You can hear the wishful thinking, the hope for an alternative to Donald Trump, in much of the commentary on the most recent Iowa polling: Yeah, Trump has a massive lead nationally, but hey, it’s only 23 points in Iowa! And there are still several months before the caucuses! Maybe the first debate will start to really change things! Mainstream Republican strategists, stuck in Trump’s shadow, are holding on to the belief that strange things happen in politics all the time. “Will Donald Trump win the nomination? Sure, he might. But there are also a host of unknowns out there that we don’t have any ability to predict,” says Whit Ayres, a veteran Republican pollster who worked on Ron DeSantis’s winning 2018 run for Florida governor. “So having someone in the debate capture public attention, get more name ID, get more contributions from donors most definitely does matter, because we have no idea what the future holds regarding Donald Trump.”
Yet the more Trump gets indicted, the larger his polling lead has grown. None of which, however, has stopped the regularly scheduled process from playing out, even if everyone besides former New Jersey governor Chris Christie seems to be positioning themselves as a fallback plan, just in case Trump is somehow imprisoned or struck by lightning.
But as eight candidates prepare to take the stage—without Trump—in Milwaukee Wednesday night, Mike Madrid would like to inject some cold reality. He is no Trump fan: Madrid was one of the cofounders of the Lincoln Project. But the Republican consultant was quick to point out that the contender who is selling a true contrast to the former president is going nowhere. “There’s no lane for Chris Christie, who is the only one saying he won’t vote for Trump,” Madrid says. “They’re all trying to take a small-D democratic route through a party that is now an authoritarian movement. The only characteristic that matters to the base Republican voter is fealty to the leader. So the person who helps themself the most in the debate may be the one who plays to Trump the most. But then why are we having a primary?”
The show, or sideshow, must go on. DeSantis has recently done his best, in a backward way, to goose interest in the first debate. Last week a firm associated with Never Back Down, the DeSantis-supporting super PAC that is effectively running the Florida governor’s campaign, posted hundreds of pages of blunt strategic advice and detailed analysis where it could be found by reporters for The New York Times. The highlights included urging DeSantis to “take a sledgehammer” to Vivek Ramaswamy, the wealthy biotech investor and a rival for the nomination, and to make sure to “defend Donald Trump” when the former president is inevitably criticized by Christie. Unless, as one Republican strategist suggests to me, the whole thing was a head fake—a leak calculated to mislead DeSantis’s opponents as they prepare to take the stage in Milwaukee. Which would be the cleverest thing the remarkably clumsy DeSantis campaign has done so far.
The debate stakes for DeSantis were always going to be high: Hyped for months as Trump’s toughest challenger and a more electable heir apparent, he has burned through tens of millions of dollars and reshuffled his campaign’s leadership, only to go backward in the polls. “It’s kind of amazing: In the most recent focus groups we’ve had, nobody even brought up DeSantis,” says Sarah Longwell, a Republican consultant. “Six, eight months ago he was very dominant, especially among people who were unsure about Trump and thought we should move on. The fact that as people have gotten to know DeSantis more they are talking about him less seems like a stark indication things are not going well.”
The reporting of the debate strategy documents heightens the pressure on DeSantis to perform well. Another repercussion has been on Ramaswamy: DeSantis’s advisers have validated him as a threat and elevated his profile just before Ramaswamy will appear in front of a national television audience. “He’s got to be thrilled,” says Scott Jennings, a Republican strategist and longtime top adviser to Kentucky senator Mitch McConnell. “His entire campaign has been that he’s the thirstiest candidate, right? I mean, showing up at the courthouse when Trump’s being [arraigned]—nobody is working the gears of the attention machine harder than Vivek. And so that was a gift for him, in a campaign where there hasn’t been too many gifts.”
Fox News, shamelessly imitating Succession’s third season, is apparently throwing in with the young right-wing firebrand, at least for now. Ramaswamy has two other elements in his favor: He stands out, in a stolid field, as a compelling entertainer, and he is a political outsider. “He’s high energy, he’s got a spiel. He’s a showman,” Longwell says. “The thing that voters say about Vivek that’s so similar to Trump is that he’s not a regular politician—which is what people are saying about DeSantis: ‘Eh, he’s a regular politician.’ Which is basically the death knell in the modern Republican Party.”
GOP insiders say they also detect voter curiosity about Tim Scott, the South Carolina senator, particularly among evangelicals and in the wake of the enthusiastic reception Scott received at the recent Iowa State Fair. “Tim Scott and Nikki Haley are both very capable politicians, both very popular in South Carolina,” Ayres says. “They are worth keeping an eye on. There’s a market for someone to say, ‘Listen, it’s time to look to the future rather than the past.’ There’s a market for someone to say, ‘We need to elect the strongest possible candidate to beat Joe Biden and his horrible left-wing supporters.’ There is a way to say that it’s time to move on without going directly at Donald Trump.”
Wednesday night would be a good time for one of the challengers to finally start uttering those magic words. Because if someone doesn’t soon, some restless GOP power brokers—like Rupert Murdoch—may ramp up the search for better options.