In policy terms, not much was new. Both candidates underlined yet again that, as if America didn’t have enough problems, they both seemed eager to get into a war with Mexico over fentanyl. Haley said flatly, “We’ll send special operations in to take out the cartels.” And DeSantis’s tough-guy bluster seemed almost comic. “I’m telling you this,” the Florida governor declared, “if someone in the drug cartels is sneaking fentanyl across the border when I’m president, that’s going to be the last thing they do. We’re going to shoot them stone cold dead.”
Stylistically, for the third debate in a row, Haley excelled. In a weird decision by the NBC moderators, abortion (which had powered the Democrats to victory in the Virginia legislative elections) was only introduced as a topic with about 20 minutes remaining in the debate. Once again, Haley artfully fuzzed her own strong anti-abortion record, saying, “As much as I’m pro-life, I don’t judge anyone for being pro-choice, and I don’t want them to judge me.” Her implicit message to moderates and Republicans who support abortion rights is that she will do her utmost to paper over the issue if she becomes the Republican nominee. In contrast, DeSantis, who still nurtures hope of winning the evangelical vote in the Iowa caucuses, began his own abortion answer by declaring, “I stand for a culture of life.”
This was also the debate when Haley channeled her inner Sarah Palin. After Ramaswamy ridiculed Haley for her strong support of Ukraine as “Dick Cheney in three-inch heels,” the former U.N. ambassador responded in unflappable fashion by saying, “I wear heels. They’re not a fashion statement, they’re for ammunition.” The affinity between Haley and the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee is not accidental, since Palin campaigned for her in the 2010 South Carolina gubernatorial primary.