump being almost 80 years old, but the assumption that he’s a helpless, doddering old man who couldn’t make it on “the inside” is just as naive as thinking he’s too old to rule America as an authoritarian if he wins.
Her more dubious assertion, though, is that it’s in “the best interest of our country” to move on.
Sending a message that you can take classified information, incite a riot, and attempt to overturn an election (just to name three of Trump’s transgressions)—with impunity—seems like a bad precedent to me.
It’s pretty obvious that DeSantis and Haley are reverse engineering bogus arguments to justify pardoning Trump. The larger question is why?
MAGA voters will never vote for them. And non-Trump conservatives presumably want a nominee who will focus on reestablishing norms. This pardon pledge is a promise to do the exact opposite.
Political campaigns are usually guilty of taking small things that their opponent has done wrong and blowing them all out of proportion. Likewise, they are usually about sharpening contrasts (you are 100 percent virtuous, and your opponent is 100 percent evil.). When it comes to Trump, DeSantis and Haley consistently refuse to play the game. It’s almost as if they bought the Campaign 101 handbook and decided to break every rule in the book.
Trust me, I know. Before I got into opinion journalism, I spent years working at a conservative organization. My job was to travel the country and train conservatives to run for political office. The many pearls of wisdom we imparted included some tough love for anyone hoping to run against an incumbent. I still remember what we told our students:
When you’re running against an incumbent (and for all practical purposes, Trump is effectively the incumbent), you are asking the voters to do two very difficult things: 1) Admit they were wrong when they voted for the incumbent the last time, and 2) ‘Fire’ the incumbent.
Based on this high bar, it’s not enough to say, ‘The incumbent is good, but I’m just a little bit better.’ The only way to justify firing the incumbent is to make a clear case that the opponent is disqualified from the job.
Now, assuming this theory is correct (I believe it is), you can see that Trump’s primary opponents are executing the kinds of campaigns that are destined to fail.
So why are they even running?
It could be that their real reason for running is to set themselves up for the future and/or to step in, should something happen to Trump before he officially becomes the party’s nominee.
I don’t think that is why DeSantis or Haley ran, at least in the beginning.
Trump clearly looked vulnerable when DeSantis decided he was going to challenge him. Meanwhile, if Haley merely wanted to be Trump’s vice president, she would have been better off not attacking him, as she did in the primary debates.
And while DeSantis never really found his footing, Haley put herself in a position to have an outside shot at wresting the nomination from Trump. But with the finish line finally in her sight, and time running out before the votes are cast, Haley seems to have lost her nerve.
Time is not on their side, but there may still be an opportunity. Next Tuesday, DeSantis and Haley are slated to debate each other in Iowa on CNN. It will likely be their best last chance to make the argument for why Republicans should prefer them over Trump.
My advice? You don’t get any credit for going easy on Trump. You’d be better off sprinting to the finish line. MAGA is never going to love you back (it’s not you, it’s them).
The sooner DeSantis and Haley accept this and quit running interference for Trump, the better their odds will be of pulling off a New Year’s miracle.
Otherwise, it’s just a race to the bottom.
