Trump Had Good Night While DeSantis, Haley Dueled

"Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley were like a couple in a bad marriage," Chapman University (California) professor Luke Nichter told Newsmax following the Wednesday night debate in Iowa between Donald Trump's two leading opponents for the Republican presidential nomination.

But Nichter, author of the critically acclaimed "The Year That Broke Politics: Collusion and Chaos in the Presidential Election of 1968," flipped back and forth on television between the DeSantis-Haley showdown on CNN and Trump's town hall televised by Fox News.

He concluded the Trump event was "a refreshing format – questions from actual normal, voting Americans as opposed to moderators armed with prompts vetted by focus groups."

In contrast, Nichter added, "The two governors – perhaps because their views are so similar – resorted to scripted digs that, to this viewer, made each more unlikeable."

Nichter's conclusion neither DeSantis nor Haley gained much ground was seconded by other political experts who spoke to us after the first one-on-one confrontation between the duo.

"No clear winner in my opinion," said G. Terry Madonna, director emeritus of the Franklin and Marshall Poll at the eponymous University of Pennsylvania, "[The debate] was bitter and both candidates defended their records and positions fiercely. No clear winner in my opinion."

Bill Ballenger, editor of the much-read, online Ballenger Report on Michigan politics "thought DeSantis did marginally the best tonight."

"But they all had their moments," he told us. "Haley was under attack more than usual and was a little wobbly in defending herself. Will it change the dynamics of the race? No, but it sets up DeSantis and Haley to surge forward if Trump stumbles."

Gerard Gibert, Mississippi's most-listened to radio talk show host, concluded, "overall, I felt the governors showed that they are fairly closely aligned on major issues, the exception perhaps being support for Ukraine."

But, he quickly added, "rather than focusing out how they differed from the other candidate on economic and tax policy, healthcare, immigration, school choice, and abortion, DeSantis and Haley attacked each other on their opponent's failure to live up to the policies that achieve the outcomes on which they're largely aligned. They did this by exposing each other's resumes as governors and Mr. DeSantis' time in Congress."

Those policy positions, Gibert continued, "are mostly aligned with Mr. Trump's. For voters, it's a question of who you want steering the ship filled with the same cargo headed to the same destination.

"Winner, former President Donald Trump."

John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.