CNN held competing town halls last night for both Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley, with the latter giving a running play-by-play of criticism on social media as the Florida governor spoke. 

Haley zeroed in on the issue of Ukraine, going on a tear accusing DeSantis of not having "moral clarity" and of being a hypocrite regarding continuing to send seemingly infinite amounts of money to the Eastern European nation. In doing so, she may have exposed her biggest vulnerability with the Republican electorate. 

Related: Nikki Haley's Slavery SNAFU Isn't Hurting Her Campaign

In 2014, Ron voted to give Ukraine aid.
In 2015, he criticized Obama for not doing enough.
Now, he’s throwing Ukraine under the bus just so he can copy Trump.
We need a president who understands the difference between good and evil.

— Nikki Haley (@NikkiHaley) January 5, 2024

If she's going to attack DeSantis, she should show some intellectual honesty while doing so. The 2014 aid package to Ukraine totaled only $1 billion. It was also non-lethal aid, which is why many Republicans criticized it at the time as being a weak move by then-President Barack Obama. 

Haley's argument that if one supported $1 billion in aid, they must thereby support aid totaling over $200 billion (and eventually even more) lest they be a hypocrite is ridiculous. It's like saying that if one supports having a single glass of wine, they must also get smashed and do meth. 

Ron thinks supporting Ukraine is not a vital U.S. national security interest. He couldn’t be more wrong. A win for Russia is a win for China.

— Nikki Haley (@NikkiHaley) January 5, 2024

Here's the thing. There is a difference between suggesting that Ukraine depleting Russia's military strength is a good deal or a moral imperative and that it's a "vital U.S. national security interest." Words have meaning, and the United States could leave Ukraine in its current stalemate tomorrow, and the outcome of that wouldn't be "vital" for America's interests. It might matter for American interests on some level, but vital suggests there is an immediate do-or-die threat to the United States, and there's little evidence of that. 

Which brings me to a comment Haley made during her own CNN town hall. 

Russia said once they take Ukraine, Poland and the Baltics are next. This is about preventing war. We don’t want our men and women to have to go and fight.

— Nikki Haley (@NikkiHaley) January 5, 2024

The first problem with that line is that Russia hasn't said that. A quick search shows some loud noises about Poland not attacking Belarus, but Putin has not directly pledged to invade Poland if he reaches total victory in Ukraine. 

Putting aside that Russia is likely to remain camped out in the same areas of Ukraine it has occupied in one way or another since 2014 because it allows Putin to save face, there is no reason to believe invading a NATO country is part of the game plan. Doing so would drag the United States and most of Europe into a direct conflict with Russia, and Putin understands that would be a losing play. There is a wide gulf between the fighting over the Donbas and marching into Poland to face NATO retaliation.

The biggest problem with Haley's comment, though, is that it amounts to the type of emotional blackmail Americans suffered for the last 20 years. How many times did we hear, "We've got to fight them over there, so we don't have to fight them over here," as if militias made up of goat herders were going to invade the mainland? Telling people that we must continue to hand Ukraine unlimited sums of money, otherwise their sons and daughters must go die, is a very perverse way to try to convince people. 

To be frank, I don't think Republican voters respond to those demands anymore, and it feels like stale rhetoric from 2004, not 2024. I understand Haley feels she has to swipe at DeSantis, who has been an objectively far more successful governor than she was, but she should do so honestly and in a way that doesn't insult the intelligence of the very people she's trying to win over.