Today’s race for second place is tomorrow’s 2028 campaign
The CNN debate between Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley was ok but it wasn’t what I hoped it would be. The winner was Ron DeSantis.
The debate with the two candidates was one that people have wanted for a long time. They are competing for second place in the Iowa caucus, to be honest. I don’t see either overcoming the big lead that Trump has, but I won’t rule anything out at this point. This has been a weird political cycle, with the two frontrunners, Trump and Biden, barely campaigning. They refuse to debate. The Democrat primary was rigged by the DNC to assure that Biden doesn’t have to break a sweat. The Democrat primary starts in South Carolina this time so as to guarantee Biden wins. Trump won’t agree to debate the other Republicans because of his strong lead and he feels entitled to the nomination.
Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley went round after round for two hours. The CNN moderators were Jake Tapper and Dana Bash. Credit where credit is due – they both did a good job and asked questions of interest to Republican primary voters. That’s more than most of the other debates were able to accomplish. They kept both candidates in line with the time restrictions. And, they did not repeatedly chastise the audience for applauding. It’s a debate. The audience is excited. Some applause isn’t the end of the world.
DeSantis got the first question and he came in hot. The criticism of Haley began right away. Then Haley did the same when it was her turn to respond. That continued throughout the debate. Both candidates slammed the other one over past actions in office to try to draw a contrast between them. I will say that Haley was more aggressive in using every answer to deliver a dig at DeSantis.
I think DeSantis won but Haley did pretty well. Her downfall was her obsessive references to her website that she claims fact checks the ‘lies’ DeSantis tells against her – “DeSantis Lies Dot Com.” Especially up to the first half of the debate, she incorporated that website into every answer.
