i don t want to say is there a lane for him but what does a chris christie run in 2024 look like? well, he needs donald trump to show up at the debate. right? that s the thing. will he ever actually be on stage? we had some conversation about that earlier. i don t know the answer to that question. i wouldn t necessarily be up there with him because he obviously takes great pleasure in gutting his enemies on a debate stage and really anywhere else. he is the ultimate pugilist of the republican party. and is quite comfortable. a lot of people aren t comfortable with confrontation. this man thrives on confrontation. not just that moment. go back to when he was governor and when he was having the town hall meetings and taking on the teachers unions. he thrives on it. he ll bring i think the most comfortable confrontation with trump. the question is is he still a credible messenger for average republicans? and i don t know if we know that yet but we re going to find out. i don t think t
to deal with russia. we want to talk about all of this with abby phillip and audie cornish, who are here now. abby, what s your take away? i think what you re raising about abortion really speaks to something that i could not ignore, which was that this was a republican audience in the state of iowa about the republican caucuses. but she was speaking to a national audience. she was really trying to present herself, i think very differently from many of her other colleagues in this race. but she was also trying to leave herself a lot of room on some issues like abortion. i thought it was so striking to me, just the tonal difference here. this was almost like a republican candidate circa the george w. bush era, incredibly hawkish on foreign policy, serious and very substantive on a number of other issues, whether it s on entitlements or government spending, even things like guns and the border and china. but i was keeping track. it took her 70 minutes to say
here s her problem, besides whatever inclination she has to parse things too much. you say she s a compassionate conservative. she can t call herself that because that is not where the republican party is today. and so she doesn t go there, and tim scott doesn t go there because the party is not there. that is not where the energy in the republican party is right now. well, i think it s what she s trying to do. no, but that s when she gets to sort of tap dancing. if i can just say, i m feeling it over here now. it s the spirit on this side over here. i think it s important to not get back to what has happened so many times. you can t paint the entire republican party as not compassionate conservatives. republicans, a large swath of primary voters, are compassionate conservatives. yes, donald trump has hijacked the party. yes, maga republicans are very vocal, and he has the largest chunk. but to say there are not compassionate i have a lot of republican
it is that close physically even closer. if she was sitting on a hay bale, that would be the thing, at the iowa state fair. it was very similar, the way she used the stage blocking, as you said, effectively turning her back on jake at some points to address the audience directly. all of that polish is part of her presentation. in part of the lecture, she said, god bless you. i saw that. she was on the role of being on the road and shaking every single hand. and i think you saw some of the effects of that polishing. all right. well, katelyn, there s a lot to chew on. i know that you have to deal with all of the political experts and people who have actually worked on campaigns in iowa and elsewhere up there in new york. yeah, including some who worked for haley herself. so we ll get to the table. scott, i want to start with you. before the town hall, you were saying nikki haley is perceived to be this candidate who sometimes tries to have it both ways. you talk about how s
was somewhat surprising because she knows actually how to speak the kind of maga language when she wants to, and she chose not to at a lot of opportunities, at a lot of junctures tonight. she really did lean on it was a lot of policy, but she took a little south carolina folksiness and made it more accessible. i do believe that was a real choice tonight. i think she could have done more to appeal to a maga base and chose not to, and maybe it has to do with what some republicans in iowa are saying, which is that maybe there s an underappreciated degree to which many iowa republicans right now are not looking for the trumpiest person in the field. and nikki haley may be making a bet that if she presents a policy in a way that s more digestible and she leans into a little bit of the old kind of george w. bush republican party, the old-ish nikki haley, who understands the maga base, that that might be a little bit of a