RUTHFULLY YOURS

Nikki Haley has been increasingly consolidating a segment of the Republican primary vote, largely the most devoted anti-Trump voters, be they traditional Reaganite conservatives or moderates. This is still not close to a winning hand: In the RealClearPolitics polling averages, she is currently at 8.3 percent and third place nationally, 11.5 percent and third place in Iowa, 14.8 percent and second place in New Hampshire, and 17.7 percent and second place in her home state of South Carolina. It has, nonetheless, produced a boomlet of commentary from people who would prefer Haley to Ron DeSantis, such as Michael Strain’s “Case for Nikki Haley” in these pages. Noah Rothman has written on why he thinks Haley’s strategy of differentiating herself from Donald Trump on policy and style and focusing on appealing to voters who dislike Trump has been superior to that of DeSantis’s.

I get the instinct to be frustrated with the DeSantis campaign, and I understand why some of the traditionally Reaganite elements of the party — let alone Republican moderates — would like to use the present moment to grind axes against not only DeSantis but the whole nationalist/populist “New Right.” But the effort to promote Haley is likely to simply divide the opposition to Trump and strengthen the hand within the party of not only the nationalist/populist Right in general, but its most irresponsible elements in particular. Like it or not, DeSantis is still the best game in town — not only for any prospect of stopping Trump from winning the nomination, but for any long-term hope of restoring purpose and sanity to the Republican Party.

Moreover, in the immediate term, neither DeSantis nor Haley is dropping out of the race, so those of us looking to settle on a single opponent for Trump should first emphasize the urgent need for Tim Scott, Chris Christie, Doug Burgum, and Asa Hutchinson — none of whom any longer has a remotely plausible case for being in the race — to follow the statesmanlike lead of Mike Pence and drop out. I’d add Vivek Ramaswamy to that list if I didn’t think he was running essentially as a stalking horse to aid Trump.

The Choices

I put my own prior assumptions on the table here up front. I would happily go into battle in the general election behind either Haley or DeSantis, and would be thrilled to see either of them as president. Both boast strong records as conservative governors. Both are prepared to be commander in chief, Haley due to her tenure at the U.N., DeSantis from his time in the House and serving as a legal adviser to Navy SEALs in Iraq and a prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay. Both represent my generation, born in the 1970s and ready to move on from the seemingly endless grip of those born in the 1940s on our politics. Both cut their teeth in politics during the Tea Party era, when there was a bumper crop of talented Republicans looking to merge populist energy with conservative principle. Either of them would be the most conservative nominee since Ronald Reagan.

As a traditional Reaganite, I probably agree more with Haley than with DeSantis on the few areas where they actually disagree. I’ve been a longtime Haley booster going back to her first campaign for governor in 2010 and was openly discussing her four or five years ago as my preferred candidate to lead the party after Trump. She managed to get out of the Trump administration on good terms with Trump and with her dignity intact — not an easy thing — and if the party had chosen a new nominee in 2018, it might well have been Haley.

I’ve soured a bit on her political judgment since then, as she has struggled to navigate the innumerable pitfalls of a political landscape dominated by Trump, exemplified by a spectacularly ill-considered (and swiftly walked-back) interview with Tim Alberta in Politico in 2021. I saw her stump speech in Iowa in August and was unimpressed with its simplistic and gimmicky proposals (a competency test?) and overreliance on her gender. The debates have been a godsend to her campaign, allowing her to sink her teeth into more serious stuff and find a foil in the haplessly shallow and irritating Vivek Ramaswamy. They have reminded many of us why we thought she was a real talent in the first place.

In pursuing conservative goals, however, there is much to be said for preferring DeSantis. Comparing their records as governors, he has been more relentless in using the levers of power to attain conservative ends, more effective at imposing his will on his own state party, and much more willing to take tough stands that made him public enemy number one for liberals, progressives, and the national media — and take the slings and arrows that come with that territory. His political success has been more impressive in the context of Florida, and more recent, than Haley’s success in pre-Trump, deep-red South Carolina.

DeSantis has — correctly, in my view — identified the liberal/progressive domination of unelected institutions as a grave threat to democracy, republicanism, and everything conservatives hold dear about America. His attempts to address that domination, especially as it exists in the private sector, have proven to be the most controversial aspect of his governorship with traditional free-market Reaganites — they explain a lot of the opposition to DeSantis among the conservative pundit class — and I’ve disagreed, myself, with some of those moves. But the fight over the best tactics with which to address the problem is one worth having within the conservative movement, and we can’t have that fight without facing squarely the diagnosis.

Yes, there’s a case to be made that cultural battles are more effectively waged with a certain amount of the softer, more diplomatic touch that Haley brings, than with DeSantis’s bulldog tenacity and combativeness with the press. Certainly, progressives can be effective speaking softly (or not at all) and just ruthlessly advancing their policies. But cultural battles are asymmetrical precisely because the institutions in and out of government are peopled with allies of the Left on so many issues. They require a stronger hand.

The other major objection to DeSantis (one that Noah has pressed eloquently) is that his efforts to straddle the Ukraine issue have been overly calculated and have thus far failed as political strategy while also failing to enunciate a clear policy. As a firm supporter of aid to Ukraine, albeit one who thinks the conflict will realistically require a negotiated end that Vladimir Putin can live with, I’m not where DeSantis is, but I’ve defended the theory of DeSantis’s approach, which caters to the center of the Republican Party on the issue — those who are skeptical of a “blank check” commitment to Ukraine but nonetheless favor Ukraine in its war with Russia and accept America helping Ukraine win, up to a point. That said, a political theory that works on paper won’t always work in the real world, where Haley’s clarity on the issue plays better on the debate stage than DeSantis’s postured and nuanced middle ground.

The Bridge

All of that is fair ground for argument; I prefer DeSantis, but given the choice of the two as president, I can easily understand why some Reaganite conservatives would prefer Haley. There is, however, an important reason to prefer DeSantis, in 2024, as the vehicle to displace Donald Trump: the Republican electorate.

First, recall the simple and unforgiving reality: At the moment, at least so long as Donald Trump himself is on the ballot, the traditional, Reaganite conservatives — even when combined as a force with their longtime foes, the moderates — are a faction. And you can’t win a head-to-head primary with just a faction.

That doesn’t mean that the Trump faction is a majority, either, at least if by “Trump faction” we mean people who are strongly committed to Trump out of some combination of personal loyalty, ideological affinity for Buchananism, and a preference for transgressive political theater. But for now, as is plainly on display in opinion polls, the people who are open to renominating Trump are a majority. You cannot assemble a winning coalition without them.

In other words, Haley’s current theory of the electorate may well prove better-calculated to pull into second place than the theory pursued by DeSantis, who continues to actively court open-to-Trump voters. But it has a much lower ceiling that will make it a lot harder to win the nomination. DeSantis may end up failing — as he is in current polls — to close the sale with a lot of the voters who see him as a second choice, but his sky-high favorables with Republicans and his status as the second choice of many people currently backing Trump means that he draws from a potentially larger pool.

Look at the field structurally: In a Trump–DeSantis race, where would the Haley voters go? Most would go to DeSantis because he’s a more acceptable choice than Trump. But in a Trump–Haley race, where would the DeSantis voters go? The much-bandied latest poll from Iowa, for example, shows that 41 percent of DeSantis supporters in Iowa list Trump as their second choice. Moreover, in a Trump–Haley race, unlike a Trump–DeSantis race, Ramaswamy would likely drop out, because he would be drawing votes away only from Trump — and that would help Trump. On that score, I agree with Nick Catoggio’s view of the dynamics of the field.

The DeSantis campaign theory at this point starts with winning Christian social conservatives in Iowa. That’s a voter base that is well-represented in many later contests, albeit one that can’t deliver the nomination by itself (ask Rick Santorum). In that sense, Iowa is more representative of the major primary battlegrounds than New Hampshire’s open primary, which is unusually heavy on socially moderate to liberal voters.

Second, the fight for the Republican Party doesn’t end with the nomination contest. The nominee still has to unite the party in the general election (ask George H. W. Bush) and hold together enough of that unity to govern (ask Kevin McCarthy).

Trump will, of course, throw a giant tantrum and try to sabotage anybody who beats him in a primary. But consider: If he loses to Haley, it will look more like a single faction of the party defeated Trump’s people, and a faction, at that, which is easily caricatured by populist talkers and writers as being “neocons,” donors, “the swamp,” etc. Yes, in a general election, there are probably some suburban swing voters Haley could reach that DeSantis could not, especially if holding out the promise of the first female president. But she would also likely face a greater risk of a flanking attack from within the party.

Just as importantly, over the longer term, the conservative movement has to learn to make its peace with the actual voting base of the Republican Party, given that the GOP remains the only plausible home for conservative politics. That base contains a number of factions and sub-factions, and those factions are apt to remain perpetually in flux for the same reasons they have been in flux in the past: the influence of leaders, shifts in the issue environment, and demographic and generational changes within the party. While I continue to believe that the party is not a majority-MAGA party, the populist faction is not going away, and the party cannot win or advance conservative policy without doing what American parties always do with significant factions: ensure them a place at the table.

The nature of the populist faction creates a particular challenge for anyone trying to give them a seat at the table: This is a faction that tends to demand absolute control and that has many irresponsible characteristics, the worst of which are fed eagerly by Trump. Nobody in Republican politics — not even Brian Kemp — has managed as adroitly as DeSantis to form something that looks like a functioning and responsible governing fusion of conservatism with MAGA populism. That may require a tolerance on the part of Reaganites for some uncomfortable bedfellows and some unpleasant pandering to them by the party’s leader, as well as some substantive concessions on issues. But the process of building a workable, winning coalition between conservatives and populists starts not only with moving beyond Trump, but with choosing a leader who can forge that new path forward.