The Horse Race: Trump Unscathed as GOP Opponents Train Fire on Each Other, Pols Who Aren't Even in the Race

WITH BRITTANY BERNSTEIN

Nov 29, 2023

Trump Unscathed as GOP Opponents Train Fire on Each Other, Pols Who Aren't Even in the Race

The 2024 presidential contenders are laying into each other and even training fire on noncombatants — political figures of both parties who aren't in the race — all while allowing Trump to skate by largely unscathed.

New reporting in the New York Post reveals the pro-Haley super PAC Stand for America has spent more than $3.5 million targeting Ron DeSantis in the last two months, while spending nothing on attacking former president Donald Trump.

SFA spokeswoman Brittany Yanick told the paper the spending aims to set the record straight about "DeSantis's lies."

Less than two months away from the Iowa caucuses, the race has devolved into a bloody scrum between DeSantis and Haley, largely sparing Trump who sits comfortably in first place. (A RealClearPolitics polling average shows Trump at 61.3 percent, followed by DeSantis at 13.8 percent and Haley at 9.9 percent.)

Since Senator Tim Scott dropped out of the race earlier this month, DeSantis has gone after Haley over everything from her response to the riots in the wake of George Floyd's death to her views on immigration to her recent comments about the need for verification for social-media users.

While DeSantis and former New Jersey governor Chris Christie have shown more willingness than others to attack the former president, the pro-DeSantis Never Back Down PAC has published 17 YouTube videos attacking Haley since early October and only two attacking Trump.

One anti-Trump video called out the former president's claim that his rally would attract 40,000 attendees, when in fact only hundreds of people showed up, while the other said, "As Israel Fights Terrorists, Trump Attacks Israel."

By contrast, the PAC has hit Haley as "Hillary Clinton 2.0" and claimed she has "dangerous judgment," is "lying about her China record," and that her word is "worthless" after her "gas tax flip-flop."

Aside from his focus on Haley, DeSantis has taken the unorthodox approach of participating in a debate against California governor Gavin Newsom this week — training his ire on a politician who isn't even in the 2024 race.

The debate, which will be moderated by Fox News host Sean Hannity, has been billed as a clash between red-state and blue-state policies. But a Newsom spokesman told Politico that viewers can expect the California Democrat to "defend the president and use the opportunity to take on the misinformation machine at its headwaters."

While Newsom has said he is not running in 2024, DeSantis has repeatedly insisted the California governor may enter the race.

DeSantis claims Newsom is running a "shadow campaign" for the White House and said Republicans must be ready for the possibility that the California governor could run for president. A recent YouGov poll found DeSantis leading Newsom in a hypothetical matchup 32 percent to 31 percent. Five percent of respondents said they would vote for another candidate, 14 percent said they were unsure whom they'd vote for, and another 19 percent said they would not vote. The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.

DeSantis campaign manager James Uthmeier told the Miami Herald the debate is "the biggest one yet."

"A Newsom presidency would accelerate America's decline, and November 30th will be the first chance to expose to a national audience just how dangerous his radical ideology would be for the country," Uthmeier said. "Ron DeSantis will take this responsibility seriously and looks forward to sharing the stark contrast between his vision to revive our nation and Newsom's blueprint for failure."

DeSantis is not the only one spending considerable energy attacking a figure who is not in the 2024 race; Vivek Ramaswamy has gone to war against the head of the Republican National Committee, Ronna McDaniel, in recent days.

"Ronna McRomney sitting atop the RNC reminds me of a squatter in a rent-controlled apartment," the biotech entrepreneur wrote in a post on X. "It's time to evict. http://FireRonna.com."

Ramaswamy also reshared a post that claimed DeSantis "won't badmouth Ronna. He won't even say her name no matter how many times Laura [Ingraham] prompts him to - you can see how frustrated she gets with him at the end for refusing."

The post included a Fox News clip in which Ingraham asks DeSantis if he thinks there should be no change at the RNC. DeSantis notes he called for change after the midterms, but does not specifically call for change now.

"But here's the thing: as the nominee I will be responsible for doing it and I will get the job done regardless of who's the chairman of it," DeSantis said.

Ramaswamy replied to the post: "There's a reason why Ronna has said I'm the only candidate who won't get another 'cent' from the RNC."

But while Ramaswamy has been quick to attack McDaniel, he's refused to hit the former president over his support for the RNC chair.

As recently as October, Trump said she has done a "fantastic job" and called her a "real good friend."

The attacks come as the RNC recently reported its lowest amount of cash on hand since 2015, with $9 million in the bank — half of what the DNC has.

Meanwhile, Nikki Haley won the endorsement of Americans for Prosperity Action, an influential political network founded by the Koch brothers. That gives her access to additional resources in her effort to emerge as the top non-Trump candidate, beginning with a multimillion-dollar ad campaign launching in several states this week encouraging voters to support the former South Carolina governor.

The group said it is "proud to be throwing the full weight and scope of its grassroots operation" behind Haley and is expected to provide resources including access to a direct-mail operation, field workers to knock on doors, and people making phone calls to prospective voters in the early primary states.

In another memo showing her growth in the polls, the group calls attention to Haley's "sustained momentum."

Support for Haley in New Hampshire grew from just 6 percent in early August to 25 percent this month, according to the memo. Meanwhile, support for DeSantis fell from 13 percent to 9 percent over that same time period. Front-runner Donald Trump saw his support grow from 36 percent to 40 percent.

In Iowa, support for Haley has grown from 6 percent in early August to 17 percent this month. Support for DeSantis fell from 17 percent to 16 percent during that time, while support for Trump grew from 40 percent to 44 percent.

The DeSantis campaign dismissed the endorsement before it was publicly announced.

"Congratulations to Donald Trump on securing the Koch endorsement. Like clockwork, the pro-open borders, pro-jail break bill establishment is lining up behind a moderate who has no mathematical pathway of defeating the former president," DeSantis campaign spokesman Andrew Romeo said in a statement. "Every dollar spent on Nikki Haley's candidacy should be reported as an in-kind to the Trump campaign. No one has a stronger record of beating the establishment than Ron DeSantis, and this time will be no different."

Around NR

• No Labels 2024 "unity ticket" continues to torment the Biden coalition, Audrey Fahlberg reports:

The chief strategist for No Labels is projecting optimism that the centrist political group's "unity ticket" will have ballot access in 15 states by the end of the year and 34 by next spring. Citing the public's exasperation with the likely rematch between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, No Labels is preparing to lend its ballot lines to as-yet-unnamed candidates in 2024, infuriating mainstream Democrats who are scrambling to prepare for what they see as the growing possibility that a third-party ticket could help lead the eventual Republican nominee to victory.

• Trump's warm reception at the Clemson–South Carolina game showcases the problem Republicans face in trying to unseat him as head of the party, Rich Lowry writes:

It's not normal for politicians to be greeted rapturously by sports fans unless they just adroitly handled some crisis or won a major war. . . . He continues to be less a politician than a political and cultural phenomenon. Maybe he can still be tripped up in Iowa, but this, in a nutshell, is why he's been so hard to run against.

• Noah Rothman questions whether either party cares what happens after the 2024 election:

So we're left with two parties that appear to regard the campaign for the White House in 2024 as mere spectacle. It's a big, booming parade, a source of catharsis, a psychological analgesic to ease the nagging suspicion that presidential politics is utterly bereft of purpose. No one seems to care all that much about what happens to America over the next four years. The foreseeable crises, to say nothing of the unpredictable exigencies, that the next president will confront at home and abroad are a secondary concern.

• Jim Geraghty predicts the U.S. is on course for a rerun of the 2016 GOP presidential primary:

The non-Trump vote out there is currently just barely a majority in those early states, but it remains divided among multiple candidates. If some non-Trump candidate managed to consolidate much of that vote, and either win or come close to winning those early primaries, it's likely that the 2024 Republican presidential race would transform into an actual competition instead of the current coronation. If one non-Trump Republican won, or came close to winning, Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, it is likely that the least-dedicated Trump supporters might reevaluate their options.

But there is no way to beat Trump with at least three competitors each taking a chunk of the non-Trump vote.

• AFP Action bets big on Haley, Dan McLaughlin writes:

The AFP Action endorsement brings not just advertising money but also a network of grassroots activists. AFP Action says that it has contacted some 6 million voters so far — a big number, given that Trump won the 2016 primary with a little over 14 million votes. The group argues that it is possible to change the trajectory of the primary by persuading regular Republican general-election voters who don't typically vote in primaries to turn out against Trump. That, too, is untested — it sounds a lot like Ted Cruz's theory in 2016 — but AFP Action has the resources to make it worth the attempt.