In GOP race hot with name-calling, SC’s Scott and Haley are keeping it clean — so far

Over the last few presidential campaign seasons, we’ve met Lyin’ Ted, Sleepy Joe, Cryin’ Chuck Schumer and Crooked Hillary.

This time around, so far, we’ve been introduced to Ron DeSanctimonious (aka “Meatball Ron”). We’ve seen insults fly from one Republican candidate to the next as they have hit the ground running on the campaign trail.

But in a political age rife with insults, heightened by social media and Donald Trump, one thing we haven’t seen is South Carolina’s in-state rivals for the White House take aim at one another.

Republican presidential candidate U.S. Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina said there’s “certainly room for two” the morning after Nikki Haley, the state’s former governor, announced her run for the White House.

“I bet there’s room for three or four,” he said in a WGTK-FM interview.

He wished his acquaintance-turned-competition well in May, when he announced his own presidential bid.

“I have such great respect for Nikki Haley,” Scott said in an interview with the Associated Press at the time. “She is a strong, powerful force for good.”

“We were friends before,” he added. “We’ll be friends after.”

Haley has not said much about Scott, and when she has, it hasn’t been insults. She and Scott have a history of working well together. When Haley was governor, she appointed Scott to the U.S. Senate in 2012. Now, with both vying for a place as the Republican presidential nominee from the same state, some might expect things to get heated.

Yet, neither has gone after the other.

Even as campaign rhetoric begins to heat up among GOP presidential candidates — with former President Trump notably bombastic and creative in his insults, as ever — the two South Carolina politicians have seldom taken jabs at one another, or other candidates, for that matter. Experts, however, say this could change as South Carolina’s February GOP primary date inches closer, and as Scott and Haley continue to jostle among other candidates in the polls

Scott and Haley’s campaign declined to comment further on one another.

Chad Connelly, former South Carolina Republican Party chairman, said Haley and Scott are both talented, excellent on their feet and disciplined in their messaging, and he doesn’t necessarily expect to see either one of them attacking or bad-mouthing each other or Republican candidates.

The other candidates haven’t said much about Scott or Haley, either. That’s because there’s little reason to target the Palmetto State pair — they just aren’t major threats in the race at this time, said Mark Jones, the co-director of the presidential elections program at Rice University’s Baker Institute.

“They’re both doing so poorly,” Jones said. “Right now, there isn’t much to be gained from attacking each other this early in the campaign. There’s nothing really to be gained from attacking another candidate who’s averaging less than 5%.”

A June poll by NBC News had Haley sitting at 4% and Scott at 3% among likely Republican primary voters. Trump led the GOP pack at 51%, with Ron DeSantis trailing in second at 22% and former Vice President Mike Pence in third at 7%.

Trump has mentioned Scott during rallies, saying “he’s a good man,” but the former president seldom voices his opinion on Haley, his former appointee as the country’s ambassador to the United Nations. Though, in February, when word of Haley making a bid for the 2024 election came to light, Trump ridiculed Haley on past statements she made about running.

“Nikki has to follow her heart, not her honor. She should definitely run!” Trump wrote on Truth Social, attaching an old video of Haley saying she would support Trump and not enter the 2024 race if he did.

For DeSantis, Haley and Scott aren’t important, which is why he hasn’t criticized them, said Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow at Brookings Institute.

“The name of the game is beat Trump,” Karmack said. “Who might be the Trump killer, so to speak? There’s no point in making enemies.”

The name game has winners, but also losers

If Scott and Haley are drawing little attention from one another and their GOP competitors at the moment, most candidates’ rhetorical cannons are aimed at the race’s biggest threats: Trump and DeSantis. With Trump far ahead in most Republican polls, many believe the GOP race at this point is a race for second place, with DeSantis holding steady there for the time being.

With the exception of former N.J. Gov. Chris Christie, who launched his White House bid June 6 and has openly jousted with the former president, most of the Republican candidates have been shy to take direct aim at party front-runner Trump, whose avid base they don’t want to alienate. Increasingly, though, there have been signs that at least some candidates may be growing more confident in speaking out against the former president, who’s facing multiple felony charges stemming from investigations into alleged hush-money payments and mishandling of classified documents.

But Trump remains popular among Republican primary voters, Jones said, so it’s not a “winning strategy” to bash Trump because of the risk of upsetting his voters.

“The trick for all candidates not named Trump is how to get the message across to Republican primary voters that while they may like Donald Trump, he is a flawed candidate for the November election, who is more likely to be defeated by Joe Biden than to defeat Joe Biden,” Jones said.

The candidates who are not Trump are really competing with each other, Jones said. For a majority of the candidates to be “safe,” one Republican nominee would have to step up and be the anti-Trump candidate. Jones said it would most likely be up to the second-tier candidate.

“From Ron DeSantis, to Mike Pence, to Nikki Haley to Tim Scott, they’re all stuck in this dilemma, that the only way to defeat Trump is to go negative on him. But if they’re the one that goes negative, they’re pretty much writing their own death certificate in terms of a potential GOP nomination,” Jones said.

Both Scott and Haley commented when the news of Trump’s classified documents indictment surfaced, with Scott saying they were “serious allegations,” and Haley saying “If this indictment is true, if what it says is actually the case, President Trump was incredibly reckless with our national security.”

Haley also has taken aim at Trump over his foreign policy, saying the former president did “too little” in reference to trade agreements with China to deter the Chinese threat and “showed moral weakness in his zeal to befriend [Chinese] President Xi” in an interview at American Enterprise Institute in late June.

The change in tune from Haley, a former Trump ally, has come as a surprise to some, including Connelly, the former state GOP chair.

“I was honestly surprised,” Connelly said. “I think that President Trump sometimes elicits a response. Sometimes it’s like click bait.”

While Haley has made small remarks on Trump, Scott appears to have a different game plan, Kamarck said.

“He clearly is taking a page out of Ronald Reagan’s book and trying to be the optimistic, happy warrior who believes in America. His own success story is quite impressive,” Kamarck said. “So he’s trying to say, ‘Look, we’ve moved beyond that, we’re in a sort of post-racial era.’ And I think it’s quite compelling.”

Winning SC isn’t necessarily of note, but losing is

Kamarck said Scott and Haley don’t necessarily need to beat Trump, but they do need to come in as a strong second place in a state like South Carolina.

“Now, for Scott and Haley, they’ve got a big problem in South Carolina, which is that you’re a candidate who is expected to do well in their home state. Therefore, the bar is higher for them than it is for somebody out of state,” Kamarck said. “If you take these four early states, South Carolina, New Hampshire, Iowa and Nevada, in each one of these, the metric is not going to be, ‘Did you actually win?’ but, ‘Did you beat expectations?’”

Haley and Scott are playing a difficult, but justified game, Kamarck said. Keep the Trump base, but point out how much better of a candidate they are.

“They’ve got to sort of say, ‘Yes, we love what he stands for, and what he does, but we don’t think he’s the best person to carry us forward.’ And that’s difficult to do,” Kamarck said.

However, Kamarck said, in order to win the nomination, you can’t only say nice things about the other candidates, and you can’t necessarily ignore them either:

“Look, you can’t win this Republican nomination if you’re saying nothing but nice things about Donald Trump, you’re just not going to do it.”