Republican debate: The GOP field gets a second chance to escape Trump’s shadow

SIMI VALLEY, California — Republican presidential candidates are set to gather onstage at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library Wednesday night for a second time without the front-runner, former President Donald Trump, participating.

The question is whether any candidates can emerge from the debate with a dent in Trump’s lead.

DESANTIS UNDER PRESSURE TO GET OFF THE ROPES IN SECOND REPUBLICAN DEBATE

Trump still remains far above his 2024 rivals even after the first debate last month in which former Vice President Mike Pence showcased a more aggressive approach, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy took several jabs from the field, and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley‘s standout performance reinvigorated her campaign. The former president has consistently pointed to his overwhelming lead as part of his reasoning for skipping yet another debate.

National polls show Trump at more than 40 percentage points above even his closest competitor, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL). In a RealClearPolitics poll average, 57.5% of Republicans back Trump, while 13.3% support DeSantis, a 44-point advantage. “You see what’s going on with the polling. We’ve been like a rocket ship,” Trump told a crowd of supporters at a Maquoketa, Iowa, event last week.

His absence could give away to another rival to shine forth. “It doesn’t really matter if Trump is not there because really they’re playing for a second,” Sarah Chamberlain, president and CEO of the Republican Main Street Partnership, told the Washington Examiner. “Trump is in first, and he’s clearly in first, but if his indictments don’t go well, then somebody on that stage needs to be a strong second, ready to step in at this point. So I think the debate does matter.”

The former president is facing 91 charges across four criminal cases, with some of the court trials related to the indictments scheduled to take place amid the GOP primary schedule as other candidates are holding rallies and other events.

For several months DeSantis was thought to be the chief candidate unencumbered by legal drama who could defeat Trump for the nomination. But his campaign has faced several setbacks over the past several months, threatening his viability. The Florida governor heads into the second debate with even more pressure to deliver a breakout performance as his poll numbers have steadily decreased over the summer and more Republicans embrace the inevitability that Trump becomes the GOP’s standard-bearer.

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A recent CNN-University of New Hampshire poll showed DeSantis losing support in the Granite State, home to the first GOP primary in 2024. The poll showed DeSantis at 10% among New Hampshire GOP primary voters, a 13 percentage point decrease from when the poll was conducted in July.

“If we’re going to talk about who’s under the most pressure and that kind of thing, I think, obviously, it would be DeSantis because he was originally putting themselves out there as the alternative, even though a lot of his messaging was very, on the issues, was similar to Trump,” Grant Reeher, professor of political science at the Maxwell School at Syracuse University, told the Washington Examiner. “If he doesn’t distinguish himself in some way, I think pretty soon he’s going to run into the problem of anybody considering him will just say: Well, you know, why would I take him over Trump?”

Trump’s campaign has repeatedly taunted DeSantis’s struggles, with senior advisers claiming that the governor won’t be able to reverse the slide. “Literally nobody thinks DeeSanctimonious can count on an impressive performance to reverse his slide. You can’t coach personality!” wrote Trump advisers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita in a memo to reporters on Monday. “Ron DeeSanctus has 30 days left to beat President Trump, according to his own top political strategist, and right now everything is going wrong for DeeSanctimonious. Tick-tock, Ron, it will all be over soon!”

Attention will also surround Haley, who seized on a solid first debate performance and is attempting to siphon off enough votes from Trump, DeSantis, and the rest of the field to become the top alternative to the former president. An NBC News poll on Monday showed Haley at 7% support, a 3 percentage point increase from when the poll was conducted in June. The poll also showed Haley beating President Joe Biden in a hypothetical match by 5 percentage points, 46% to 41%, while Trump is tied with Biden at 46%.

Jason Roe, a GOP strategist who worked on Sen. Mitt Romney‘s (R-UT) and Sen. Marco Rubio‘s (R-FL) presidential campaigns, told the Washington Examiner that Haley could pose a plausible threat to DeSantis’s campaign depending on her debate performance. “If one of the other candidate candidates has a good night like Nikki Haley, I think you could see him continue to plunge,” Roe said. “And for those that don’t want Donald Trump as the nominee, I think this debate is going to really begin a winnowing process that creates some consolidation around the strongest candidate.”

Mike Murphy, a Republican strategist, argued that if Haley does deliver a solid debate performance, she should lean more into attacking Trump more heavily but not as aggressively as former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has lambasted Trump. “Newsflash: to Haley and all the GOP candidates. You are losing the primary. Badly. Try something else. This silly uniform GOP strategy of praising Trump to death is madness and clearly a failure,” Murphy wrote in his Substack newsletter. “You have to beat him, cleverly. Beat him in Iowa and then in New Hampshire. That will take the nomination away.”

Other candidates facing pressure to step up include Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), who will likely need to have a better debate performance this go-around. During the first debate, the South Carolina was criticized for his meekness. However, Scott’s campaign has emphasized that one debate performance will not determine the winner of the GOP primary. “Tim’s high favorability across the early states, combined with the fact that most voters know him to be truly conservative, is why he has the most room to grow of anyone in the field,” wrote campaign manager Jennifer DeCasper in a memo last week. “Our resources, deployed effectively and ready to go the distance, will be the rocket fuel that helps him do just that.”

Yet Chamberlain said a more aggressive tone is needed on the debate stage. “He can be optimistic, but he has to be louder and he has to be much more engaged,” she said. “He too needs to kind of bring his game and up it.”

Ramaswamy, who was one of the breakouts during the first debate, will need to showcase more expertise this time around, said other Republican experts. “If he takes it more seriously, voters will take him more seriously,” Roe said about the political novice. “Going into [the first debate], I thought he came across as petulant and not up to the job of president the way he handled himself. So I think if he would settle down and let his brain do the lifting and not let his mouth do so much of it, I think that might serve him better.”

Woodrow Johnston, a Republican consultant, said Ramaswamy, who got into a back-and-forth with Haley during the first debate, could target her this time around. “I wouldn’t be surprised if Vivek fires back at Nikki. He didn’t really do anything on her last time,” Johnston said. Yet he also repeated a suggestion that has been suspected of Ramawamy on the campaign trail. “I’m convinced that Vivek, who is running a great campaign, is trying to set himself up for 2028 or a nice, cushy Cabinet spot,” Johnston said.

As his rivals battle it out onstage, Trump will give a prime-time address to a crowd of striking United Auto Workers in Detroit, where he will likely slam Biden‘s handling of the economy. Trump will later trek out to California to attend the state’s GOP convention, as will DeSantis, Scott, and Ramaswamy.

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But Reeher cautioned that the GOP field needs to winnow quickly for a viable non-Trump candidate to emerge. “If the field stays really crowded well into the first few primaries, it does allow the former president to draw on his deep support,” he said. “And that will allow him to finish first in a lot of places, first or second, and that’s what really only needs to do so. And particularly if he does that early on, then I think the collective feeling is going to be that it’s it’s a done deal.”

For those candidates who don’t make the second debate, such as former Texas Rep. Will Hurd, experts suggest dropping out could be the next decision they make. “At this point, I don’t really see much of a pathway for the candidates who are not on the second debate stage,” said Johnston. “There should be that consolidation. I don’t see why someone like a Will Hurd wouldn’t support someone like a Chris Christie or even a Mike Pence. But I don’t know what’s going to happen because, again, we’re Republicans. We’re individualistic.”