With that upward climb, she has come underneath extra scrutiny. After the second debate final month, the previous president attacked her as a “birdbrain” on social media, and Ms. Haley accused his marketing campaign of sending a birdcage and birdseed to her lodge.
Although Mr. DeSantis has drawn assaults from his rivals on the controversy stage — together with some from Ms. Haley — he has largely averted initiating heated exchanges, a stance in line with his long-running insistence that the first is a two-candidate contest between him and Mr. Trump. However Ms. Haley’s surge — and her choice to focus her hearth on the Florida governor — have clearly pressured the DeSantis marketing campaign and its allies to recalculate.
Mr. DeSantis’s tremendous PAC, By no means Again Down, reported spending practically $1 million in opposition to Ms. Haley this week, after devoting simply $29,000 to anti-Haley messaging through the first half of the 12 months.
The current exchanges have been spurred by dueling tv appearances over the weekend on the deepening humanitarian disaster in Gaza. Final week, Mr. DeSantis doubled down on his opposition to serving to a few of the practically a million individuals contending with shortages of meals, clear water and shelter within the area. He described the tradition within the Gaza Strip as “poisonous” and argued that the individuals of Gaza “educate youngsters to hate Jews.” Ms. Haley pushed again in opposition to this view, saying that giant percentages of Palestinians didn’t assist Hamas and that “America has at all times been sympathetic to the truth that you’ll be able to separate civilians from terrorists.” (Polling in Gaza supports Ms. Haley’s declare.)
However in an interview on Fox News on Tuesday, Mr. DeSantis solid her phrases as proof that she supported permitting refugees from Gaza to come back to america. The By no means Again Down advert from this week spliced the clips from Ms. Haley with feedback from Mr. DeSantis criticizing her in an NBC interview. “She’s making an attempt to be politically right,” he says within the advert. “She’s making an attempt to please the media and other people on the left.”
Ms. Haley’s marketing campaign has countered with a number of emails to supporters and the information media, citing truth checkers who’ve discovered that Mr. DeSantis bought her statements wrong and rejecting what her marketing campaign officers have described as Mr. DeSantis’s constant mischaracterizations of her statements and her file.
Spokespeople for each Mr. DeSantis’s marketing campaign and By no means Again Down keep that their critiques of Ms. Haley are correct.
As governor, Ms. Haley at occasions voiced the necessity for america to be a welcoming nation for immigrants and refugees. In 2015, she supported the efforts of faith groups to resettle individuals in South Carolina. However Ms. Haley took an aggressive stance in opposition to resettling Syrians in her state after the fear assaults in Paris that very same 12 months, citing gaps in intelligence that would make the vetting course of tough.
Now, underneath hearth from Mr. DeSantis, her marketing campaign has underscored her hard-line monitor file as governor on immigration insurance policies and portrayed her as nothing however staunchly against taking in individuals from the Center East. “The reality is, Haley has at all times opposed settling Center East refugees in America, believing that Arab international locations within the area ought to take up them,” learn one e mail to reporters.
The disputes spotlight how whilst Republicans stay divided on different options of Mr. Trump’s isolationist “America First” agenda, they’ve unified behind its hard-line method to immigration and the nation’s borders, with Mr. DeSantis and Ms. Haley largely aligned of their calls to maintain out refugees from the battle zone.
It’s widely seen as unlikely that Gazan refugees shall be headed for america anytime quickly. Nonetheless, at a DeSantis marketing campaign occasion in South Carolina on Thursday, the group applauded when Mr. DeSantis pledged that as president, he would settle for “zero” individuals from Gaza, including that he opposed “importing the pathologies of the Center East to our nation.” He additionally mentioned that any American assist despatched to Gaza would find yourself within the fingers of Hamas.
Rick McConnell, a 70-year-old Air Power veteran who heard Mr. DeSantis communicate, mentioned he understood that Gazans wanted meals, water and medical provides. However Mr. McConnell mentioned that Iran — which he believed was liable for Hamas’s brutal assaults — ought to present that assist.
“Why can’t they assist them?” Mr. McConnell mentioned. “Now we have veterans sleeping on the streets — our veterans.”
The issues have been echoed at Ms. Haley’s occasions. “If you’re residing in Gaza, I don’t suppose you’re keen on America or are Christian,” mentioned Corrine Rothchild, 69, a retired elementary faculty trainer who was nonetheless weighing her vote between Ms. Haley and Mr. DeSantis.
Mr. DeSantis, who served on the International Affairs Committee throughout his time within the Home of Representatives, has sought to differentiate himself on international coverage, pointing to restrictions he signed in Florida that banned land purchases by many Chinese language nationals and calling for the usage of army drive in opposition to Mexican drug cartels. Within the final week, he additionally has used state funds to constitution flights which have introduced dwelling a whole lot of Individuals stranded in Israel.
Ms. Haley additionally has sought to make her international coverage credentials, her hawkish stances on China and her staunch assist of Israel central to her marketing campaign. As Mr. Trump’s United Nations ambassador, Ms. Haley forcefully spoke out in assist of his formal recognition of Jerusalem because the capital of Israel, in addition to his choice to chop American funding to Palestinian refugees.
The 2 have sparred on international coverage earlier than. She has criticized Mr. DeSantis for his assist of Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama and his maintain on army nominations over a coverage that covers the journey bills of service members who search reproductive well being care providers, together with abortions, in different states. She additionally attacked Mr. DeSantis’s stance on the conflict in Ukraine, which he known as a “territorial dispute” that was not central to U.S. pursuits — a characterization he later walked again.
In current days, each have additionally turned their scorn on Mr. Trump for remarks that he made after the Hamas assault criticizing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and referring to Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militant group, as “very good.” Mr. Trump has since retreated from his feedback. He, too, has pledged to reject refugees from Gaza.
