DeSantis and Haley choose divergent paths post-Trump defeat

Former President Donald Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) have seemingly buried the hatchet after a contentious primary fight, while former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley has left her voters to be courted by President Joe Biden.

It isn’t the first time the two vanquished Trump rivals have diverged in their strategies for dealing with the former president and presumptive Republican nominee since wrapping up their own White House bids. DeSantis immediately, if unenthusiastically, endorsed Trump when he dropped out. Haley hasn’t done so yet, and Democrats hope to win over her supporters.

If DeSantis helps boost Trump’s fundraising for the fall campaign, it could have major 2028 implications, especially if Haley remains on the sidelines through November.

Trump, by winning, would disqualify himself from seeking another term in 2028 under the 22nd Amendment of the Constitution. Defeat would leave Trump with an uncertain future, politically and otherwise. Either way, it would set up a fight for the GOP beyond Trump.

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DeSantis ran this year as a successor to Trump, one who could pursue Trumpism with more rigor and discipline than the ex-president himself. Haley, perhaps out of necessity, eventually settled on running as the candidate for Republicans who wanted to see the party revert to the way things were before Trump’s June 2015 escalator ride down the escalator.

Both in their own ways also positioned themselves as more orthodox movement conservatives than Trump, hitting the former president on excessive federal spending. Haley in particular sought to contrast herself with Trump on entitlements and, to a lesser extent, foreign policy. But her campaign was an implicit rejection of Trump’s populism and an explicit reproach to his pugilism in a way that DeSantis’s never was.

Haley’s approach kept her from suffering the fate of more overtly anti-Trump candidates, such as former Vice President Mike Pence and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, but put a ceiling on her level of support in a Republican primary. She won only Washington, D.C., and Vermont. DeSantis campaigned in a way that kept him firmly in second place for almost a year until a distant second-place showing in Iowa wasn’t enough to keep him from falling behind Haley elsewhere.

A Trump-DeSantis rapprochement could help the Florida governor stay relevant after he is term-limited out of Tallahassee in 2027, a year before the next round of Republican presidential primaries. It may even make DeSantis the front-runner if this is Trump’s final campaign, though if Republicans retake the White House, the new vice president would presumably have the inside track.

Haley could make peace with Trump just as easily as DeSantis. Despite her insistence that Trump must earn her support, she has waffled on the former president in the past. She initially wasn’t going to run for president in 2024 if Trump did also. By Super Tuesday, she was the last major candidate standing against him.

DeSantis could also take a breakfast meeting with Trump and do little else. He and Haley both have been on the receiving end of Trump attacks that could make them reluctant to help much now.

But Haley’s narrow path to a future Republican presidential nomination seems to revolve around being able to say “I told you so” if Trump loses. Some, if not most, of the voters who continue to pull the lever for her in the primaries since she dropped out are at this point functionally Democrats. It’s not clear how many of them she could deliver with her endorsement in any case, and she looks like a long shot to be Trump’s running mate this year, which is probably the clearest way she could benefit from him winning.

In addition to his relationship with deep-pocketed Republican donors, DeSantis could potentially prevent disaffected conservatives, especially those who thought Trump’s pandemic response was too liberal, from defecting to independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

DeSantis could more easily avoid being blamed for a Trump loss. And he might not need to be vice president to have a political future if Trump wins.

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Either way, other Republicans are sure to emerge as potential candidates after November. But once bitten by the presidential bug, few prospective contenders ever get over that ambition. Haley is only 52, and DeSantis will turn 46 in September.

Everything either of them decides to do could have an impact on the results in November — and must also be viewed through the prism of 2028.