OPINION:
The fundamental lesson of former President Donald Trump’s wins in New Hampshire and Iowa is that issues matter.
While Mr. Trump retains an unfortunate tendency to veer occasionally into self-absorption and vindictiveness — even in a victory speech — he and his team have been notably consistent in talking about actual issues in the campaign. They have wisely focused on the economy, border security and the urgent need to improve Social Security and other entitlement programs and steered away from the less energizing elements of Mr. Trump’s message.
As a consequence of that focus, Mr. Trump dominated in Iowa and New Hampshire among voters who identified the economy and border security as their most important issues. As the young people like to say, he met the voters where they were.
In comparison, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis talked a lot about “wokeness,” DEI and Disney. Those are important issues, but they are not what most voters care about. Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley wandered even further from target, running pretty much entirely on her gender, occasionally mixing in reminders that she is Indian American.
Her campaign has been remarkably light on specific policies.
Much of Mr. Trump’s focus on issues is the result of his campaign’s effort to maintain message discipline and improve the fit and finish of the campaign. It helps that the leaders of the effort — Susie Wiles, Chris LaCivita and Brian Jack — are themselves thoroughly competent professionals.
To date, they have done a great job.
The task that lies before them is formidable. Maintaining candidate and message discipline across more than nine months of what will be an expensive, rough and messy national campaign will be exponentially more challenging than wrangling Republican votes in Iowa and New Hampshire.
In an election cycle where the margins are narrow and the candidates are extremely well known — and therefore unlikely to be affected by efforts to brand, rebrand or re-rebrand — the ability to develop, clearly deliver and repeat defining solutions to issues will be dispositive.
The Biden campaign, with its Swiss-cheesy record on the economy and national security, has decided to run on “defending democracy” and making sure that everyone who wants to abort their offspring can.
It’s an interesting choice of issues, especially since those issues in total are identified by maybe 1 in 10 Americans as among the most pressing facing the United States.
In comparison, the Trump campaign seems determined to stay focused on the economy, border security and our obvious weakness in the global neighborhood. Those issues command the heights of American political consciousness, with just about everyone identifying at least one of them as the most important challenge facing the nation.
It is not difficult to see why. The Committee to Unleash Prosperity occasionally notes that real household income, after you consider the effects of inflation, was about 10% higher during the Trump administration than it is now. As many as 6 million people have entered and remained in the country illegally during the current regime, and we really don’t know who they are or where they might be.
We probably don’t need to get into the disaster that was the withdrawal from Afghanistan, nor the wandering around Ukraine and now Gaza, nor the Biden administration’s pronounced and embarrassing tilt toward Iran.
The recipe for victory in this cycle is clear. In a close race with well-known candidates who both have relatively high negatives, the electorate is likely to choose the candidate who speaks to their immediate concerns.
• Michael McKenna is a contributing editor to The Washington Times and served as a deputy assistant to President Donald Trump.
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