2024

[T]he gaffes, the internal squabbles and even his unwillingness to use the legal consequences of Trump’s behavior against him pale beside DeSantis’ fundamental flaw: his inability to get enough Republican primary voters to like him.

Polling shows that his numbers were strongest before he actively began campaigning for president in late May, and that the more voters saw of him, the less inclined they were to support him.

“The idea of ‘a’ DeSantis was appealing, but the reality of ‘the’ DeSantis was repellent,” said Mac Stipanovich, who served as chief of staff to Florida Republican Gov. Bob Martinez in the 1980s, and has been involved with GOP campaigns in the state for decades. “It is telling that his favorite president is Calvin Coolidge, the avatar of anti-charisma in politics.”

“When you come across as a mean person who shows little empathy for the real concerns for citizens, and who always wants to make sure everyone in every room knows you think you are the smartest person there, it doesn’t go over all that well,” said Steve Duprey, a former Republican National Committee member from New Hampshire. “Focusing on Disney, wokeness, a little hippie college in Sarasota, and an abortion ban out of sync with most of America, instead of on the economy, the debt, the border, isn’t a winning formula.”

“Other than that,” Duprey said, “he’s nailing it.”

This spring, the main super PAC backing Mr. DeSantis laid out a costly organizing operation, including an enormous voter-outreach push with an army of trained, paid door-knockers, that would try to reach every potential DeSantis voter multiple times in early-nominating states.

Seven months later, after tens of millions of dollars spent and hundreds of thousands of doors knocked, one of the most expensive ground games in modern political history shows little sign of creating the momentum it had hoped to achieve.

Mr. DeSantis’s poll numbers have barely budged. His super PAC, Never Back Down, is unraveling. And Mr. Trump’s hold on Republican primary voters seems as unshakable as ever. With time running out before the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 15, Mr. DeSantis, the governor of Florida, appears in danger of losing the extraordinary bet he made in outsourcing his field operation to a super PAC — a gamble that is testing both the limits of campaign finance law and the power of money to move voter sentiment.

Conservatism has been in turmoil for decades, with successive shocks exposing and widening fractures within the movement that brought Ronald Reagan to power and helped win the Cold War. As we approach the middle of the century, conservatives are now seeking a renewed sense of purpose. Americans are crying out for new leadership. A Trump-Biden rematch would represent a profound failure to move on in national politics. Looking to a new generation is the nation’s best hope for renewal, and the candidate who best embodies that hope is Nikki Haley.

Haley’s character, philosophy, and record reflect the essential virtues of conservatism. She expresses strength without descending into divisiveness, defends a consistent set of principles while being practical, and has brought about major conservative achievements as South Carolina Governor and UN Ambassador. Such substance is clearly lacking in candidates like Ramaswamy. Haley has also been an active campaigner in Iowa and New Hampshire, meeting with thousands of people and making a real impact. Unlike DeSantis, the more primary voters see of her, the more they like her. Too much political discourse focuses on the people who are too online rather than the concerns of the normal Americans who decide elections.

It is the quest for normalcy that has helped define Haley and her campaign. Rather than wanting to tear down the whole system, Haley has called for an America that is “strong and proud, not weak and woke.” Narratives of American decline have become endemic on both the Left and Right. It is true that there are structural long-term problems that face the nation, but decline is a choice. America needs a confident leader who is prepared to take the tough decisions to reinvigorate the nation. The new Cold War with the anti-Western coalition of China, Russia, and Iran presents an opportunity for the conservative movement to rally together again in defense of American ideals and institutions. […]

Haley is defending an authentically American conservative tradition. Free enterprise, civil society, and limited government are keystones in her philosophy. Following in the tradition of Reagan and Thatcher, Haley believes in freedom as the key organizing principle of the American nation. The cry of liberty has continually defined the course of American history: independence from the British Empire; the abolition of slavery and expansion of civil rights; victory over Nazism, Fascism, and Communism. These historic achievements were made to defend and expand the freedom of Americans. A conservatism that renounces freedom entirely must also abandon the American political inheritance and the fundamental truths espoused by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence.

Where the commitment to freedom is most contested on the Right is the economy. Economic freedom has undeniably delivered huge gains in generating wealth and innovation and lifting people out of poverty. But economic stagnation has made a comeback across the Western world over the past fifteen years. The result is inflation, low growth, and higher taxes under a bloated state that interferes too much while simultaneously failing to deliver its core responsibilities effectively.

For months, the DeSantis campaign has been telling donors and party leaders that the answer is no: Haley is a vestige of the pre-Trump party, one that is far more open to free trade, foreign intervention, and reducing the national debt than the MAGA-fied populists who now make up the base.