Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis are the two candidates who, based on polls and finances (including Super PACs), appear to have the staying power to challenge Trump in New Hampshire. With his anti-Trump fervor, Chris Christie is also betting on the Granite State. But Christie, who finished sixth in the 2016 New Hampshire primary, is saddled with a near-fatal disapproval rating of more than 65 percent in the CNN poll of the state. Yet watching Haley and DeSantis on their mid-October swings through the state highlighted that they, too, have serious problems. More than their predictable right-wing ideology, more than their timorous refusal to engage with Trump unless pressed, both candidates were guilty of the cardinal sin in politics—being boring.
Haley, as ambassador to the United Nations under Trump, is perceived as the only major Republican challenger with foreign policy heft. The New York Times even declared in a recent page one print headline, “Haley’s Strong Support of Israel Could Be Crucial to Campaign.” But in New Hampshire, less than a week after Hamas’s October 7 assault on Israel, Haley bizarrely refused to emphasize the Middle East as a major campaign theme. It was far less a political decision and far more the unwillingness of a fledgling candidate to jigger with the structure of her stump speech. Haley, it seems, suffers from the same malady that made Marco Rubio a laughingstock in the 2016 Republican primaries: She is so wedded to her uninspiring talking points that she clings to them like a security blanket.
Speaking to a mostly gray-haired crowd of about 150 at an American Legion hall in Rochester, Haley talked for 21 long minutes before she ever mentioned Israel. Instead, voters heard the former South Carolina governor rail against $7.4 billion in Republican-sponsored earmarks in Congress, as if they mattered at a time of a $1.7 trillion deficit. They were treated to the riveting tale of her epic battle in the South Carolina legislature to demand recorded votes on pay raises. And the audience even applauded when Haley declared—invoking an extreme niche issue—“Let’s put vocational classes back in our high schools.”