Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis accomplished the impossible on Wednesday night: They made me miss Vivek Ramaswamy.
The hope was that a one-on-one debate between Donald Trump’s top two opponents (to the degree either are running against Trump), absent the gadflies and hangers-on who sucked up attention during previous debates, would be a clarifying moment. Winnowing down the field would incentivize a serious policy debate, while potentially allowing one candidate to emerge as the chief rival to a man who has been indicted in four separate cases.
Instead, we were treated to a semi-childish, back-and-forth debate. For two hours, Haley recited talking points and relentlessly plugged a website called DeSantisLies.com. Meanwhile, DeSantis wagged his finger in his usual condescendingly didactic way, dropping lame canned lines, including accusing Haley of “warmed-over corporatism” and caving to the “woke mob,” among other insults.
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It turns out that giving DeSantis and Haley more time and a brighter spotlight just revealed their flaws.
And neither candidate inspired us, offered a compelling vision, or gave us a moment of authenticity that might reveal something about who they are as a person.
Both candidates dropped opposition research, accusing each other of a litany of sins (wanting to raise gas taxes—or voting to raise the debt limit or the retirement age, etc.).
In response to these opposition dumps, both accused the other of lying.
To be sure, their ability to talk fast and recite memorized lines, including areas where their opponent had failed to hew closely enough to conservative orthodoxy, was impressive.
I’m serious; I couldn’t do it if you held a gun to my head. I could never memorize all that stuff and engage in a petty back-and-forth for two hours. This is probably because I am an only child who didn’t grow up with siblings to fight. So I admire their talent.
But the bickering was also uninspiring. With both candidates insisting they are the one telling us the truth about the other, it’s really difficult to adjudicate who is right and who is wrong (see Haley’s nonstop referencing of DeSantisLies.com).
Based on the last eight or so years, I suspect that most voters aren’t terribly interested in litigating which candidate is “the most conservative” on, say, school choice, anyway. Instead, they are looking for hints of some other quality such as humor, authenticity, or likability. And neither of them showed even a sliver of those elusive qualities on Wednesday night.
Cards on the table: My hope was that Haley would bring her likability and charisma to this debate. The contrast with DeSantis would be stark. It would also highlight Haley’s ability to appeal to swing voters and suburban moms, which would translate into her being the most challenging opponent for Joe Biden.
Save for her closing remarks, Haley never turned on the charm. Instead, she seemed determined to let no shot go unanswered—to counterpunch and fight back and give Ron no quarter. And while this pugnaciousness showed that she could hold her own, she failed to tap into what is, by far, her greatest selling point: likability.
The performance of DeSantis and Haley was also a reminder that the Republican voters who have soured on typical “politicians” aren’t entirely wrong to be turned off by them. In so many ways, DeSantis and Haley on Wednesday night looked and sounded like they had learned virtually nothing from these last eight years.
Donald Trump’s arrival on the political scene in 2015 did many things, including short-circuiting an internecine struggle between the “entertainment” wing of the Republican Party, represented by aspiring podcaster Ted Cruz, and a more serious, center-right, governing wing, represented by Marco Rubio.
Wednesday night’s debate between DeSantis (this year’s Cruz) and Haley (this year’s Rubio) promised to be a renewal of hostilities and a continuation of unfinished business. It also served as a reminder of why Trump was able to render that debate moot, supplanting these politicians entirely.
I have long criticized Republican voters willing to support Trump (who, it should be noted, was on Fox News doing a town hall during the CNN debate), despite his repulsive nature. Wednesday night was a reminder that at least part of the reason Trump has succeeded in the GOP is that his rivals are so out of touch with a party that craves authenticity and is repelled by standard-issue politicians who rehearse hand gestures and spout talking points.
When talking to traditional Republicans and freedom conservatives, a common refrain from members of the New Right is that we don’t know “what time it is.” Based on Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley’s much-ballyhooed one-on-one debate, I’d say they have a point.
Everyone said “fewer candidates” would make for a better debate. Well, it happened, and it sucked.
