Republican debate: Nikki Haley wins and it’s not particularly close
Tiana Lowe Doescher
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The dominant front-runner of the Republican presidential contest was not even on the stage of the primary’s inaugural debate. The current runner-up either remained above the fray or receded into irrelevance, depending on your opinion of Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), and the supposed pugilists failed to provide any anticipated career-ending blows.
The real winner of the debate was the woman with not much lose and not much expected of her. Nikki Haley, who has maintained a respectable fifth or fourth place in the race but never yet broken through, met the moment and then some, aiming the sort of friendly fire across the stage that differentiated her candidacy and capitalized on the shocking decisions by former President Donald Trump and DeSantis to bow out of the infighting.
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Haley will surely make the most headlines for sparring over foreign policy with Vivek Ramaswamy, the billionaire biotech entrepreneur who opposes increasing further aid to Ukraine and who has surpassed the former ambassador to the United Nations in national polling. When Ramaswamy snarked that he wished Haley well in her “future career on the boards of Lockheed [Martin] and Raytheon,” Haley’s comeback elicited some of the loudest applause of the night: “You have no foreign policy experience and it shows.”
Even up against Ramaswamy’s cheek, Haley wasn’t a Karen. She was simply clever, cool, and collected.
Haley, an accountant before she launched her political career as governor of South Carolina, name-checked her competitors for their complicity in Uncle Sam’s spending spree that has resulted in the worst inflation in 16 years.
“The truth is that Biden didn’t do this to us; our Republicans did this to us too,” Haley said. “You have Ron DeSantis, Tim Scott, Mike Pence, they all voted to raise the debt. Donald Trump added $8 trillion to our debt.”
Her finest moment came up against the former vice president, who himself shone far more than most expected. While Pence struck gold against much of the rest of the field, especially Ramaswamy, he was outmatched when Haley countered him on abortion.
“No Republican president can ban abortions any more than a Democrat president can ban all those state laws,” Haley said when Pence boasted of his support for a federal restriction on abortions after 15 weeks of gestation. “Don’t make women feel like they have to decide on this issue when you know we don’t have 60 Senate votes.”
But more than a legal argument about the merits of federalism, Haley presented the blueprint for Republicans wishing to win back the moderate mothers frightened away from the Right after Trump and the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade.
“Can’t we all agree that we should ban late-term abortions?” Haley posited. “Can’t we all agree that we should encourage adoptions? Can’t we all agree that doctors and nurses who don’t believe in abortion shouldn’t have to perform them? Can’t we all agree that contraception should be available? And can’t we all agree that we are not going to put a woman in jail or give her the death penalty if she gets an abortion?”
Rumors of Haley’s ambitions remain vastly understated. Far from running as a Cabinet secretary for some other candidate on or off the stage, Haley presented a radical restructuring of a GOP that does not shy away from the Trump-era culture wars but centers the strength and stability of the greenback, a foreign policy realism that balances peace and strength, and, crucially in a post-Roe electorate, an actual compromise on the abortion war that protects the bodily autonomy of mothers and babies alike.
When Trump and DeSantis decided to leave a power vacuum, Haley dared to get down in the dirt. Expect the pollsters, betting markets, and donors to reward her for it.