What are we all doing here?
The Republicans’ first primary debate dangles on the calendar like one of those leftover paper snowflakes slapped up on the mini-fridge. It feels like a half-hearted vestige—it’s late summer, five months before the first votes are cast; precedent calls for a lineup of haircuts on a stage. And for the most part, the qualifiers will oblige, except for the main haircut—former President Donald Trump, barring some last-minute fit of FOMO that lands him in Milwaukee en route to his surrender to authorities in Georgia.
So why should the rest of us bother? Would anyone watch a Mike Tyson fight if Iron Mike wasn’t actually fighting? Or The Sopranos, if Tony skipped the show for a therapy session (with Tucker Carlson)?
Poor Milwaukee, by the way, which already suffered desertion three summers ago when it was selected to host the Democratic National Convention only to have COVID keep everyone home. Joe Biden blew off his own convention and didn’t bother to send an emissary (no Jill, Kamala, or even Doug). Delegates were told to stay away, and the city was left all spiffed up for only a crew of surgical-masked functionaries.
Tonight’s pageant of also-rans must go on too. The Republican National Committee has decreed this kickoff debate to be a landmark event, sanctifying August 23 as a key date in the 2024 cycle. (“Cycle” feels like an especially apt cliché here—events spinning hypnotically in circles.) Never mind that Trump upended the traditional presidential campaign cycle years ago, and that it is now dictated by whatever whim he decides to follow at a given moment. No matter how much thunder Trump steals from this proceeding—by skipping it, counterprogramming it with Tucker, and potentially following it up with a morning-after mug shot—everyone else is still required to treat this spectacle as some big and pivotal showdown.
As such, the media will swarm into town—because this is what we do and what we love (and because datelines impress). The host network, Fox News, will hype the clash—the “Melee in Milwaukee,” or some such. One-liners are being buffed, comebacks polished, and umbrage rehearsed. And no matter how effective certain gambits are deemed to be in practice, the absence of the GOP’s inescapable front-runner will only underscore how impotent the rest of the field has made themselves.
Who knows? A debate stage crowded with eight twitchy egos carries the possibility for surprise. Strange things do happen. That’s why we watch. Trump has given his opponents an opportunity, at least in theory. They can seize this chance to hammer away at the most important issue of the campaign: Trump himself, his radiating legal jeopardy, and the recurring debacle of the GOP nominating him again and again (and probably again). This need not be the televised festival of appeasement that so many expect. And no doubt, there will be a few feisty outliers on the stage. Some of the bottom dogs—Chris Christie, maybe Mike Pence—will probably unleash some unpleasantness in the direction of the truant front-runner. They will have their “moments,” and commentators will praise them for “landing some punches.”
Even so, tonight’s contest will inevitably suffer from two basic structural flaws. The main point, theoretically, of a political debate is to try to persuade voters to support your campaign instead of the other candidates’. But that presupposes a constituency of voters who can be persuaded by hearing a set of facts, or are open to being educated. This, on the whole, is not the audience we have here. A large and determinative and still deeply committed portion of the GOP electorate—the MAGA sector—has been more or less a closed box for seven years now.
The rigid devotion that Trump continues to enjoy from much of his party keeps affirming itself in new and dispiriting ways. A CBS News/YouGov poll released over the weekend contained this doozy of a data point: 71 percent of Trump supporters said they are inclined to believe whatever Trump tells them. That compares with 63 percent who are inclined to believe what their friends and family tell them, 56 percent who believe conservative-media figures, and 42 percent who believe religious leaders.
The other structural defect involves the likely self-neutering of tonight’s putative gladiators. Ideally, a debate features participants who actually want to win. That generally requires a willingness to attack their biggest adversary, whether he’s participating in the event or not, and especially when he holds a massive lead over them. Other than Kamikaze Christie, whom Republicans will almost certainly not nominate, most of the remaining “challengers” on the stage seem content to play for second place—running mate or 2028.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis insisted otherwise on Monday, when he claimed on Fox News that he would be the only Republican debater who is “not running to be vice president, I’m not running to be in the Cabinet, and I’m not running to be a contributor on cable news.” This reeked of projection, even though DeSantis would seem especially ill-suited to being a cable personality—even less well suited than he is to running for president.
DeSantis suffered another indignity last week when The New York Times reported that a firm associated with the super PAC supporting his campaign, Never Back Down, had posted hundreds of pages of internal debate-strategy documents on its website. The game plan, summarized by the Times, called for DeSantis to “take a sledgehammer” to upstart Vivek Ramaswamy while also taking care to defend Trump from Christie’s likely bombardment. In other words, DeSantis would try to score easy goodwill by sidling up to the bully and vivisecting the real enemy, the thirsty biotech guy. So noble of the governor. Maybe Trump will send a thank-you note.
DeSantis remains, for now, the Republicans’ most legitimate threat to Trump. But if these debate directives are a guide, why is he even bothering? The blueprint appears fully emblematic of everything wrong with his campaign: a bloated venture, playing for continued viability, and zero stomach for taking on Trump in a serious way. It’s also telling that someone decided to post the document trove in such a findable space online—which is either really dumb or really indicative of how badly someone in DeSantis World wants to embarrass him.
Whether intentionally or not, DeSantis actually coined something memorable the other day when he chided Trump’s supporters for mindlessly following his every pronouncement—“listless vessels,” he called them. (He later said that he was referring to Trump’s endorsers in Congress, not voters.) This struck me as sneaky eloquence from DeSantis, or whoever wrote the line for him. But again, the phrase carried a strong whiff of projection as DeSantis prepared to lead the real parade of listless vessels to Milwaukee, content to bob along in the wake of the Titanic.
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