GOP strategist: Haley ‘ran a great general debate,’ Ramaswamy ‘ran a primary debate’

Republican strategist Sarah Chamberlain said Nikki Haley’s debate performance Wednesday was akin to one aimed at a general election audience, while Vivek Ramaswamy “ran a primary debate.”

Chamberlain, the president and CEO of Republican Main Street Partnership, said GOP candidates need to appeal to Republican voters — especially supporters of former President Trump — to lock up the nomination before they can start thinking about the general election, which was the strategy Ramaswamy utilized at the first Republican presidential debate of the 2024 cycle.

The comments came during The Hill’s event, “2024 Debate Breakdown: An Insider’s Look at the First Republican Presidential Debate,” which streamed Thursday morning.

“Right now they’ve got to be pulling the Trump voters away from Donald Trump. In order to do that, you have to do what Vivek did last night,” said Chamberlain, who is also the president and founder of Women2Women Conversations Tour. “Nikki Haley ran a great general debate, Vivek ran a primary debate, and that’s just the difference between the two.”

“In order to get to the general we have got to get through a primary,” she continued. “And I would say, you know, we talk about the more mainstream Republicans, but they’re not voting in the primaries, and that’s a problem. So the people who are voting in the primaries, we have to go out and appeal to in order to get to the general, and that’s what happened last night.”

That philosophy, however, came under criticism from Democratic strategist Michael Starr Hopkins, founding partner of Northern Starr Strategies, who argued that Republicans are putting themselves “in a position where it’s political suicide” by focusing so heavily on the primary race and not looking ahead to the general election. 

“I think what Republicans are doing, the biggest problem is while running for a primary they’re doing nothing to position themselves for a general,” Hopkins said during The Hill’s event. “All they’re doing in this primary is creating attack ads for Democrats, and it’s really gonna create a problem in the long run.”

He pointed to Ramaswamy’s remark that “the climate change agenda is a hoax” and comments from candidates on abortion, asserting “this isn’t something that’s gonna bring in independent and suburban voters.”

The inaugural 2024 GOP presidential debate marked the first time since 2016 that a large Republican field traded barbs at that level.

Unlike the debates in 2016, when former President Trump’s presence disrupted the political orthodoxy of the time, Trump’s absence Wednesday left a vacuum, though many of his policy proposals were embraced by the candidates onstage. The roughly two-hour event covered a range of topics including abortion, Ukraine, border security, Trump’s indictments and the former president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Instead of appearing on the debate stage, Trump sat for an interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson that was streamed on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. Trump is the clear front-runner in the GOP primary, leading his opponents by double digits in a number of polls.

Hopkins, the Democratic strategist, suggested that Republican candidates should keep an eye on the general election, especially as Trump maintains his commanding lead.

“When you look at the polls you see Trump losing to President Biden, now by six. There’s no candidate in the primary that’s gonna pull away from Trump voters,” Hopkins said. “So the question is gonna be what do you do when you have this large group of Republicans who are diehard Trump voters who likely aren’t gonna support someone else, and then heading into a general, if Trump isn’t the nominee, likely either aren’t gonna vote or are gonna protest vote.”

“Republicans have put themselves in a position where it’s political suicide,” he added.