Jan.11

electoral-vote.com

Dem 51

   

GOP 49

Haley and DeSantis Spend Hours Attacking Each Other

Last night was the fifth Republican presidential candidates' debate, and the last one before people cast actual ballots. Hopefully you did not watch it, as it was a near-total waste of time, while also having the added bonus of being extremely depressing.

Here, such as it is, are the ten things that stood out to us:

1. Too Long: With the higher threshold for qualifying, as well as the usual absence of Donald Trump, there were only two people on stage—Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and Nikki Haley. We are not persuaded there is ever a situation where a 2-hour debate is called for; that's longer than most movies, and demands more of an attention span than most Americans have. But certainly 2 hours is too much when you only have two candidates. Because of the vast amount of time available, the candidates were given 90 seconds to answer the questions put to them, which ended up meaning that they had 90 seconds to prattle and to go off on whatever tangent would allow them to deliver one of their pre-scripted talking points.
   
   
2. Answer the Damn Question: As the above implies, the two candidates rarely answered the actual questions that were put before them. When Haley was asked how, in view of her promise to kill the federal gas tax (which would mean a loss of $40 billion in revenue), she would pay for maintenance on roads and freeways, she ended up in a rant about the state of the Florida economy. When DeSantis was asked if his support for a flat tax would mean that poorer people end up paying more in taxes while rich people end up paying less, he ended up in a rant about the FBI. Debate host CNN did a smart thing, where they put the question on screen as the person answered, so you could see how far afield they were going from the actual query. But why couldn't the moderators follow up with: "You didn't answer the question. Here it is again."? That happened just one time, by our count.
   
   
3. Mediocre Moderators: Speaking of the moderators, Dana Bash and Jake Tapper were a little better than what we've seen in the past four debates, but not by much. They, like their predecessors, often struggled to maintain order, with the result that there were many occasions when the two candidates were shouting over each other. On top of that, some of the questions were good, but some were very, very poor. For example, the moderators asked DeSantis if he believes Haley is sufficiently pro-life, and Haley if she believes that DeSantis is sufficiently pro-life. What value do such questions have? There is NO WAY either of them is going to say: "Yes, my opponent is very strongly pro-life; I really admire them for that." And so, the question might just as well be: Please spend 90 seconds attacking your opponent on the issue of abortion. What does that have to do with "debating" or "journalism" or anything other than egging the candidates on?
   
   
4. Ugh, the Audience: We've said it before, and we will say it again, but the audience adds an unwelcome dimension to the debate. And it was particularly bad last night, as the venue was pretty intimate, and the crowd was right up close to the stage. We also suspect that CNN specifically recruited a bunch of Haley partisans and a bunch of DeSantis partisans, because nearly every time either candidate spoke, they got a big cheer. For our part, we don't need to hear hundreds of people cheering when, for example, DeSantis promises to deport 10 million people. And if they MUST have a cheering audience, then we would also like to see them implement a laugh track, ideally with the button controlled by us.
   
   
5. Iowa, What's Iowa?: Ostensibly, the point of the debate was to help Iowans make their decision before caucusing on Monday. However, only a tiny portion of the two hours was spent on issues that would specifically be of concern to Iowans (like, say, ethanol subsidies). Most of the mentions of Iowa were just token references, like DeSantis noting that he is friends with Gov. Kim Reynolds (R-IA) or Haley talking about going to a cattle farm. If we were Iowans, we would have found these mentions to be a little patronizing.
   
   
6. Hissy Fit: As it turns out, DeSantis hates to be thought of as a failure almost as much as Donald Trump does. And so, the one really off-script moment for him came when Haley pointed out that his campaign has blown through $150 million and has high-single-digit polling to show for it, along with all sorts of dissension within the campaign. She suggested, not unreasonably, that if someone can't run a campaign, they probably aren't suited to running a country. DeSantis got very agitated and almost looked like he was about to cry. You can see the exchange here, if you wish.
   
   
7. DeSantis Talking Point #1: When each candidate gets nearly an hour's worth of speaking time, they have plenty of opportunity to hit upon whatever their key talking point for the night is. And in DeSantis' case, it was that Haley is a hypocrite with a lousy track record. He found dozens of different ways to demean her time as governor and as U.N. ambassador.
   
   
8. Haley Talking Point #1: Meanwhile, Haley's #1 talking point was that DeSantis is a liar. At the start of the evening, she made a joke about how if you turn the debate into a drinking game, and you take a drink every time DeSantis lies, you'll quickly end up "overserved." Why she couldn't just say "drunk," we don't know. In any event, she followed that by announcing the launch of the website www.desantislies.com, where you can get the Haley campaign's totally unbiased presentation on how truthful DeSantis is. She then mentioned the site, over and over, throughout the evening—at least 15 times.
   
   Truth be told, we don't know why a website is needed, since DeSantis is such a terrible liar. To take but one example, he was asked about his war against Disney, which he said was necessary because Disney is "trans-ing" kids. Hmmmm, that word does not appear in our dictionary. In any event, he said that while he was fighting Disney, Haley was welcoming the company to South Carolina. But, of course, his war against Disney commenced something like 5 years AFTER she was governor. You don't even need Google's help to be able to figure out that he was lying.
   
   
9. Morning in America?: We've noted many times, including this week, that presidential candidates used to try to be positive, at least part of the time. But positivity was in short supply last night, unless you count "I'm going to punish the people who (allegedly) hurt you, angry Republican voters" as a positive message. It is instructive, we think, that the most important thing that the two candidates wanted to leave you with was not something affirmative about what they might do as president, or even something negative about the guy they are chasing in the polls, but instead something negative about the other person on stage. If the most important thing Haley has to say is "Ron DeSantis is a liar," then why vote for Haley? If the most important thing DeSantis has to say is "Nikki Haley is incompetent," then why vote for DeSantis? This is a clear manifestation of Trumpian politics: attack the boogeymen, attack your opponents, attack everything else in sight. Although even he offered/offers a sliver of hopefulness, with the "Make America Great Again" bit. DeSantis and Haley can't even come up with a sliver.
   
   
10. Targeting Trump: Speaking of Trump, he came up last night, and both candidates were willing to poke him, more often than in previous debates. However, there were some very clear rules of engagement that both DeSantis and Haley were following. Both candidates were willing to say that they like Trump's ideas, but that the U.S. needs someone who can actually execute on more of them. On the other hand, they absolutely were not willing to attack Trump the person, even when specifically asked if he has the character to be president. Each of the two people on stage also came equipped with a passive-aggressive Trump-related sleight of hand. In Haley's case, nearly anytime she was asked about Trump's record, she said that she's not in a position to comment, and that this is why she wished the former president had showed up for the debate. In DeSantis' case, he said he was "concerned" about the GOP nominating a candidate who might end up in legal trouble because they might have to go before an "ultra-liberal, all-Democrat D.C. jury." That's a very tidy way of saying Trump might end up a convicted felon, while placing the blame for that on someone other than Trump himself.

If you would like a winner, well, the winner is... nobody. Both candidates were obnoxious, the moderators did a pretty lousy job, and the people of Iowa got very little assistance in helping to cast their ballots. Everyone is now dumber for having watched it. We award Haley and DeSantis no points, and may God have mercy on their souls. (Z)