Nikki Haley really, really needed to come in second place in Iowa on Monday and didn’t. After she came in a close third behind Ron DeSantis, Haley’s supposed surge has been exposed as a mirage. That could have major implications for her in New Hampshire, especially since Ron DeSantis outperformed the polls.
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Haley’s reaction to her third-place showing was, to say the least, bizarre. “I can safely say tonight Iowa made this Republican primary a two-person race,” Haley told her supporters Monday night.
Umm, what? That makes no sense. Did she not see that she lost to Ron DeSantis?
So, naturally, she’s trying to get out of debating Ron DeSantis again. On Tuesday, Haley announced that she will not participate in the next debate unless Donald Trump also participated.
“We’ve had five great debates in this campaign. Unfortunately, Donald Trump has ducked all of them,” Haley said in a statement. “He has nowhere left to hide. The next debate I do will either be with Donald Trump or with Joe Biden. I look forward to it.”
Related: CNN and MSNBC Censor Trump’s Victory Speech in Iowa
I have never supported Trump’s decision to skip the GOP primary debates, even though he arguably had a point that it was absurd to share a stage with candidates polling at or near 1% when he was polling at or above 50% most of the time. But the race is now a three-person race, and if he attacks his opponents like it’s a competitive race, he might as well face them on stage like it’s a competitive race. Instead, he’s calling on DeSantis and Haley to join Vivek Ramaswamy and drop out and unite behind him, so there’s no reason for anyone to believe he will suddenly have a change of heart and participate in a debate with his two remaining rivals.
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Haley knows this, so her announcement is a clear sign she realizes her previous debate with DeSantis hurt her campaign, and she has no desire to damage her candidacy further by getting clobbered by DeSantis again before New Hampshire.
DeSantis called her out.
“Nikki Haley is afraid to debate because she doesn’t want to answer the tough questions such as how she got rich off Boeing after giving them millions in taxpayer handouts as governor of South Carolina,” he said in a post on X/Twitter. “The reality is that she is not running for the nomination, she’s running to be Trump’s VP. I won’t snub New Hampshire voters like both Nikki Haley and Donald Trump, and plan to honor my commitments. I look forward to debating two empty podiums in the Granite State this week.”
And that’s probably what will happen. The planned debate will end up being a DeSantis town hall event because Haley is hiding behind Trump’s refusal to participate.
At this point, Haley can’t exactly flip-flop and debate DeSantis without looking even sillier — that is, unless her polling in New Hampshire tanks in the coming days and she decides facing DeSantis may be the only way to fix that. But let’s face it, even that is a huge gamble, especially given her recent fumbles with softball questions like “Would you pardon Hunter Biden?” or “Can a man become a woman?” She dodged both of those questions when she should have said unequivocally, “No.”
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If I were her, I wouldn’t want to debate Ron DeSantis either.