After the last Republican debate proved to be nothing more than an opportunity for Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley to lob petty, childish insults at each other for two hours straight, it really made it hard to keep pretending like there’s any usefulness in these debates.
Fortunately, Nikki Haley seems to agree. Following Iowa’s Republican caucus Monday, she said she won’t be participating in the next debate unless Donald Trump does as well. Trump has been sitting out the debates from the start, claiming he doesn’t need to participate given his enormous lead in the polls. As terrifying and infuriating as it is, he’s not wrong. He cleaned house in Iowa and didn’t need to step on a debate stage once.
While she doesn’t have anywhere near the numbers Trump does, Haley is also in a position where continuing with the debates isn’t likely to help her. The next state to go to the polls is New Hampshire, where Haley has been dominating DeSantis in polls. One recent poll has Haley at 34% support in the state, compared to DeSantis’ embarrassing 5%, while another shows Haley essentially tied with Trump at 40% each.
Haley still might not have a chance in hell of actually beating Trump in this election but she doesn’t have anything to gain from a night of childish sparring with DeSantis—an experience she seems to hate as much as the rest of us hate watching it.
“We’ve had five great debates in this campaign,” Haley said in a statement. “Unfortunately, Donald Trump has ducked all of them. 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.”
In response, ABC canceled the debate scheduled for Thursday, rather than let DeSantis take the stage solo. CNN has another debate slated for Sunday, and there’s no word yet on whether that will go on as planned.
On Twitter/X, DeSantis accused Haley of being “afraid to debate because she doesn’t want to answer the tough questions.” But during the last debate, the two of them didn’t come close to discussing anything substantive. There’s no downside to canceling this clown show.
(featured image: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
