The race for second place
US politics may have its honourable moments defined by people with the highest ideals and driven by heartfelt emotions but Wednesday’s Republican debate is probably not going to be one of those instances. We can talk about ideology, geopolitics, economics, the environment, AI’s role in the free market, the worldwide clamour for limited resources, and any number of “important” topics (guns!), but, on another level, politics amounts to calculations as crude as whether an obese seventy-seven-year-old might succumb to an overly spicy taco bowl.
It’s rarely stated as bluntly as that, of course, and on Wednesday night, anybody crazy enough to stay up into the very early hours (UK time) to watch the first debate among would-be Republican nominees will hear various reasons why these candidates believe they are ideal for the White House. Some like Ron DeSantis will talk about the hard decisions he’s had to make, like going to war with Mickey Mouse in Florida. Others will talk about political experience, business acumen, or simply youth and “energy”. The truth, however, is that they’re all there in case there is a lethal taco bowl moment.
Politically Donald Trump is unassailable. What we’ve learned in eight years is that normal political arguments don’t harm the former president. He is a cultural force. His only real weaknesses are his age and his legal situation, and the two might well be linked. He faces a tough twelve months in which there’ll hardly be a week when one or more of his cases won’t be heard in a federal or state court. There will hardly be a week when he won’t be preoccupied with thoughts of serious prison time or when he won’t be hearing things that might be detrimental to his state of mind. There’s a non-zero percent chance of a taco bowl moment or, at the very least, a legal situation developing that requires a “bad health” defence. There’s even a slim chance he won’t make it to the first primary in Iowa on the 15th of January.
These are the calculations behind what we’ll see played out in Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee. Yet the debate should also make a few ambiguities clear; the jostling for position informative of where we are in this election cycle. The debate is hosted by Fox News and the eight likely participants will mark out slightly different positions. All have notionally signed “The Pledge”, an agreement that the candidates will support the eventual nominee but, for some, it’s merely notional and a way to get on the stage. Trump himself has refused to abide by the pledge and continues to define himself by his difference to establishment Republicanism, as does his absence from the debate. He simply has nothing to prove and everything to lose. He has something like a 40% lead in the polls over DeSantis and absolutely no reason to take part.
Ron DeSantis, meanwhile, will be hoping to reverse the precipitous decline in his polling he’s seen over recent months. It was a decline easy to predict and unsurprising except to those who didn’t know DeSantis well enough to realise his fundamental weakness/weirdness. There’s a chance he’ll surprise but, if he does, it would go against his history of underperforming on the national stage.
Polling suggests that Vivek Ramaswamy, a biotech entrepreneur, might be one to watch but it’s too early to speak about somebody who has a big novelty factor based on his media strategy of doing anything to get himself on TV. He is also an avid Trumpian, possibly in the game to run as Trump’s choice for Vice President (Trump has already announced on Truth Social that he’ll only watch the debate to pick his running mate). Watch out for provocative statements to grab some headlines as he has already done with his comments on the issue of arms to Israel (“There’s no North Star commitment to any one country other than the United States of America”) to Russell Brand, itself indicative of his fringe selling point.
Not hugely loved by pundits or, for that matter, Republican voters, but Chris Christie is perhaps one to watch. He is a stubbornly-strong retail politician who refuses to accept the established wisdom of his being an “also-ran”. He usually does well in debates and the expectation is that Wednesday will be a chance to remind people of what he brings to Republican politics. Unfortunately for Christie and the other candidates, really the game is beyond whatever happens on the stage. None of these candidates have the weapons to harm Trump.
Significantly, the one candidate who should be able to dent the former President’s reputation is Mike Pence who has also made the stage. His candidacy has been suitably underwhelming and seems to amount to little more than his once being Vice President and his claims to have served America in its hour of need.
South Carolina Senator Tim Scott has been stockpiling cash for his campaign and is rising in the polling but has yet to break double figures. He is another who might simply be looking at the Vice President spot, leaning into Trump more than sensible Republicans would hope, but not quite as heavily as Ramaswamy. It’s hard to tell how much this is meaningful given a field where people are pretending to be more radical than they probably are. Should that in itself invalidate his candidacy? Again, in an ideal world, it should but it is unlikely. Alongside Christie, Scott stands the most to gain by making the stage.
Nikki Haley is another familiar face but her star has dimmed somewhat through her association with Trump and general willingness to bend to the prevailing political winds. There was a time when she seemed a reasonably serious politician. Now? Who knows! Another seeking the VP slot? Some say that being the only woman in the line-up gives her a unique advantage but there’s no indication there would be any advantage in this race.
North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum has made headlines with his campaign scheme that gave $20 gift cards to anybody who donated $1 to his campaign. It sounds like a crazy scheme but it is legal in a race where candidates need to prove their ability to raise campaign funds (even if that means running at a huge loss). It is, however, an expensive indulgence for somebody who just offers perhaps the least compelling version of Trumpism on offer here.
Asa Hutchinson is something of a surprise addition to the line-up and is polling in eighth place, which perhaps tells us all we need to know about the state of the race. He’s considered the most “normal” of the candidates, coming from the establishment side of the GOP. He has claimed that he’ll be on stage to “prosecute” Trump, which is both commendable and also futile.
As for Trump, he’s already recorded a podcast with Tucker Carlson and he’ll certainly be sucking all the oxygen from Thursday’s news agenda now he’s announced that he’ll be handing himself over to authorities in Georgia. Trump and his 18 other co-conspirators had been given eleven days to present themselves at the jailhouse but that window runs out at lunchtime on Friday. Thursday should make for extraordinary TV. Unlike his arraignments in New York, Washington, and Miami, Trump’s arrest in Georgia promises to be very different. It’s anticipated that he will be photographed and treated like an everyday criminal, but we won’t get to see coverage of Trump from inside a courtroom. Although Georgia’s law advocates for cameras (with a judge’s permission) as part of the state’s commitment to transparent justice, Trump is only due to be arrested on Thursday. His arraignment will take place next week, which will give the media two bites at the story and Trump two chances to play to the crowds. And with drama like that due to take place, who really cares what happens in any debate?
@DavidWaywell
Write to us with your comments to be considered for publication at letters@reaction.life