Cutting Bait on DeSantis

The Republican presidential primary is a two-man race. You can nominate a paranoid elderly coup-plotter who’s facing dozens of criminal charges or you can nominate a whip-smart fortysomething governor who’s delivered repeatedly on right-wing policy priorities.

Those are your options. Realistically, there are no others.

Or so the Ron DeSantis 2024 campaign would like us to believe.

I do believe it—or did. For most of this year, the numbers backed it up. The governor of Florida once polled at 30 percent nationally against Trump, the only challenger in the field to have crossed that threshold. He was also the only challenger ever to have polled as high as 20 percent.

In fact, he remains the only challenger to have polled as high as 10 percent.

DeSantis’ strategy for victory depended on Republican voters perceiving the primary as a binary choice. His plan was to go full metal populist on policy in hopes of splitting the MAGA base, at which point the remainder of the party that’s already lukewarm on Trump would fall in line behind the governor. In a two-man race, all the younger man had to do was prove that he stood a credible chance of winning.

He failed.

The polls no longer support the belief that this is a two-man race. And so, arguably, they no longer support Ron DeSantis’ strategy for victory.

Many traditional conservatives swung behind the governor with varying degrees of enthusiasm after being convinced that he was, in fact, the only viable alternative to an unthinkable third Trump nomination. If he’s no longer viable—or no longer the most viable challenger, at least—then what’s the argument for continuing to support him?

At what point do conservatives whose top priority, allegedly, is defeating Trump decide they might have a slightly better chance of doing so by cutting bait on Ron DeSantis?

As of Thursday morning, Trump is polling at an all-time high of 58.8 percent in the RealClearPolitics national average. DeSantis is polling at an all-time low of 12.5 percent, just 5 points ahead of Vivek Ramaswamy. For almost six months the governor has trended downward, dropping from 30.1 percent at the start of April to 20.1 percent by mid-July to his barely-double-digits current position.

At 46.3 points, Trump’s margin nearly matches Joe Biden’s lead over preposterous crank Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in Democratic polling.

It’s not just the national polling that’s terrible. Yesterday CNN released a survey of New Hampshire that had DeSantis sliding to fifth place there. Last year the same pollster ignited enthusiasm about his presidential prospects when it showed the governor leading Trump in New Hampshire, 39-37. Earlier this year, still riding high off his reelection landslide, DeSantis extended his lead to 43-30. Now he sits at 10 percent, slightly behind Ramaswamy, Nikki Haley, and even Chris Christie. And far behind Trump.

All of this would have been terrible and discouraging even if DeSantis had maintained his status as the clear second-place choice in the field, with no other candidate rising to challenge him as the most formidable Trump alternative. He hasn’t. Although Nikki Haley continues to struggle in national polling, recent surveys of the early states show some momentum for her there.

Iowa? The latest numbers have her in third at 11 percent, just 4 points behind DeSantis. A private poll conducted by Trump’s campaign is in line with that, placing Haley at 13 percent versus 15 for the governor. Things have been so discouraging there for him lately that his campaign recently told Politico that a “strong second-place showing” in the caucus behind Trump would suffice. Soon they may start muttering that a Rubio-esque third-place showing behind Trump and Haley is almost as good.

New Hampshire? The same new CNN poll that had DeSantis landing in fifth place saw Haley rising to third. It was the first taken in that state since last month’s Republican debate, at which she did conspicuously well, and her performance appears to have paid off. Previously she had been polling at 3 to 4 percent; now she’s at 12, suggesting real interest among voters.

South Carolina? This one comes with an asterisk since it’s her home state, but she’s on the rise there too. The last pre-debate poll put Haley at 8 percent, 6 points behind DeSantis and fellow South Carolinian Tim Scott. Post-debate, two different surveys have her at 18, easily good for second place.

In short, she and DeSantis have reached near-parity in the states that matter most and they’re trending in opposite directions. So why should a conservative voter eager for a more traditional Republican nominee stick with an unlikable post-liberal like the governor of Florida instead of hopping aboard the Haley Express?

If, after all, the near-term goal is to defeat Trump, polling would suggest that Nikki Haley is now at least as likely to do so as DeSantis and might soon be more likely. (She’s destined to target the governor at next week’s second Republican debate.) And if the longer-term goal is to defeat Joe Biden, there’s reason to believe Haley is the GOP’s best bet by far. Earlier this month, a different CNN poll had her leading the president by 6 points in a hypothetical general election match-up. The same poll had Trump leading Biden by one and DeSantis tied with him.

DeSantis fans have spent the past year demanding a Republican nominee who’s electable. Well, here’s their chance to have one. Haley 2024!

I don’t mean to downplay her flaws in saying that. My disdain for Haley’s cynicism in accommodating Trump is a matter of record. But if I had the deciding vote on whether to nominate her, DeSantis, or Trump, I’d take the traditional conservative over two authoritarians without hesitation. You can dislike Nikki Haley’s political opportunism while recognizing that she’d govern responsibly, with vastly less demagoguery than Trump or DeSantis.

And I suspect many of the conservatives who have, or had, reconciled themselves to the governor in the false belief that this was a two-man race would agree. So when do they jump ship in the name of consolidating anti-Trump votes behind the challenger with the best chance of winning?

Or is their admiration for DeSantis’ post-liberalism less situational and more heartfelt than they might care to admit?

“It’s too early to give up on him,” some might say.

Okay, but it’s later than you think.

On Thursday Nate Cohn published a piece at the New York Times putting the state of the primary in perspective. Yes, there have been comebacks before, he concedes, but “this race currently has many of the features of a noncompetitive contest.” Specifically:

[Trump’s] gains [in polling] follow what would be considered a disastrous 50-day stretch for any other campaign. Since early August, he has faced new federal and state criminal indictments for attempting to subvert the 2020 election. He skipped the first presidential debate, which was nonetheless watched by over 10 million people. Not only did it not hurt him, but he came out stronger.

With these latest gains, Mr. Trump is inching into rarefied territory. The latest surveys show him polling about as well as any candidate in the history of modern contested presidential primaries.

This is what having Ron DeSantis as the other man in an alleged “two-man race” has gotten us, a primary that feels more like an incumbent president facing token opposition than a true competition. Perhaps rallying behind an alternative like Haley in hopes of boosting her momentum before Iowa is a better play for conservatives than riding the Ready for Ron rocket all the way into the ground.

Especially since DeSantis hasn’t evinced the sharpest political acumen lately, both in New Hampshire and writ large.

I thought he was making a shrewd play earlier this year by positioning himself to Trump’s right and trying to crack the MAGA base before worrying about wooing more moderate Republicans. You can’t win the nomination by ceding Trump 35 percent of the party off the top, I believed (and still believe). You need to at least try to convince them that you, not he, would be the rootin-est tootin-est populist president in creation if elected.

DeSantis did everything he could to execute that strategy. It, uh, did not succeed. In fact, according to the CNN poll of New Hampshire, it alienated moderates without winning over MAGAs.

The time would seem right for a pivot to plan B, giving up on populist voters (temporarily) and wooing moderates instead in hopes of building some momentum in the center. So what has the governor decided to do?

He’s aligned himself with fiscal conservatives in the House who are “pushing House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to embrace a shutdown if Democrats won’t agree to hard-right policy demands.” And he told Sean Hannity in a televised interview that, as president, he would refuse to provide federal funding for the COVID vaccines that the vast majority of Americans have taken.

Go figure that some normie DeSantis voters in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina looked at that and started thinking Nikki Haley might not make a bad president either.

The governor might even find himself jammed on the issue of abortion soon despite the fact that he did just what pro-life activists wanted him to do by signing a six-week ban in Florida. That’s a major conservative feather in his cap, and he’s understandably trying to take advantage. But, thanks to Trump, abortion is (probably) becoming a less salient issue in GOP primaries. And insofar as it still matters, which position is more likely to appeal to the moderate Republicans whom DeSantis and Haley are now battling over? An unapologetic six-week ban or pleas for compromise and consensus?

In short, DeSantis may have maneuvered himself into a political no-man’s land, not Trumpy enough to suit Trump diehards but too Trumpy to suit many anti-Trump conservatives. “His campaign needs a kick in the ass,” said an ally to NBC News about the state of the race. “It’s dead in the water.” Some mainstream Republican voters who had been leaning his way may have concluded that no such kick is coming and that the first debate’s standout performer, Nikki Haley, suits them better. Last month I speculated that his campaign could plausibly follow the same trajectory as Scott Walker’s in 2016, Ted Cruz’s in 2016, or Kamala Harris’ in 2020. At this point, if you had to bet on one of those outcomes, you’d bet on the Harris scenario—minus the vice presidential nomination, of course. 

So why don’t traditional conservatives who have stuck with him thus far finally cut bait?

I can think of a reason.

Here’s the reason, presented as a question: What is the “Nikki Haley victory scenario” in this primary, exactly?

There is a DeSantis victory scenario, although it’s become reeeeeeeeally far-fetched. Because the governor is the only candidate whom populists and conservatives seem to like, he remains the only person in the field who could hypothetically build a coalition capable of beating Trump.

In July, Nate Cohn divided the Republican primary electorate into three blocs: 37 percent who are diehard Trumpers, 25 percent who refuse to vote for Trump again, and a 37 percent bloc of “persuadables” who are considering other candidates but still like Trump enough to support him.

There’s nothing DeSantis can do about the first bloc, as he’s discovered to his chagrin. But he’s the most accomplished populist executive in the field and he has conservative credibility leftover from his days as a Tea Party congressman. He could unite the non-MAGA 62 percent. Hypothetically.

What would need to happen at this point for him to do that, I simply don’t know. We’ve been through four criminal indictments; DeSantis has laid all of his policy cards on the table; he’s even begun pointing out that Trump is very, very old, which I’m reliably informed Republican voters care about in a president. Not only has nothing worked, the governor has fallen further behind. Barring a health crisis for the frontrunner or a criminal conviction in the next few months, neither of which seems likely, there’s no reason to think any meaningful chunk of voters will begin shifting from other candidates, including Trump, toward DeSantis.

But even so, the hypothetical promise is there. Give me a similar hypothesis in which Nikki Haley somehow builds a majority coalition in the primary.

Go ahead and spot her the 25 percent who are done with Trump, per Cohn’s formulation. Give her another 15 percent from persuadables who prefer conservatism to populism on balance. Forty percent ain’t nothing!

But it’s pretty close to nothing if you can’t get to 50. How does Nikki Haley, even with momentum behind her, convince an outright majority of a party dominated by Trumpy populism to prefer her to Donald Trump himself? DeSantis can offer MAGA voters a slew of lib-owning policies and endless bluster about winning the culture wars to try to lure them away from their hero. What’s Haley offering them to somehow reduce Donald Trump’s share of the vote from 58.8 percent, as it is now, to no higher than 49.9?

And how does she plan to close on that offer when Trump, who hasn’t laid a glove on her as yet, begins giving her the DeSantis treatment by attacking her viciously to reverse her momentum?

The Republican Party in 2023 is a party by and for demagogues. Nikki Haley isn’t a demagogue. It’s an insurmountable and all but disqualifying character “flaw.”

In fact, and ironically, her recent surge in the polls following the first debate helps Trump on balance in the same way that John Kasich’s moderate candidacy in 2016 helped him. Haley “represents something of a best case for Mr. Trump: moderate and strong enough to peel away anti-Trump votes from Mr. DeSantis; far too moderate to pose a serious threat to Mr. DeSantis or to win the nomination,” Cohn wrote in his piece on Thursday. Haley can’t win, but she can help Trump to victory by dividing the conservative vote that desperately needs to unite if there’s to be any chance of defeating him.

So, if your goal is to stop Trump, why would you ditch DeSantis for her?

The best I can do in conjuring a Haley victory scenario is this. She has another great debate next week, at which point Mike Pence, Tim Scott, Chris Christie and the rest of the normie candidates begin bleeding votes to her. Her polling bounce leads to a boomlet of “Haley surge” coverage, which further boosts her momentum. Soon she’s polling in the mid-20s, all alone in second place. Then, importantly, a raft of polling comes out showing that she would fare considerably better than Trump would in a race with Biden. The “electability” argument against him that’s failed miserably so far finally ignites—for Haley, not for DeSantis.

The governor, having lost some votes to Haley himself and now stuck in single digits, hangs around for another debate or two but ultimately is pressured by donors to throw in the towel before Iowa so that Haley can have a clear shot at a head-to-head race with Trump.

And then … what? She wins Iowa with help from evangelicals and somehow parlays that into national momentum, never mind that Ted Cruz tried and failed to pull off the same trick in 2016? Bear in mind that the Republican Party likes Trump a lot more now than it did then:

Also bear in mind that current Trump voters (which includes more than just diehards) are disproportionately more likely to say that their minds are made up than are voters who prefer other candidates.

I still can’t get from “Haley surges in the polls” to “Haley defeats Trump,” especially once Trump inevitably begins threatening to have his diehard fans boycott the general election if she’s the nominee. Pollsters might start testing that proposition too as the race develops. If it turns out that Haley would fare worse against Biden with Trump egging on a boycott than Trump would fare against him, what’s left of the “electability” case for her?

Granted, Trump would also threaten to have his diehard fans boycott the general election if DeSantis (or anyone else) were the nominee. But the degree of difficulty in persuading them to do so would be higher in that case. If you’re a loyal MAGA voter who’s miffed that your man lost to the governor, you might find enough to like in DeSantis’ anti-woke, anti-gay, anti-vax agenda to justify laying your hard feelings aside despite Trump’s bitterness. Finding enough to like in pro-Ukraine “uniparty” establishmentarian Nikki Haley would be much more challenging.

And that’s why conservative DeSantis fans won’t cut bait on him anytime soon, I think, notwithstanding his disastrous (DeSastrous?) decline in the polls. Until his polling slides to embarrassing Kamala-Harris-esque depths that make any hope of a comeback ridiculous, or until there’s reason to think that some other candidate might plausibly build a coalition capable of beating Trump, he remains the only game in town.

A two-man race in which one participant has the political equivalent of two broken legs and a spinal injury is still a two-man race!