By skipping the New Hampshire debate against DeSantis, Nikki Haley is making the first smart move by any of Trump's competitors

• Nikki Haley announced Tuesday that she'll skip the sixth GOP debate in New Hampshire.
• It's a smart decision, as Trump's repeated absences have made the debates pointless.

On Tuesday, Republican presidential candidate and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley announced she'd skip the sixth primary debate. It's the first smart move any of former President Donald Trump's competitors have made on the campaign trail so far.

"We've had five great debates in this campaign," Haley said. "Unfortunately, Donald Trump has ducked all of them. He has nowhere left to hide. The next debate I do will either be with Donald Trump or with Joe Biden. I look forward to it."

As Haley noted, Trump has yet to attend a single one of the last five debates. And though he was absent, the participating candidates chose not to go after the embattled former president for the vast majority of the debates.

And by refusing to attack the leading candidate, most of the remaining candidates' efforts to amass supporters have been relatively fruitless: If they're not willing to distance themselves from Trump, why should the voters?

As the qualifications to be invited to the debates have gotten stricter with each event, the debates have gotten messier and messier, with candidates taking personal attacks at each other for more than an hour under the guise of answering policy questions.

With this in mind, it's unsurprising that each GOP debate this election cycle has had fewer viewers each successive debate; voters clearly aren't getting anything from these debates between candidates with little chance of ever receiving the nomination.

Skipping out on the sixth debate in New Hampshire gives Haley more time to focus on locking down support in the state, where she recently finished just 7 percentage points behind Trump in a CNN poll.

In place of the debates, DeSantis and Haley have scheduled televised town halls ahead of the New Hampshire primary on January 23, where instead of talking over each other trying to attain the perfect viral clip, they can actually discuss their ideas.

And while there's little chance that'll be the key to overcoming Trump, the remaining candidates have to try something different, and fast.