Jeff Roe’s name recognition among primary voters is low.
Once again, DeSantis is talking about actual accomplishments, such as getting school choice done, and Haley keeps responding by attacking DeSantis campaign spending and bad polling.
Nikki Haley thinks the “you blew a lot of money on your campaign” attack line is more effective than it is.
Her criticisms of the DeSantis campaign’s internal issues are correct enough as far as it goes but so very parochial, especially when framed as an argument against DeSantis as a bad executive. His governing record is his calling card there, not his campaign operation.
Oh, and for what it’s worth, South Carolina ranks 44th out of 50, but pays about $7,000 more per year than Florida does.
Haley says teachers want to teach what they were taught: math, science, English, etc. But that’s the nub of the problem: that is not what is taught in education schools today. Leftist agitprop IS what today’s teachers are trained to do.
An hour in, DeSantis remembered to mention that the Republican governor of Iowa endorsed him.
As the debate shifts to education, I am surprised Haley didn’t mention that Florida has, by a decent margin, the lowest-paid teachers in the country, about 4,000 per year less than Mississippi. Sure, some state has to rank 50th out of 50, but it seems reasonable to conclude that the state that pays the teachers the least will have the hardest time attracting and hiring good teachers?
This Disney exchange is one of the first substantive interactions between the candidates that illuminates a genuine philosophical distinction between them. “We don’t need government fighting against private industries,” Haley says in response to DeSantis’s defense of his efforts to compel Disney to exit the political arena (with varying degrees of success). Haley is on the wrong side of popular opinion on the Right today, but her articulation of conservatism’s view toward public sector interventions in private affairs may still have a few supporters.
If you want to be the Man, you have to beat the Man. If nothing else, you have to at least make an attempt at going after the Man. And the Man, right now, is Donald Trump. Instead, DeSantis and Haley are attacking one another almost exclusively, which does nothing to affect the overall contours of the race in either Iowa or New Hampshire, or nationwide. Why are we here, folks?
Your mid-debate reminder that Trump, who is not on the debate stage tonight, is polling north of fifty percent among Republicans in Iowa, according to FiveThirtyEight’s polling average. DeSantis and Haley are both polling in the high-teens in the Hawkeye State ahead of the January 15 caucuses…but hey, anything’s possible!