DeSantis and Haley forced into balancing act as they hold fire against Trump

Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley are facing GOP attacks for their failure to criticize former President Donald Trump sufficiently as they duke it out to be the sole alternative in the 2024 GOP presidential race.

Both DeSantis and Haley have approached criticism of Trump carefully and intentionally, but such apprehension to pounce on their opponent has drawn criticism from some, namely former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who is also vying for the Republican White House nomination.

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“This is the problem with my three colleagues. They’re afraid to offend Donald Trump,” Christie claimed on the Republican National Committee’s debate stage last week, noting that Haley, DeSantis, and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy are hesitant to go after Trump in a fierce manner or on certain topics.

One strategist has a theory as to why this is. “It hasn’t worked for Christie,” Iowa Republican strategist David Kochel said of the former governor’s consistent attacks on Trump. “His negatives are through the roof.”

“I don’t think it would be beneficial for them to be more blunt in their criticism of Trump,” said Andrew Smith, director of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center, who also pointed to Christie “having the lowest favorability rating of any candidate.”

He added that “about half of primary voters [say] he’s the candidate they will not vote for under any circumstances.”

As Smith explained, Christie’s strategy of focusing his campaign on criticizing Trump hasn’t gained him traction during the 2024 race, in which he has remained in the single digits nationally. In New Hampshire, where he has been spending nearly all of his campaign, he still falls significantly behind Trump and several points behind Haley, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average in the state.

Further, the former New Jersey governor is wildly unfavorable among Republicans. According to a recent Monmouth University Poll, he was seen as favorable by just 12%, while 65% had unfavorable opinions of him.

While Christie hit his opponents for refusing to denounce Trump as explicitly as he has and continues to do, they each notably qualified for the fourth debate easily. On the other hand, there was significant concern that Christie may not qualify for the matchup because it was disputed whether he reached the national polling threshold. However, he ultimately qualified to take the stage, per the RNC.

Haley and DeSantis aren’t pouncing on Trump because they “are trying to attract Trump voters that like the former president but might want an alternative,” according to Republican strategist Ron Bonjean.

In the latest Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom Iowa poll, 46% of voters said they are still open to supporting a different candidate and are not locked in with just five weeks until the caucuses. DeSantis and Haley are the top two second choices in the survey, suggesting there are likely Trump supporters who could end up choosing them, or vice versa, given Trump is also the second choice of 13% of respondents. If attacks were to be elevated against Trump, opponents might risk the consideration of those voters.

This, he noted, is “a difficult situation” because they remain far behind Trump and can’t afford “not to start taking more chances.” However, taking chances on new and harsher lines of attack against Trump is “a high-risk, low-reward situation.”

Kochel echoed the risky nature of these attacks, claiming, “At this point it, if there’s something we know would work, it would have been done.”

“We don’t know” if taking it to Trump as they have other opponents would be effective, explained Republican strategist Doug Heye. “We just know that it hasn’t been tried.”

DeSantis has been willing to hit Trump for not delivering on his campaign promises, namely finishing the southern border wall, and for his inability to serve two terms if he’s reelected in 2024. Though he hasn’t waded into the name-calling and more pointed criticism that Trump has employed against him.

Haley has relied on tying Trump to baggage and chaos, without being all that specific. She’s further done so without necessarily taking positions on the legal troubles Trump is facing. “Rightly or wrongly, chaos follows him,” Haley said recently. “And we can’t have a country in disarray in a world on fire and survive this chaos. We have to have a new generational conservative leader.”

Either of them could have been hammering home that Trump has spent a significant amount of time in court instead of on the campaign trail and pointing to his legal trouble as a distraction from beating President Joe Biden, Heye said. “None of them have ever made that case,” he said.

“Their official position in all of this is Donald Trump is a victim, and I’m not going to do anything politically to benefit,” he said. “OK, so how are you going to win? You’re not because you’re not really trying to win.”

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“Right now, Haley and DeSantis are fighting to get into [second] place so they can be the alternative to Trump,” Republican strategist John Feehery explained. “When they get to be that alternative, that’s when they need to start defining differences with Trump.”

Smith predicted these contrasts may be drawn sooner, suggesting that “both DeSantis and Haley will get more pointed in their criticism as the [New Hampshire] primary approaches.”