Opinion: The seven Republicans competing for the role of Trump understudy

Opinion by David Axelrod

(CNN) — The Hall of Fame philosopher/catcher Yogi Berra once said, in describing the shadows that engulfed left field at Yankee Stadium in the afternoon, “It gets late early out there.”

The same can be said of the current, lopsided campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. Though the first contest in Iowa is still three months away, time is running out for one of the candidates in the field to begin to emerge as former President Donald Trump’s principal challenger.

All of this gives added urgency to Wednesday’s debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. There the also-rans will meet again to audition for the role of clear Trump alternative before a party that doesn’t seem to be particularly looking for one.

Since the spring, when the first of four separate felony indictments against him was delivered, Trump’s lead among the GOP electorate has steadily grown from sizable to prodigious to bordering on historic. (He had denied all wrongdoing.) An NBC News poll from this weekend places Trump’s national lead for the nomination at more than 40 points.

So assured is the former president of his chances that he will skip Wednesday’s debate, as he did the first one in Milwaukee on August 23, leaving his opponents to scrap among themselves as he counterprograms by rallying autoworkers in Detroit.

Any hope of stopping the former president’s seemingly inexorable momentum rests heavily on Iowa, which on January 15 will be the first state to vote for the GOP presidential nomination. There Trump’s polling lead is formidable but less than a majority.

Trump narrowly lost the Hawkeye State in 2016, and the belief among Republican strategists I speak to is that he has a lock on about 35% of the caucus vote. But beating Trump would require someone to first coalesce the voters who are open to another choice, and no one in the field of a dozen challengers has thus far come close to doing that.

There was a time, before Trump’s indictment surge, that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis seemed destined to play that role. The Florida governor was nipping at Trump’s heels in national polling last winter and confidently pitched himself as the only viable GOP alternative. Instead, DeSantis has become Exhibit A for how first-time presidential campaigns can grind down early phenoms as voters come to know them and scrutiny mounts.

Today, DeSantis sits in the teens, much closer to the pack chasing Trump than to Trump himself. DeSantis has pushed all his chips into Iowa, where he is doing somewhat better than he is nationally. His hope is that a sharp lurch to the right on abortion and other issues will allow him to outflank Trump in a caucus dominated by social conservatives.

In the first debate, DeSantis landed some well-rehearsed answers. But it is partly that robotic nature that has bridled him. He awkwardly faded into the woodwork when give-and-take requiring spontaneity erupted. Overall, DeSantis held serve but failed to achieve the breakout he needed to regain his lost mojo.

On that occasion, DeSantis was eclipsed on the right by entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who turned in a flamboyantly Trumpian performance, replete with audacious, base-riling provocations. Yet when it comes to such demagoguery, Ramaswamy is still a disciple. Trump is the master. So while Ramaswamy gained a few points in post-debate polling, it was more at DeSantis’s expense than Trump’s.

Former UN Ambassador and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley was the other star of the show in Milwaukee. She looked comfortable and strong in slapping down Ramaswamy on foreign policy and scolding Trump, in absentia, for his profligacy in office and his vulnerability in a general election.

Haley also stood out as the only woman on the stage. Her appeals to generational change are timely, given that the party frontrunners today — Trump and President Joe Biden — are a combined 157 years old. Her story as a first-generation American is compelling. But these are likely to be more meaningful assets in a general election than in this Trump-ified Republican Party.

Although Haley currently scores better than any Republican against Biden, she remains in single digits in Republican primary polling nationally. One glimmer of hope for the ambassador came in recent polls in New Hampshire, which follows Iowa on the Republican primary schedule. Haley has risen to double-digits and is in the top three, though Trump still does three times better than she does.

No one else advanced their cause in the first debate, and the result was the continued muddle among the pretenders that Trump had hoped for when he took a pass on the event. Now another month has elapsed, and so may have the time for any of the other candidates to show critical donors and Republican activists that they can catch the runaway frontrunner.

It is a daunting challenge, in part because of the peculiar dynamic of a race in which the Republican tribe is rallying around an indicted former president. It’s hard to beat someone without attacking him, but it’s hard to attack him without appearing in the eyes of many Republican voters to be siding with what they perceive as his unjust, politically motivated accusers.

The candidates on stage who flayed Trump for his alleged crimes — former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson — were judged by polls of Republicans to be debate losers, although Christie, like Haley, has bypassed DeSantis in New Hampshire, where independent voters can participate in the Republican primary. (Hutchinson, for his part, failed to qualify for the debate stage on Wednesday.)

Haley, who has lately gotten attention from the desperate Republican donor class as their latest, best hope to stop Trump, has tried to navigate the minefield. She has attacked Trump on issues other than the 91 felony counts against him and finessed her critiques by opining that even Trump as a convicted felon would be better than the Biden/Kamala Harris ticket.

All of this reflects the reality that despite his travails — and trial and Republican primary calendars that might coincide to make him his party’s choice and a convicted felon on almost the same day — there may be no viable strategy to deny Trump a third GOP nomination.

The seven on the stage Wednesday may actually be competing for the role of understudy should Trump unexpectedly falter, with hopes of getting cast by Republican voters in the leading role in 2028. If so, look for them to score more points against each other than the man who isn’t there.

The-CNN-Wire
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