Ambassador Nikki Wiped The Floor With Guv Ron — With One Repeated Utterance

Your correspondent’s initial concept for a headline on the Iowa beatdown between Florida Guv Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina chief executive Nikki Haley was:

“He Said. She Said. MEGO.”

MEGO, of course, being a jargony journalistic acronym popularized by the late, great Nixon speechwriter and then New York Times columnist (now there’s a living oxymoron) Bill Safire, and standing for “My Eyes Glaze Over.”

This scribe had already observed just how tiresome, exasperating and downright “ugh-ly” all the sniping had become among the collection of undercard candidates populating the Republican debate stages. (Which was, precisely as predicted, thinned to two with the departure from the race that very day of insult artist Chris Christie and CNN’s exile of smart but smarmy Vivek Ramaswamy).

Now, as the remaining combatants instantly swan-dived into an unappetizing and singularly unenlightening mud-wrestling match, why bother making the effort to sort among and determine the veracity of the various cherry-picked charges, countercharges, denunciations, denials, paraphrases and putdowns flying back and forth? 

Turns out there was no need to make that effort. Because just as interest was devolving into ennui and turnoff descending into tune-out, Ambassador Nikki suddenly struck rhetorical gold. And, if anyone is still paying attention to GOP debates by this point, may have decided the race to be the last candidate standing for the ultimate mano a mano against The Donald. 

In a single 16-character utterance. Repeated, as it turns out, 16 times.

“DeSantisLies.com.”

The strategy of announcing the existence of, and constantly repeating the URL of, a website putatively cataloguing and refuting “lies” Guv Ron was allegedly propagating about the reportedly surging Ms. Haley was a masterstroke on a number of levels.

First of all, it meant that Ms. Haley didn’t have to defend herself persuasively or in detail against her counterpart’s various assertions. All she needed to do with each new attack was respond “DeSantisLies.com.” The instant assumption in most viewers’ minds was certainly that she had the goods on him in black and white – and that the website would definitively dispatch his charges.

Second, unlike a specific allegation, the staccato, repeated recitation of the URL proved impossible for a clearly blind-sided DeSantis to counter, since he apparently didn’t know the specifics of the website’s defense against any given accusation he was levying. As it turns out, had he been prepared, there was an equally devastating blanket takedown available on his side. 

The website depends heavily on the left-leaning “fact check” sites so loathed on the opposite side of the spectrum for their anti-conservative bias and selective use of said “facts.” So had his team studied the site and pre-armed him, the governor might simply have sneered, “You mean ‘NikkiSnopes.com?’” 

Third, and most significant, the URL succinctly and memorably captured Ambassador Nikki’s entire narrative for the evening and likely the rest of DeSantis’ potentially brief remaining campaign: the Sunshine Stater is losing, and the more he loses, the more he lies. A theme she deftly drove home with a crushing characterization of the disarray and dissension afflicting his team, including near-fisticuffs and the waste of tens of millions in donations. Along with knife-twisting digs that he was “desperate” and that she had “struck a nerve.”

On that score, “DeSantisLies.com” may very well prove to be the “Lying Ted” – not to mention “Little Marco” and “Low-Energy Jeb” — of 2024: the mocking monikers Donald Trump deployed to define, deride, discredit and ultimately destroy his competition.

The especially sad part for the candidate who was indisputably the most qualified to assume the office of president of the United States, especially given the baggage the Republican frontrunner is currently dragging around like Marley’s chains: It didn’t have to be this way.

Had DeSantis, as previously suggested in this space, cited Ronald Reagan’s “11th Commandment” – “Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican” – and refused to be goaded into mixing it up with the Master of Disaster, he could have simply run on his enviable record, and potentially held on to his once-commanding lead and sailed to the nomination.

Again, it was precisely when he eschewed that path that his poll numbers plummeted. And once he did, that deflection strategy was no longer available to him to deploy against the much more sympathetic Ambassador Nikki, setting him up to walk directly into her well-baited trap.

Unless he can actually cash in on his claimed 30,000 commitment cards in Iowa – and probably, somehow double that support – the springing of that trap may also have also sprung the final leak in Guv Ron’s listing ship.

Bob Maistros is a messaging and communications strategist, crisis specialist, and former political speechwriter. He can be reached at bob@rpmexecutive.com.