Their efforts to diminish one another’s standing will succeed only in making both of them appear unequal to Trump.
The race for second place in the Republican presidential primary is rapidly narrowing to a contest between two candidates, Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley. But there can be only one. At least, that’s the thinking among Republican political professionals and members of the GOP’s donor class who are still hoping against dwindling hope that Donald Trump can be dislodged from his perch at the top of the polls.
With that imperative in mind, DeSantis and Haley are straining themselves in the effort to establish a contrast that neutralizes their rival. So far, that enterprise has been unproductive. What’s more, their efforts to diminish one another’s standing will succeed only in making both of them appear unequal to Trump.
Consider the ways in which both candidates have tried to undermine the other. Haley has attempted to impugn DeSantis’s commitment to bringing America’s unexploited domestic energy reserves to market by attacking the limits he placed on fracking in the Florida Everglades. That would matter a great deal if Florida were sitting on vast fossil-fuel deposits, which it isn’t. Likewise, her campaign’s attempt to make DeSantis’s refusal to leave congressionally appropriated sums devoted to Florida on the table into some sort of liability is dishonest. Few governors would decline to take advantage of opportunities provided by Washington, even those that are the product of the federal government’s profligacy, and their voters wouldn’t reward them for doing so.
For his part, DeSantis has been throwing wild haymakers in Haley’s direction — a flurry of activity that has only grown more frenetic amid the governor’s declining prospects in the polling.
He has attacked Haley for welcoming a Chinese-owned fiberglass manufacturer to South Carolina at a time when every state in the Union was pursuing the same foreign direct investment. He has made a mountain out of Haley’s admittedly foolish comments about the need for governmental intervention to eliminate the scourge of anonymous social-media accounts — an eventuality with a likelihood approaching zero, but comments that nonetheless allow 240-character edgelords to posture as though they are the modern equivalents of Alexander Hamilton or John Jay.
DeSantis has called Haley a “Democrat in sheep’s clothing,” which sounds itchy. He has attacked her for lacking sufficient hostility toward legal immigrants. He has accused her of supporting the “sexualized curriculum in elementary schools” promoted by the Left. None of it has redounded to DeSantis’s benefit because the accusations are not believable.
If Haley and DeSantis hit the stage at the fourth Republican presidential-primary debate gunning for one another, both will likely experience tragic success. They will emerge from that debate equally diminished, and Trump will continue to coast to the nomination. What’s more, they will have passed on yet another of the few remaining opportunities to make the case for themselves as plausible alternatives to Trump.
Apart from their views on the foreign-policy crises confronting America, the divisions Haley and DeSantis have so far highlighted are superficial. Both are accomplished, conservative governors who agree more than they disagree. The big, bright contrast in this race is the one that both of them strike when compared with Trump, and they should both maximize the chances they have to underscore that contrast. Taking the fight to Trump in absentia elevates both of them to a position of parity with a figure Republican voters seem to regard as the GOP’s functional incumbent. Both candidates need to seed in Republican voters’ minds the notion that they are Trump’s equals, if not superiors. Squabbling amongst themselves won’t achieve that.
I realize that this is an unlikely outcome. Both Haley and DeSantis have a parochial interest in maximizing their appeal to their respective “lanes” in the GOP primary, such as they are. The Hobbesian logic of the Highlander primary maintains that alternatives to Trump within the party cannot take the fight to the former president before they dispense with all his competitors. But that day never comes. Both candidates would be better served in December by stating plainly all the reasons why Republican voters should not cast their ballots for Trump. That’s an argument to which the GOP primary electorate has not been privy, amazingly enough, for most of this primary cycle. Rest assured, Republicans will be bombarded with the case against Trump once he is the party’s presidential nominee. The time for Republicans to reckon with that reality is now.