Tim Scott exit brings GOP closer to a DeSantis-Haley showdown

The exit of Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) from the 2024 Republican presidential race leaves just four major challengers to former President Donald Trump for the nomination, bringing us closer to the day when it will be two.

Trump clearly has the top tier all to himself, with a second tier of Gov. Ron DeSantis and former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley behind him.

REPUBLICANS NAVIGATE CULTURE WAR SETBACK ON ABORTION

Normally, a candidate with Scott 2-4% in the national polls suspending campaign wouldn’t have a major impact on the race. But Scott was doing better than that in Iowa and South Carolina, two key early contests.

DeSantis now occupies the lane to the right of Trump on abortion all to himself. This could help him in Iowa, where he his counting on Trump to stumble and evangelicals are an important voting bloc.

Trump has a strong bond with many of these voters based on his first term in office. Whatever he says about abortion now, the former president was instrumental in overturning Roe v. Wade, appointing three of the five justices who supported its reversal in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

But Trump has also been reticent about federal abortion restrictions, touting Dobbs’s sending the issue back to the states where he claims “legal scholars” on both sides believed it belonged. He has also criticized DeSantis for signing a six-week ban into law in Florida and has snubbed some high-profile social conservative gatherings in Iowa.

Haley, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie have all taken positions more or less in line with Trump’s. Scott and former Vice President Mike Pence have already dropped out. That leaves DeSantis as the last candidate standing who can say he is more antiabortion than Trump.

Then there is the possibility that Scott’s departure could help Haley in South Carolina, where she served as governor. While Scott seems to have dropped from the 10% he was getting in his home state in a Washington Post/Monmouth poll in September to the 6% he notched in a CNN survey last month, he could conceivably help Haley consolidate native son-and-daughter support and move further away from DeSantis in second place.

The RealClearPolitics average for South Carolina has Trump at 49%, Haley next at 18.8%, DeSantis 10.5%, and Scott at 7.8%. Even a couple of points could be marginally helpful for Haley, who is also in second in New Hampshire, according to the polling averages.

Scott also did reasonably well at fundraising, which is one of the reasons his supporters were confident they could power through lackluster polling numbers. Perhaps some of the donors could now be available to Haley, though DeSantis will make a play for them too.

Both DeSantis and Haley will now get to test the theory that the winnowing of the field will help one or both of them more directly take the fight to Trump. Up until now, they both have had to try to be heard above a cacophony of voices around them and Trump far ahead.

Now Ramaswamy and Christie will face increasing pressure to drop out before the fourth Republican debate. While it remains to be seen whether either of them will listen, it is increasingly shaping up to be a DeSantis versus Haley race for second place.

DeSantis will continue his campaign as someone who can keep the party moving in the direction Trump started it on in 2017, but will win and keep his promises. Haley will position herself as the candidate who can appeal to suburban women, talking generational change even as aspects of her platform and style hearken back to George W. Bush.

Both candidates have the advantage of being significantly younger than Trump in a contest that may be defined by President Joe Biden’s age.

Of course, the risk for both of them is that they may never be able to get past each other. Here’s how the DeSantis campaign greeted Haley’s latest Iowa overtures, which they described as “lighting millions of dollars on fire”:

“No amount of money will be enough for Nikki Haley to conceal her pro-China, pro-Gaza aid, pro-gas tax, and pro-Hillary record,” DeSantis campaign communications director Andrew Romeo said in a statement. “As Americans look behind the curtain, they will see she does not have the extensive record of conservative achievements that Ron DeSantis boasts.”

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

Perhaps Tim Scott got out before the race got ugly.

We’ll soon see if this Trump-dominated affair can get interesting.