An Overcaffeinated Debate

By Noah Rothman

Wednesday, January 10, 2024

 

Interwoven amidst the gratuitous barbs, the cloying churlishness, the banal opposition research, and — my lord — the website plugs, Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis scratched out some meaningful distinctions between them in relation to their policy preferences and their governing philosophies during Wednesday’s CNN-sponsored debate.

 

The candidates discussed their respective tax policy preferences and how reforms to marginal income-tax rates relate to economic growth. They submitted competing proposals to address the border crisis through augmented security and reforms to statute. They argued over U.S. grand strategy abroad, the relative importance of America’s support for its embattled partners overseas, and the ongoing attacks on American service personnel by Iranian proxies. They went into detail on the educational reforms that would impose transparency on what has become a bureaucracy as committed to social engineering as it is to pedagogy. They struck out meaningful distinctions on the role of government insofar as it relates to intervention in the private sector when the private sector defines its remit beyond mere provision of commercial services. They battled one another over the necessity of entitlement reform and the solvency of America’s social-welfare programs. From tort reform to electoral integrity, Medicaid expansion to mental health, the Black Lives Matter movement and the virtue of conflict with progressive activists versus defusing that tension through outreach — no one can honestly say this wasn’t a substantive debate.

 

But average viewers were unlikely to see it that way. This was a hypercompetitive contest, and both candidates came away from it diminished. Both DeSantis and Haley seem to have been coached into never letting an opportunity to speak pass without introducing some superfluous attack on their rival. DeSantis spent an inordinate amount of time attacking Haley’s motives and attributing her positions to the mesmeric control her donors exert over her campaign. Haley could not have been more solicitous in her promotion of one of her camp’s anti-DeSantis websites, and she lost the plot by dwelling for extended periods on the astronomical sums the Florida governor’s campaign and super PAC have burnt through. I struggle to imagine the voter whose heart is changed after learning that DeSantis’s PAC was poorly managed. I cannot conceive of the uncommitted voter who could be persuaded that Nikki Haley is “more liberal than Gavin Newsom.” I’d bet my mortgage that the overwhelming majority of viewers have no idea who Thomas Massie is.

 

So, despite all the substance and policy, the debate is unlikely on its own to guide Iowa and New Hampshire’s Republicans toward moving on from Donald Trump. That is not to say that the candidates shied away from attacking the front-runner in the race. Nor did they need to be goaded by CNN’s moderators into doing so. Both candidates took the opportunity to land their blows on Trump’s character, comportment, and conduct in office, albeit selectively and with precision. But in their frenetic effort to win not just every segment of the debate but every exchange, both candidates made themselves look smaller in comparison to the looming presence at the top of the GOP’s primary polling.

 

The debates have mattered. Haley would not be where she is today without them. The same could be said for DeSantis, though in a less complimentary fashion. Perhaps this debate will matter, too, but I wouldn’t expect a sea change. Unlike 2016, the anti-Trump consolidation process has progressed at a pace that still could present Trump with a challenge as the voting gets underway. But I wouldn’t bet on it.

 

This debate’s viewers were presented with two very distinct options: One, a fighter and a proven Republican reformer with a wooden personality and a habit of picking more fights than he can win. The other, a bridge-builder with a conservative philosophical outlook whose suspicion toward the exercise of power in pursuit of social reforms makes her less appealing to the Republican base but could remake the 2024 electorate in ways that are advantageous to the Republican Party. It’s a stark choice, but all those qualities are present — or, at least, theoretically present — in Donald Trump. Was tonight’s display enough to get those voters to reconsider the affinities they’ve spent eight years cultivating? I doubt it.