Dem
51
GOP
49
It's a little bit of a strange thing for a third-place finisher to say, but Nikki Haley began her post-Iowa campaigning by declaring: "I can safely say tonight Iowa made this Republican primary a two-person race."
Since Haley did not immediately suspend her campaign, that means that she's talking about herself and Donald Trump as the two remaining candidates. As we wrote yesterday, she's not wrong, in the sense that Ron DeSantis' goose is cooked, and he's about to suffer a bunch of bad losses, followed by his withdrawal from the campaign. On the other hand, if Haley was going to be 100% accurate, she would have described it as a one-person race. After all, her D-Day is looming too, on or about March 6 (i.e., the day after Super Tuesday).
There is one happy result of Haley's new framing of the race: She announced yesterday that she will not participate in any more debates unless Donald Trump and/or Joe Biden are onstage. Inasmuch as that won't be happening anytime soon, if at all, this means that the last two Republican candidates' debates are presumably off. ABC already canceled Thursday's planned debate, and surely CNN will soon give up on Sunday's. We can't say we're disappointed.
As we, and others, wrote after the last debate, finding a reason to forego any further debates was the strategically correct play for Haley. At the moment, she is sure to finish well ahead of DeSantis in New Hampshire and South Carolina, and probably in Nevada as well. That being the case, why give the Governor even the slightest opening? Plus, debate prep is brutal and time consuming; undoubtedly Haley would rather be out on the campaign trail.
This also means that we are apparently in the post-Trump debate era. For several decades, if there was a debate held by a major media outlet (or major debate-staging organization), and a politician got an invite, that politician showed up with bells on. Trump had the insight that you should only RSVP if it makes sense for you to do so. Now, every top-shelf politician is thinking that way. Haley just canceled on the two remaining candidates' debates, while both Trump AND Biden are wavering when it comes to the usual trio of presidential debates. We could be entering into an era where debates become much rarer, thanks to Trump, which is kind of a good thing given how obnoxious the debates have become, also thanks to Trump. (Z)