If you listened to the speeches of Republican presidential candidates Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis after the Iowa caucuses Monday night, you would think that it was a tight race between three candidates.
While former President Donald Trump won the caucuses, Haley and DeSantis both struck a triumphant tone, signaling their intentions to forge ahead and continue their campaigns in New Hampshire and South Carolina.
“When you look at how we’re doing in New Hampshire, in South Carolina, and beyond, I can safely say tonight, Iowa made this Republican primary a two-person race,” Haley said.
“They were just so excited about the fact that they were predicting that we wouldn’t be able to get our ticket punched here out of Iowa, but I can tell you because of your support, in spite of all that they threw at us, everyone against us, we got our ticket punched out of Iowa,” DeSantis told his supporters after the results were in.
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For an uninformed observer, these are the remarks of two candidates who either won or finished a close second. But DeSantis and Haley trailed Trump by 30 points as the former president exceeded 50% of the vote. Haley didn’t even break 20%.
DeSantis and Haley are not running serious campaigns at this point. They are embracing a delusion that they can move on from Iowa and beat Trump for the nomination as other states hold their contests.
While Haley has a fighting chance of beating Trump in New Hampshire, she trails the former president by 30 points in the polls for her home state of South Carolina, a state where Trump again consistently clears 50%. As for DeSantis, there just isn’t another state where he has any hope of even matching his distant second-place finish in Iowa.
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The Republican nomination is won by securing a majority of delegates, and Trump is poised to do just that before the calendar hits April, if the Iowa results and polls for upcoming states are any indication.
By offering fantastical comments about a “two-person race” or a “ticket punched out of Iowa,” DeSantis and Haley are deluding themselves while encouraging their supporters and donors to continue to follow them down a doomed path. If they had any dignity left, they would drop out and stop lying to their supporters.