Rating the GOP candidates in Iowa
Byron York
RATING THE GOP CANDIDATES IN IOWA. Six Republican presidential candidates — Tim Scott, Asa Hutchinson, Mike Pence, Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Ron DeSantis — appeared Friday at the Family Leadership Summit in Des Moines, Iowa. The event was sponsored by the Family Leader, the most influential social conservative organization in the state. The candidates were questioned by former Fox News host Tucker Carlson. While the event did not make big news like it did back in 2016, when then-candidate Donald Trump notoriously said of the late Sen. John McCain, “I like people who weren’t captured,” the forum still offered revealing portraits of some of the candidates vying to unseat the now-former President Trump as the leader of the Republican Party. Here is a brief look at how each one did:
TIM SCOTT. Unfortunately for Scott, the interview with Carlson highlighted the South Carolina senator’s least appealing side, which is his tendency to try to joke his way out of difficult situations. While that can be a good way to defuse tension at a town hall, in an interview, it can look like evasion. Scott’s low moment came when he repeatedly avoided the question of whether he would deport the millions of illegal border crossers who entered the United States during Joe Biden’s presidency. Scott’s nonanswer suggested that no, he would not deport those millions of border crossers. Why not just say it?
ASA HUTCHINSON. A mess. A lot of Republicans have asked why the former Arkansas governor and head of the Drug Enforcement Agency is running for president. There is no clear answer to that question. Hutchinson has virtually no support — he recently admitted he has only 5,000 of the 40,000 donors required to qualify for the first GOP debate next month — and has not created any excitement among voters. At the Leadership Summit, Hutchinson stumbled and dodged under Carlson’s questioning about Hutchinson’s 2021 veto of an Arkansas bill that would have outlawed hormone treatments, puberty blockers, and surgery for minor children who say they are transgender.
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MIKE PENCE. Another mess. For the former vice president, Carlson’s big question was about Ukraine and the issue of religious liberty. Carlson said that it was simply beyond dispute that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is violating religious liberty, while Pence said no, that was not the case. Pence noted that he had visited Ukraine multiple times, including recently, and religious leaders told him that what Carlson called “persecuting Christians” was not happening. Pence’s mistake was that he simply cited authorities — they told me it wasn’t true — instead of actually explaining what was going on. Carlson’s position was supported by headlines such as this from AP: “Ukraine bans religious organizations with links to Russia,” and this from the New York Times: “Zelensky Proposes Barring Orthodox Church That Answers to Moscow.” Carlson and others call that the persecution of Christians. Other observers see Zelensky’s position as reasonable; a piece in National Review referred to Zelensky’s actions as “Kyiv’s efforts amid its war of national survival to limit the influence of the Russian Orthodox Church and its patriarch, Kirill, to destabilize the country from within.” Pence had a case to make. Maybe Carlson and some in the audience would not have accepted it. But Pence did not even try.
NIKKI HALEY. The former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador under President Donald Trump had two things going for her. One was solid experience. Of course, some other candidates, including Pence, had as much or more experience than Haley. The second thing Haley had was a winning manner and a coherent case for her presidential candidacy. But as it turned out, there was a third factor that was even more important: Tucker Carlson went easy on her. He chose not to go after Haley in the way he went after Hutchinson and Pence and did not press her at all on some issues, such as Ukraine. That allowed Haley to do things such as go off on a crowd-pleasing and plausible reading of the White House cocaine situation. “I strongly believe this is a cover-up for either Hunter or someone very close to the president,” Haley said, “and they don’t want to say who it is.”
VIVEK RAMASWAMY. The youngest (37) candidate with no governmental experience, Ramaswamy has made real inroads in the GOP race. He addresses his signature issue, wokism and the culture wars, with a passion and perspective not seen in older candidates. He’s also a good talker, although he is falling victim to sounding canned, which can happen when a candidate says the same thing a million times on the stump. In any event, Ramaswamy enjoyed the same advantage Haley did: Carlson went easy on him, allowing him to deliver a good performance.
RON DESANTIS. The Florida governor was the last candidate to appear, and he was the best. He issued a strong defense of the abortion bill he signed in Florida and suggested he did not expect such a bill to be passed nationally. He was clear about Ukraine and applied a vision of American strength with a caution about the mission creep he saw during his own time in the military. He was sharp about the overreaching of law enforcement and national security agencies. And he was particularly sharp about a Central Bank Digital Currency, on which his short answer was: Not gonna happen.
DeSantis’s performance showed that there is a reason he is solidly in the position of main challenger to Trump for the Republican nomination. (Trump himself declined to appear in Iowa Friday.) Yes, there’s been talk of DeSantis struggling, of failing to connect with voters, of losing donors, of simply not being a likable candidate. But the governor’s time onstage in Des Moines on Friday showed why he is, at the moment, the strongest candidate to take on Trump.
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