Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley appeared at back-to-back town halls on CNN on Thursday night to make their final pitches to voters with just days to go before the first nominating contest kicks off in Iowa.
Summary
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley appeared at back-to-back town halls on CNN on Thursday night to make their final pitches to voters with just days to go before the first nominating contest kicks off in Iowa.
- Both candidates worked to set out clear contrasts between themselves and former President Donald Trump, who leads both candidates by wide margins in polls of Iowa and has a much smaller lead over Haley in New Hampshire.
- Haley called Trump “the right president at the right time” …for the 2016 presidential election, that is. For 2024 however, she argued, “The reality is, rightly or wrongly, chaos follows him and we all know that’s true…We can’t have a country in disarray and a world on fire and go through four more years of chaos. We won’t survive it.”
- DeSantis went hard at Trump on abortion, saying the former president had “flip-flopped” on his position by attacking DeSantis for signing a “heartbeat bill” into law in Florida. The Florida governor said Trump’s disparaging remarks about anti-abortion legislation shows he’s “not pro-life.”
- DeSantis systematically laid out the conservative case against Trump, hitting the former president for not fulfilling his campaign promises about cracking down on illegal immigration, for going along with Anthony Fauci’s recommendations to lock down during Covid, and his lack of discipline and focus as an executive.
- The Florida governor also knocked Haley for a joke she made at a New Hampshire campaign event about Iowa needing a New Hampshire correction and for having “some problems with basic American history” after her gaffe about the origins of the Civil War during a back-and-forth with a voter the week before.
- The New York Times pointed out Haley continued her criticisms of Trump for running up a huge national debt during his four-year term and despite some of the legal cases brought against him being “political in nature,” she said he would still “have to answer” in court for the other charges. “I used to tell him he’s his own worst enemy,” she said, referring to her time in Trump’s cabinet.
- CNN noted both DeSantis and Haley tried to set expectations ahead of Iowa given their large deficit in polls of the Hawkeye State, where Trump remains the clear frontrunner. CNN also observed DeSantis appeared looser and more “folksy” compared to his at-times wooden delivery earlier in the campaign.
- The Washington Post observed Haley’s Civil War gaffe is still haunting her campaign as she had to devote substantial time to cleaning up her remarks. The article also pointed out both candidates’ decision to go hard at Trump was a marked contrast to their previous debate performances where they trained much of their fire on each other.
- The Washington Examiner’s W. James Antle III argued DeSantis’ performance in recent days shows he’s leaving “it all on the field in Iowa.” Antle concluded, “DeSantis may need to blow everybody away yet again to fulfill his potential as a candidate. Trump is hoping to finish him off in Iowa, an outcome Haley would also try to turn to her advantage. ‘The only poll that matters is the one on Election Day’ may be a cliche, but DeSantis is counting on it being true.
- National Review covered DeSantis’ attacks on Trump for failing to end birthright citizenship as president like he had promised in 2016. “What is he now telling people in Iowa? He says he’s going to do the same thing that he didn’t do,” said DeSantis of the frontrunner’s recycled campaign pledge.“ DeSantis summed up his position: “If you come to this country illegally and then have a child, that somehow that’s birthright citizenship — I don’t think that’s what the 14th Amendment was meant to do. I think it was meant to overturn Dred Scott v. Sanford and to ensure that for African Americans — that there was no doubt that they were Americans.”
- The New York Post highlighted Haley’s response to a question from an Iowa voter asking about her joke that New Hampshire would “correct” Iowa. “I have been coming here for months, going to every part of Iowa, shaking every hand, answering every question, being the last person to leave at every one of these town halls. You are going to see me fight until the very end on the last day in Iowa,” Haley replied. “I’m probably gonna say something funny in Iowa tomorrow about South Carolina and New Hampshire. It’s the way to just kind of not make everything so serious,” she continued as the audience applauded.
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© Dominic Moore, 2023
