The Haley-DeSantis debate: One last gasp for air(time) before the Trump wave crashes

Tonight’s CNN Republican primary debate is the last gasp in a series of cringeworthy and ineffective humiliations for former Ambassador Nikki Haley, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and the entire Republican Party. What happens next has been predictable since the contest began: former President Donald Trump, up by a commanding 30 points in Iowa, will cruise to victory in next week’s first-in-the-nation caucus.  

As far as Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel is concerned, the party graciously gave Haley, DeSantis and their now-sidelined presidential hopefuls plenty of opportunities to dislodge Trump from his position atop the party. Those efforts not only failed to stop Trump, they strengthened his support among core Republican voters.  

If Haley and DeSantis hoped to position themselves as the GOP’s next-generation leaders, it’s difficult to imagine a more decisive rejection from the party’s die-hard base. 

Haley, at least, can cling to the good news of rising polls in New Hampshire, where she’s cut Trump’s lead to “just” 7 points. She also benefits from a growing internal party consensus that she — not the once-hyped DeSantis — is the only serious candidate left.  

But both candidates must know the shades are about to close on their presidential hopes. Tonight’s debate will be as much about face-saving for the future as it is a serious effort by Haley and DeSantis to push back against the tidal wave of Trumpism tearing toward them at breakneck speed. 

The MAGA movement in 2024 is, if anything, more harshly skeptical of the unfaithful now than it was in 2022, when Republican voters booted out a slew of Trump-critical Republicans — most notably former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney. Both DeSantis and Haley have committed the unforgivable sin of declaring Trump wrong on one issue or another. Both are smart enough to know their tickets into the MAGA tent have been permanently revoked. If they had any doubts, they need only turn on a television in Iowa, where Trump-aligned groups recently buried Haley for being “too liberal” on immigration.  

In that sense, then, Wednesday’s debate will be Haley and DeSantis’s last chance to use Republican Party resources to send an anti-Trump message to the GOP electorate. In all likelihood, it will also be the last time in Donald Trump’s lifetime that the RNC dedicates any resources to Trump-critical voices within the party. When Haley and DeSantis take the stage, their pitches will sound an awful lot like two people urging the Republican Party to remember them once the Age of Trump is over — whenever that might be. 

We’ll also see Haley and DeSantis struggle with a foundational challenge still dogging their campaigns and the entire Republican Party: disagreeing with Donald Trump.  

It’s clear both DeSantis and Haley find Trump personally distasteful, though Haley has been stronger in criticizing the former president’s increasingly authoritarian public rants. Haley at least recognizes that there will come a post-Trump era in Republican politics, and it will not be kind to the extremists who steered the GOP into its current intellectual and moral ditch. 

The road is trickier for DeSantis, who spent the first half of his campaign attempting to brand himself as the Trump-but-smarter heir to the MAGA movement. When that fell flat with voters, DeSantis re-emerged from his first campaign reboot as a gentle Trump critic before quickly abandoning any effort to hold his influential Florida neighbor accountable. That disloyalty was enough to destroy what marginal MAGA support DeSantis had, while also souring him in the eyes of Republican megadonors who correctly view him as nothing more than a political weathervane. Now DeSantis is doubly branded — too disloyal for the hardline MAGAs, and too wishy-washy for anyone else.  

CNN never intended for its debate to become a broader referendum on the state of the Republican Party, but there is no longer any sense in avoiding it. Iowa voters will soon reflect at the ballot box what Republicans and most Americans have known for years: The GOP is Donald Trump’s party, and even national figures like DeSantis exist within it only at Trump’s pleasure. Tonight the American people will get the chance to see two of the GOP’s former rising stars come to terms with that reality in real time.  

Debates only matter in political parties that care about the fundamental tenets of democracy and free speech. Today’s GOP is a Trumpist extremist experiment deeply hostile both to democracy and to even glancing criticism. Haley and DeSantis realized that grim fact too late to change the course of the 2024 election.  

On Wednesday night, they will have one final opportunity to say goodbye. 

Max Burns is a veteran Democratic strategist and founder of Third Degree Strategies.