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      DeSantis’s Debate Mission: Prove He’s the Top Trump Alternative

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      The Florida governor was livid after his allies’ debate strategy memo was revealed online. He enters tonight’s debate looking to reclaim lost ground.Follow live updates on the first Republican presidential primary debate.Ron DeSantis was livid.The super PAC supporting him had posted a trove of sensitive material, including strategic advice and research on his rivals, only days before the first debate of the 2024 campaign. The advice was, at times, so basic that it could come off as condescending: reminding the Florida governor to talk about his family, for instance, and prescribing how many times he should attack President Biden and the news media.Mr. DeSantis erupted over the revelation, according to people told of his reaction, even though the posting of the documents online was meant to avoid running afoul of campaign finance rules. The advice memo, pilloried as “amateurish” within his extended orbit, was quickly taken down, along with the other documents, but the damage had been done. If he followed the advice laid out — including which rivals to hit — he would look like a puppet.Campaigning over the weekend, Mr. DeSantis distanced himself from the memo. “I didn’t do it,” he said. “I didn’t read it. It’s not going to influence what I do.”The episode was a self-inflicted wound by the broader DeSantis team that capped two months of difficulties for the Florida governor that have included dropping poll numbers, a new campaign manager and staff cutbacks. Now, Mr. DeSantis heads into Wednesday night’s event in Milwaukee looking to reclaim lost ground and avoid losing more, knowing that he is almost certain to be a major target for his rivals without Donald J. Trump on the stage.It’s been clear for weeks that the debate would be a critical juncture; to prepare, Mr. DeSantis brought on a top Republican debate coach, Brett O’Donnell. But in some ways, a number of Republicans said, Mr. DeSantis is less in need of a breakout moment than of a stabilizing performance. Allies believe his top priority is to reassure skittish donors and supporters that he has the mettle to square off against Mr. Trump.“This is a big moment for him, but he’s going to rise to it,” predicted Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky, one of a few House Republicans backing Mr. DeSantis.Mr. DeSantis has displayed some resiliency. Polls show that after months of attacks from Mr. Trump and weeks of unflattering headlines about campaign upheaval, many Republican voters still like Mr. DeSantis. He had the highest favorability rating of any Republican in this week’s Des Moines Register/NBC News poll in Iowa, even as he trailed Mr. Trump by 42 percent to 19 percent.But his standing in the multicandidate race has slipped, with other candidates such as Vivek Ramaswamy and former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey appearing to make inroads in the race for second place.“When he got in the race, he had the first license to be the alternative to Trump,” Brad Todd, a longtime Republican strategist, said of Mr. DeSantis. “But it was a license that had an expiration date, and I think that’s probably due.”“It’s really his title to keep,” Mr. Todd added, but “it’s not a foregone conclusion he keeps it.”Whether Mr. DeSantis can convert those favorable views into votes remains to be seen.Advisers say Mr. DeSantis is focused on winning the nomination on the ground in Iowa and the other early states, outworking Mr. Trump and leveraging his well-funded super PAC to out-organize his rivals. But if the national perception of his candidacy does not improve, that task becomes significantly harder.Publication of the debate-prep documents further sowed mistrust between Mr. DeSantis’s campaign and the super PAC, which he seeded with $82.5 million left over from his 2022 re-election. The anger is so palpable that one person who has advised the DeSantis campaign said the super PAC memo “almost seemed intentionally unhelpful.”One line in the memo seemed to sting most: the suggestion that Mr. DeSantis defend Mr. Trump and bludgeon Mr. Chris Christie by accusing him of angling to become an MSNBC host with his frequent broadsides against the former president.That is because Mr. DeSantis, who had been traveling to events in Iowa and New Hampshire organized by his super PAC and interacting with members of the group’s staff, had already been testing out a version of just such a line with various people in private, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.The dynamics of a Trump-less debate stage on Wednesday are hard to predict. But the DeSantis campaign expects the governor to be the “center of attacks,” according to a guidance that his new campaign manager, James Uthmeier, issued in a memo to donors and allies over the weekend.“We all know why our competitors have to go down this road: because this is a two-man race for the Republican nomination between Governor DeSantis and Donald Trump,” Mr. Uthmeier wrote.But the description of the G.O.P. contest as a “two-man race” seems outdated, as Mr. DeSantis’s rivals have drawn far closer to him in many polls than he is to Mr. Trump. The super PAC memo advised the governor to take a “sledgehammer” to one rival, Mr. Ramaswamy, who has been climbing in some surveys.Mr. Massie, who dismissed the memo as “not the smartest move,” said that Mr. Ramaswamy was more of a “curiosity” than a serious candidate.“There is no way in hell people are going to elect someone as president — or to either party’s nomination — who they only found out about six months ago,” Mr. Massie said.A spokeswoman for Mr. Ramaswamy, Tricia McLaughlin, responded by mocking Mr. DeSantis for urging Republican voters not to be “listless vessels” who blindly support Mr. Trump.“Counter to what some candidates onstage say, we believe the American people are more than just listless vessels,” she said.One Republican aligned with a rival to Mr. DeSantis described Mr. Ramaswamy, who has repeatedly come to Mr. Trump’s defense, as a wild card in the debate.Much will depend on the questions the moderators ask of the candidates, and whether they try to steer the conversation to a referendum on Mr. Trump in absentia, forcing the candidates to talk about him.Mr. Massie said that Mr. Trump’s absence would allow Mr. DeSantis to take unanswered “clean shots” at the former president’s record, and to assert his right to rebuttals when attacked by rivals, soaking up airtime.“He’s got to be careful, I think, not to criticize the man, Trump,” Mr. Massie said. “Policy is Ron’s path to victory.”Indeed, while Republican politics is rife with prognosticators saying that the way to beat Mr. Trump is to attack him, Mr. Christie has been doing just that for weeks, gaining in New Hampshire but not in national polls. Neither strategy to beat Mr. Trump — holding him close or a frontal assault — has proved surefire in the months before Labor Day, when the campaign season begins in earnest.The race is “wide open” for the eight candidates onstage, said Henry Barbour, a longtime Republican National Committee member. But, he added, “it has to be a one-on-one race.”If there’s more than one candidate not named Trump still in the race after the South Carolina primary, the fourth G.O.P. nominating contest, which is set for Feb. 24, 2024, Mr. Barbour said, “it’s almost a given that Donald Trump will have an insurmountable lead by the middle of March” in the all-important delegate chase.With Mr. Trump missing, Mr. Todd, the G.O.P. strategist, said the debate had the potential to feel like an undercard ahead of a later marquee matchup.“The debate in some ways will perform like a semifinal,” Mr. Todd said, with the goal being to advance to the next round. “Everyone knows Trump is in the finals. This is about who will be in the finals with him.” More

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      Who Are Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, the Debate Moderators?

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      The role of debate moderator carries prestige, but it also brings exacting demands and inherent risks: personal attacks by candidates, grievances about perceived biases and, for the two moderators of Wednesday’s Republican primary debate, a tempestuous cable news network’s reputation.Enter Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, the Fox News Channel mainstays who drew that assignment and will pose questions to the eight G.O.P. presidential candidates squaring off for the first time, absent former President Donald J. Trump.The party’s front-runner, Mr. Trump will bypass the debate in favor of an online interview with Tucker Carlson, who was fired from Fox News in April.But that doesn’t mean the debate’s moderators will be under any less of a microscope.Here’s a closer look at who they are:Bret BaierHe is the chief political anchor for Fox News and the host of “Special Report With Bret Baier” at 6 p.m. on weeknights. Mr. Baier, 53, joined the network in 1998, two years after the network debuted, according to his biography.Mr. Baier, like Ms. MacCallum, is no stranger to the debate spotlight.In 2016, he moderated three G.O.P. primary debates for Fox, alongside Megyn Kelly and Chris Wallace, who have since left the network. He was present when Ms. Kelly grilled Mr. Trump about his treatment of women during a 2015 debate, an exchange that drew Mr. Trump’s ire and led him to boycott the network’s next debate nearly six months later.During the 2012 presidential race, Mr. Baier moderated five Republican primary debates.At a network dominated by conservative commentators like Sean Hannity and the departed Mr. Carlson and Bill O’Reilly, Mr. Baier has generally avoided controversy — but not entirely.After Fox News called Arizona for Joseph R. Biden Jr. on election night in 2020, becoming the first major news network to do so and enraging Mr. Trump and his supporters, Mr. Baier suggested in an email to network executives the next morning that the outlet should reverse its projection.“It’s hurting us,” he wrote in the email, which was obtained by The New York Times.Mr. Baier was also part of a witness list in the defamation lawsuit that Dominion Voting Systems brought against Fox News over the network’s role in spreading disinformation about the company’s voting equipment. Fox settled the case for $787.5 million before it went to trial.Martha MacCallumShe is the anchor and executive editor of “The Story With Martha MacCallum” at 3 p.m. on weekdays. Ms. MacCallum, 59, joined the network in 2004, according to her biography.During the 2016 election, Ms. MacCallum moderated a Fox News forum for the bottom seven Republican presidential contenders who had not qualified for the party’s first debate in August 2015. She reprised that role in January 2016, just days before the Iowa caucuses.She and Mr. Baier also moderated a series of town halls with individual Democratic candidates during the 2020 election, including one that featured Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.Before joining Fox, she worked for NBC and CNBC.When Fox projected Mr. Biden’s victory over Mr. Trump in Arizona, effectively indicating that Mr. Biden had clinched the presidency, Ms. MacCallum was similarly drawn into the maelstrom at the network.During a Zoom meeting with network executives and Mr. Baier, she suggested it was not enough to call states based on numerical calculations — the standard by which networks have made such determinations for generations — but that viewers’ reactions should be considered.“In a Trump environment,” Ms. MacCallum said, according to a review of the phone call by The Times, “the game is just very, very different.” More

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      What Are the Rules for the Republican Debate?

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      The first debate of the 2024 Republican presidential primary, hosted by Fox News, is set to kick off in Milwaukee on Wednesday at 9 p.m. Eastern time. It’s expected to last two hours.In contrast to many debates, the candidates will not make opening statements, though they will have 45 seconds each for closing statements. They will have one minute to answer each question and 30 seconds for follow-ups.The debate will be moderated by the Fox News hosts Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, and will include eight candidates: Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota, former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, the former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, former Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, former Vice President Mike Pence, the entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina. Former President Donald J. Trump has chosen not to participate.To qualify, candidates had to meet polling and donor criteria set by the Republican National Committee and also sign a pledge to support the Republican nominee, no matter who it is. More

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      Preparing to Fact-Check the GOP Debate: A Look at Possible Lines

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      Through stump speeches and statements on the campaign trail, the Republican presidential contenders have hinted at what they might say on the debate stage. Here’s a look at their possible lines.The top contenders in the Republican presidential primary — minus the most important one — will face off Wednesday night in the first debate of the 2024 race. The debate will provide the candidates, many who are relatively unknown to voters, an opportunity to refine their message and to test their attacks on rivals, hoping to deliver a zinger to stand out in a crowded field.Those statements may include exaggerations or outright misinformation about a host of subjects, like inflation, immigration, foreign policy and cultural issues. The candidates’ stump speeches and previous statements offer a glimpse of what the debate audience might hear.Here is a sampler of the kind of exaggerations, misleading statements and half-truths that could come up.Chris Christie“We should discuss why he promised to build a wall across the entire border and completed 52 miles of new wall in four years. At that pace, he’d need 110 more years as president to finish the wall.”This is partially true.Mr. Christie has made targeting former President Donald J. Trump — the front-runner for the Republican nomination, who is not attending this debate — central to his campaign and specifically criticized him for supposedly not fulfilling his campaign promises while in office.It is true that Mr. Trump said throughout the 2016 cycle that he would build a wall along the border and make Mexico pay for it. Mexico has not paid for any wall construction.However, Mr. Trump said he would build a 1,000-mile wall, not along the entire border as Mr. Christie has claimed. And while Mr. Christie’s 52-mile figure refers to one category of wall construction, the Trump administration built around 453 total miles of border wall starting in 2017, though most of the new barriers reinforced or replaced existing structures.Ron DeSantis“In Florida, our crime rate is at a 50-year low. You look at the top 25 cities for crime in America, Florida does not rank amongst the top 25.”This is partially true.Mr. DeSantis has played up his record as Florida’s governor and what he sees as legislative successes there throughout his presidential campaign.While Florida’s crime rate fell to a 50-year low in 2021, crime reporting was incomplete and provisional after a switch in how law enforcement agencies reported data. The crime rate that year included data from just 59 percent of agencies in Florida, leaving crime data for more than 40 percent of the state’s population unaccounted for, according to The Tampa Bay Times.Nikki Haley“Why was it last year that a third of our teenage girls seriously contemplated suicide? This is serious. We need to look at that. So let’s snap out of it. Boys go into boys bathrooms, girls go to girls bathrooms and if there’s something in between, go into a private bathroom.”This lacks evidence.Ms. Haley, the only woman in the Republican primary, has, like many candidates, leaned into issues involving gender identity and sexuality on the trail. Criticizing transgender athletes who compete in women’s sports has become one of her most reliable applause lines.There is no scientifically proven link between suicidal ideation and trans people competing in sports. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported this year that teenage girls are facing elevated suicide rates. Medical experts have said that while there are many potential causes, no evidence points to increased awareness of L.G.B.T.Q. issues as a causal or contributing factor.Mike Pence“The fact is, today abortion law in the United States is more aligned with China and North Korea than with Western nations in Europe.”This is misleading.Mr. Pence, the staunchest abortion opponent in the race, has frequently expressed support for a national abortion ban and called on other candidates to back a 15-week ban.The majority of European countries have legalized abortion up to 10 to 15 weeks of pregnancy and allow for abortions past the gestational limit if the parent’s life is in danger. Many laws in those countries are more permissive than they appear on paper and allow for exemptions upon request.China, in contrast, allows for elective abortions without specific gestational limits, but in recent years has said that it aims to reduce the number of “medically unnecessary” abortions. And it is unclear what North Korea’s laws are, given that the World Health Organization reported no documentation after 2015 on the procedure’s legality.Vivek Ramaswamy“There’s very little evidence of people being arrested for being armed (Jan. 6). Most of the people who were armed, I assume the federal officers who were out there were armed.”This is false.Mr. Ramaswamy has remained one of Mr. Trump’s most ardent defenders through his four indictments and said throughout his campaign that “systematic and pervasive censorship,” not Mr. Trump, was to blame for the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.The Justice Department reported that 112 individuals were charged with using a “deadly or dangerous weapon or causing serious bodily injury to an officer” and 104 were charged with entering a restricted area with a dangerous or deadly weapon as of Aug. 4. There is no way to know how many of the thousands there were armed, but Secret Service officials confiscated several hundred weapons that included knives or blades, pepper spray canisters, brass knuckles and tasers.And Mr. Ramaswamy himself condemned Mr. Trump on X, formerly known as Twitter, after the attack: “What Trump did last week was wrong. Downright abhorrent. Plain and simple.”Tim Scott“There have been more illegal encounters under Biden than the previous two administrations combined.”This is false.Mr. Scott, who has campaigned as a “happy warrior” with an optimistic message, has largely directed his criticism toward the Biden administration, particularly its handling of illegal border crossings.Reporting of immigration data changed in March 2020 from tracking “apprehensions” to “encounters,” a broader range of expulsions enabled by the Title 42 border policy that allowed for quicker removals during the Covid-19 pandemic, making comparisons across administrations inconsistent.But available data from U.S. Border Patrol showed that illegal immigration levels nationwide were still lower under Mr. Biden than under the Trump and Obama administrations combined. And PolitiFact reported that the Scott campaign used inconsistent metrics to back its claim. More

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      Burgum Debate Attendance in Question After Basketball Injury

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      The North Dakota governor, a long-shot Republican presidential candidate, was taken to an emergency room Tuesday. The extent of his injury was unclear.Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota injured himself playing basketball with his staff on Tuesday and was taken to an emergency room ahead of his planned appearance at Wednesday’s first Republican presidential primary debate.Mr. Burgum, 67, injured his leg, according to two campaign aides, and it was unclear on Wednesday morning whether he would be able to stand at the debate. The injury was earlier reported by CNN.Mr. Burgum is among the least-known candidates who made the stage, climbing over the 1 percent polling requirement set by the Republican National Committee after dipping into his personal fortune to air television ads in the early nominating states.In a brief interview this month, Mr. Burgum made clear that reaching the stage was a key first step in his candidacy.“The important part was making the debate,” he had said.This is a developing story. More

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      ‘I Don’t Think Trump Will Be the Nominee’: Three Writers on the First G.O.P. Debate

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      Frank Bruni, a contributing Opinion writer, hosted an online conversation with Ann Coulter, who writes the Substack newsletter Unsafe, and Stuart Stevens, a former Republican political consultant, to discuss their expectations for the first Republican debate and the future of American politics.Frank Bruni: Stuart, I’ve done many of these political roundtables, but never one at a juncture this titanically and transcendentally bizarre. The first Republican debate of the presidential election season is tonight, the party front-runner is absent, and he’s running, oh, infinity points ahead of his Republican rivals despite two impeachments, 91 felony counts and unquantifiable wretchedness. Color me morose.But also, illuminate me: Given Donald Trump’s lead and its durability, does this debate matter, and how? Is there an argument that it could change the trajectory of this contest?Stuart Stevens: If a candidate enters the debate with a strategy of taking out another candidate, it can change a trajectory. In the 2012 primary, Mitt Romney did this to Rick Perry in their first debate and again in a subsequent debate to Newt Gingrich. (I was the campaign strategist for that Romney campaign.) But you must go into a debate with the attitude “one of us will walk off this stage alive.” I don’t think anyone has the nerve to do that.Ann Coulter: I think this is Ron DeSantis’s to lose. If he’d just ignore the media and be the nerd that he is, he’ll do great.Bruni: Stuart, do you agree that DeSantis has an underappreciated strength and that there’s really a path for him to this nomination? And other than DeSantis, is there anyone on that stage tonight who could have a breakout moment and matter in this nomination contest?Stevens: DeSantis is Jeb Bush without the charm. He is a small man running for a big job and looking smaller every day. If I were advising Tim Scott or another candidate, I’d advise them to use the debate to attack DeSantis and blow him up. This is a man who lost a debate to Charlie Crist.Coulter: I’m sorry, but this just shows that you have zero understanding of the country, much less the party. Also, famous last words, but: I don’t think Trump will be the nominee, but you’d really do the country a solid if you could get Democrats to stop indicting him.Bruni: Ann, in just a few sentences, why won’t Trump be the nominee? That’s a renegade perspective. (Or, given recent Republican political history, should I say maverick?) Convince me.Coulter: Trump can barely speak English. He’s a gigantic baby. The only reason he crushed in 2016 is because of immigration — the wall, deport illegal immigrants, the travel ban (which imposed limits on travel from several predominantly Muslim countries). That is DeSantis this time — without the total lack of interest in carrying it out.Bruni: OK, but before we move on, is there anyone else in this debate who could break out and matter?Coulter: No.Bruni: Stuart, do you too believe Trump will not or might not get the nomination, as Ann does?Stevens: Trump is what the Republican Party wants to be. He’s a white grievance candidate in a party that is over 80 percent white and has embraced its victimhood. Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson are alternatives, but there isn’t a winning market for an anti-Trump message. Trump will be the nominee.Coulter: I think you’re both more focused on personalities and whiteness than the voters are. It’s issues. And on the issues, Christie is totally out of step with the G.O.P. — and I’d say the country. He weeps about Ukrainians killed and raped by Russians, but doesn’t seem to give two figs about Americans killed and raped by illegal immigrants in our country.Bruni: Fair point about personalities, Ann, so let’s indeed turn to issues and larger dynamics. You’ve identified Ukraine as an issue getting too much attention. What else is getting lots of attention but largely irrelevant to this race’s outcome, and what’s hugely relevant and being overlooked?Stevens: It is actually all about race. Eighty-five percent of the Trump coalition in 2020 was white non-Hispanic in a country that is about 60 percent non-Hispanic white, and less since we’ve been chatting. The efforts in 2020 to deny votes was focused in places like Atlanta and Philadelphia. Why? That’s where a lot of Black people voted.Coulter: So you think the G.O.P. is racist. Wow, never heard that before.Stevens: In 1956, Eisenhower got about 39 percent of the Black vote. In 2020 Trump got 8 percent. A majority of Americans 15 years and younger are nonwhite or Hispanic white. This is what terrifies Republicans.Coulter: This is just your excuse for your candidate losing a winnable election in 2012.Bruni: You and Stuart are both hugely down on Trump as a human and as a candidate. Do you think he loses to Biden despite Biden’s age and low approval ratings, or is this a jump ball if Trump gets the nomination?Coulter: If Trump gets the nomination, I say he will lose. I know it, you know it, the American people know it (to paraphrase Bob Dole).Stevens: Trump could win. In 2020, he lost by a combined 44,000 votes in Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin. Otherwise, he would still be president. Biden needs to win by 4.5 percent to carry the Electoral College. So it is inevitable it will be close.Coulter: Nah. OK, maybe. I think Trump loses, but who knows? He’s not the Trump he was in 2016 — it’s the same old thing over and over and over again. “Shifty Schiff,” “perfect phone call,” “we won BIG,” strong, strongly, strong — zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.Bruni: There’s sustained chatter that someone significant — Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp — could join and upend the Republican field at a late moment, presented as a savior. Do you foresee that? How would it play out?Stevens: There is this need among some in the donor Republican class and the National Review types that the Republican Party can revert to being a normal party. That’s insane. Take Glenn Youngkin. He endorsed Kari Lake for her Arizona gubernatorial run. Youngkin didn’t change her, she changed him.Coulter: I hope it doesn’t come to that because DeSantis is head and shoulders above every other G.O.P. presidential candidate (or politician) on the three most important issues: immigration, crime and the Covid response. Unless the prime minister of Sweden is running in this race, no one beats DeSantis on the Covid response. That’s the 3 a.m. phone call — every state and world leader faced the exact same unseen-before virus. Only those two got it exactly right.Bruni: Ann, I have to ask you this simply because your pom-poms for DeSantis are so large and exuberantly shaken. How are you comfortable with how negative, vengeful, naming-of-enemies, slaying-of-enemies his whole shtick and strategy are? Dear God, you are the biggest Reagan lover I know, and there’s no “It’s Morning Again in America” from the Florida governor. It’s the darkest night, all the time.Coulter: So glad you asked that. As I describe in my book “In Trump We Trust” — about the greatest presidential campaign in history (followed by the most disappointing, wasted presidency in history) — this “I’m optimistic!” talking point that campaign consultants feed their candidates is absurd. Ronald Reagan was not optimistic in 1980 — it was only after four years in office that it was “Morning in America.” He was not “positive” or “optimistic” in 1980 at all.It’s nauseating to see candidates try to pull off the “I’m optimistic” nonsense — which I promise you they will in the debate, especially Tim Scott.Bruni: Well, I’m not optimistic, for what that’s worth.Coulter: Yes, Frank — you’re like most voters! That’s why the “I’m optimistic” idiocy falls so flat.Stevens: Republican donors looked at a model for Republican success as a big-state governor: Reagan, George W. Bush and Romney won the nomination. But all of those candidates were optimistic, expansive candidates. DeSantis is an angry little man who can’t articulate why he wants to be president. He got in a fight with the Happiness Company, Disney, and lost. He created a private police force at a cost of over $1 million to go after voter fraud in his own state, which he had claimed had a perfect election. They arrested 20 people — and convicted just one.Bruni: I still prefer candidates who, I don’t know, tell us to try to find the good in, and common cause with, one another rather than identify whom to hate and how much. I’m old-fashioned that way. To return to the debate: Is there any chance Trump is hurt by his decision to skip it? Or is he showing considerable smarts? By choosing tomorrow to turn himself in in Georgia, he will compete with and shorten the media’s post-mortems on the debate. He will, in his signature manner, yank the spotlight back toward … himself!Coulter: The only reason Trump will “stay in the news” is that the media keep him there. The weird obsession liberals have with Trump is driving normal people away from the news. Even I, MSNBC’s most loyal viewer, cannot watch it anymore. The same words, same arguments, same info, same topics for over two years now! “We almost lost our democracy!”Trump is a bore. Please stop covering him.Bruni: Let’s do a lightning round. Fast and quick answers. If something happened soon and Biden couldn’t or didn’t run, which nationally known Democrat would be the party’s fiercest presidential candidate, assuming that candidate had just enough runway to take off, and in a few phrases or one sentence, why?Stevens: Gavin Newsom. He’s a skilled politician who can build the coalition it takes to win. It’s not a bad exercise to ask, “Could this candidate win X state as governor?” Newsom is someone you could see as governor of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, Nevada, Ohio.Coulter: No one the Democrats would ever nominate — for example, Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, possibly Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown.Bruni: Why?Coulter: Because they’re all white men.Bruni: Is the widespread belief that Kamala Harris negatively impacts Biden’s prospects for re-election overstated or understated?Stevens: Overstated. Has anybody actually looked at her record as a candidate? She’s won big, tough races. Until her presidential bid, she never lost.Coulter: Understated. I heard a discussion on MSNBC yesterday about how she’s fantastic one-on-one, a laugh riot, a charm offensive. That just doesn’t come out when she’s in front of a crowd, you see.The last person they tried that with was Al Gore, who apparently reached comedic highs alone in his bathtub.Bruni: Should Clarence Thomas be impeached?Stevens: Is that a rhetorical question? A Supreme Court justice who acts like an oligarch’s girlfriend, flying around on special vacations. Of course. He’s a disgrace.Coulter: No, he should be made czar of our country. For decades, liberals were mostly OK with the Supreme Court as it was inventing rights like abortion or Miranda or throwing out the death penalty. But now, suddenly there’s a major ethics issue about a justice who’s gotten the left’s goat since he was nominated.Thomas votes and writes opinions exactly as his judicial philosophy would predict. The idea that he ruled a certain way because someone took him on a fishing trip is ludicrous.Bruni: Lastly, rank these American institutions in the order of influence they might have over the final results — the winner — of the 2024 presidential contest: Fox News, Facebook, The New York Times, the Supreme Court.Coulter: Fox News: almost zero, unless the nominee is Trump — then you can blame Fox. Facebook: 2 percent. New York Times: 8 percent, maybe 10. The political economist Tim Grosseclose wrote a book (“Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind”) estimating the influence of the media on elections and concluded it was about 8 percent. But that was roughly 10 years ago. It’s probably more now. The Supreme Court: hopefully zero.Stevens: The Supreme Court by far. In the history of the country, only five justices were confirmed by senators representing a minority of the country’s population. All five are on the court today. It is completely out of step with the majority of the country, and the results played out in 2022.I don’t think Fox created the Republican Party; the Republican Party created Fox. For the most part, Fox didn’t support John McCain, didn’t support Romney, didn’t support Trump in his nomination campaign. They couldn’t affect the outcomes with their own base.Facebook has the potential to impact the race, as it did in 2016.I don’t think The Times has played a major role in a presidential campaign, and I think that’s a good thing — it’s not their job to play a major role.Bruni: Thank you both for your time, your insights and your energy.Coulter: Thank you, Frank, thank you, Stuart.Stevens: Thanks, all!Source photograph by Mark Wallheiser/Getty.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.Frank Bruni is a professor of journalism and public policy at Duke University, the author of the book “The Beauty of Dusk” and a contributing Opinion writer. He writes a weekly email newsletter. Instagram • @FrankBruni • FacebookAnn Coulter is the author of the Substack newsletter Unsafe.Stuart Stevens (@stuartpstevens), a former Republican political consultant who has worked on many campaigns for federal and state office, including the presidential campaigns of Mitt Romney and George W. Bush, is the author of the forthcoming book “The Conspiracy to End America: Five Ways My Old Party Is Driving Our Democracy to Autocracy.” More

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      The First Debate and the Race for Second Place

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      Being No. 2 could be especially important next year, and Ramaswamy has been gaining on DeSantis.Someone’s missing. Joseph Prezioso/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWhat’s the point of tonight’s Republican debate?It’s not an unreasonable question, with the runaway front-runner for the Republican nomination deciding to skip it.But there’s a case that we might just be getting a clearer view of the race in Donald J. Trump’s absence. We will certainly get a clearer look at an important dimension of the race that we might not have otherwise been able to observe.Let’s start with a question from a reader, James Tucker of Plano, Texas, who pointed to something we’ve never addressed head-on until now: the possibility that Mr. Trump might not be in the race.“Mr. Cohn, I enjoy your columns. Do you see any pollsters asking Republicans: “If Trump is not in the race, who would be your choice?” The possibility is real enough.”It will surely seem real enough tonight, without Mr. Trump on the debate stage.And it’s a possibility that might gradually take on greater significance in the weeks and months ahead.The office of the special counsel requested a Jan. 2 trial date in the election subversion case against Mr. Trump in Washington, and it said it would need four to six weeks to present evidence. At least theoretically, that could yield a verdict before the preponderance of Republican delegates are awarded in March.I’m not a lawyer, so I won’t speculate about whether it’s likely that the special counsel will get his trial date, let alone a conviction, by Super Tuesday on March 5.But as a political analyst, I can say Mr. Trump wouldn’t ordinarily seem likely to lose the nomination by conventional means in a conventional race: His lead over Ron DeSantis is at least twice as large as that of any front-runner who has ever gone on to lose a party nomination at this stage.Taken together, it’s entirely possible that the likeliest way for Mr. Trump to lose the nomination involves the mounting weight of his legal challenges, rather than a conventional electoral defeat on the campaign trail and debate stage. That weight could take a variety of forms, including some well short of a conviction, like the possibility that Republican voters gradually reassess the seriousness of the risks facing Mr. Trump as a trial nears — but realistically we’re talking trial, conviction and even imprisonment.If we stipulate that these risks are in fact the greatest ones facing Mr. Trump, a certain strategy for his opponents begins to take shape: a strategy premised on capitalizing on Mr. Trump’s collapse, should it come. It might involve avoiding conflict with Mr. Trump, rather than trying to bring him down, in hopes of winning the former president’s supporters once he falters. It might involve attacking the other minor candidates, so as to emerge as the likeliest to capitalize on a potential Trump collapse. In time, it’s a strategy that might yield victory. For now, it might not look any different than fighting to take second place — the fight we’ll see on the debate stage.The debate strategy posted by a firm affiliated with the DeSantis-aligned super PAC Never Back Down contained some of this approach. It argued for partly defending Mr. Trump when Chris Christie attacked him, presumably in hope of maintaining broad appeal to Mr. Trump’s supporters. Instead of attacking Mr. Trump, the memo argued, Mr. DeSantis should “take a sledgehammer” to Vivek Ramaswamy, who may have worked his way up to third place in national polls.Mr. Ramaswamy might seem to rank far, far behind Mr. Trump on the list of challenges facing Mr. DeSantis, but not if he’s running a second-place strategy. So far this year, Mr. DeSantis has had a very clear lead over his nearest rivals, including in polls without Mr. Trump. But Mr. Ramaswamy is gaining. If Mr. DeSantis fell behind him, the bottom could fall out, his donors could flee, and he would no longer be in position to capitalize on any opening, should there be one.It’s probably not fair to say that Mr. DeSantis is simply running a “second-place strategy.” For one, his campaign may still have a narrow path to a conventional victory, even if Mr. Trump doesn’t crumble under his own weight, in part because Mr. DeSantis appears relatively stronger in Iowa. For another, Mr. Trump has pledged to stay in the race, even if he goes to jail. A second-place strategy would, eventually, need to turn into a first-place strategy when the time was right.But either way, Mr. Trump’s decision not to compete in the debate might wind up being a useful one. Out of respect for the candidates, the voters and the democratic process, I’m always reluctant to contemplate the possibility that a candidate might end up “not in the race,” as our questioner put it. But without Mr. Trump on the debate stage, it’s entirely appropriate to consider the campaign without him. That’s the race we have tonight. It may just be the race we have next year. More

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      An Unusual G.O.P. Presidential Debate

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      The New York Times Audio app is home to journalism and storytelling, and provides news, depth and serendipity. If you haven’t already, download it here — available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter.The Headlines brings you the biggest stories of the day from the Times journalists who are covering them, all in about 10 minutes. Hosted by Annie Correal, the new morning show features three top stories from reporters across the newsroom and around the world, so you always have a sense of what’s happening, even if you only have a few minutes to spare.Eight candidates have qualified for the Republican debate on Wednesday.Associated PressOn Today’s Episode:Why Republican Candidates With Little Chance of Beating Trump Keep Running, with Trip GabrielUkraine’s Forces and Firepower Are Misallocated, U.S. Officials Say, with Eric SchmittIn a Hot Job Market, the Minimum Wage Becomes an Afterthought, with Ben CasselmanEli Cohen More