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      Third Republican Debate: Key Takeaways

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      Nikki Haley staked out a clear, hawkish vision. Ron DeSantis avoided risks. And the night’s glaring absentee, Donald Trump, again emerged untouched.It was the undercard that underwhelmed.The third straight Republican presidential debate that former President Donald J. Trump has skipped — choosing instead to rally with supporters a few miles away — represented a critical and shrinking chance for his rivals to close his chasm of a polling advantage.And with only five candidates on the stage for the first time — Chris Christie, Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy and Tim Scott — they all had far more time to speak.Yet they had precious little to say about Mr. Trump, even when given the chance just over two months before the Iowa caucuses.They sparred in a substantive debate that dissected disagreements over aid to Ukraine, Social Security, confronting China, banning TikTok and how to approach abortion less than 24 hours after Republicans suffered their latest electoral setbacks driven by the fall of Roe v. Wade.But there was something surreal about such detailed discussions unfolding among candidates who seem so far from the Oval Office — even Mr. DeSantis and Ms. Haley, who asserted themselves as the leaders of the non-Trump pack.Here are six takeaways from a debate in Miami that may best be remembered for Ms. Haley snapping at Mr. Ramaswamy, “You’re just scum.”Haley came out swinging.Ms. Haley, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said that there would be no Hamas without Iran.Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesNikki Haley emerged as a power center on the debate stage, giving a forceful performance that took advantage of the night’s focus on foreign policy to present a clear and hawkish vision of America’s role in the world.Leaning into her experience as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, she staked out expansive, interventionist positions that cut against Mr. Trump’s “America First” foreign policy vision.She backed Ukraine to the hilt. She said she would support military strikes against Iran. And she said the United States needed to support Israel with “whatever they need and whenever they need it.”Most of the other candidates gave versions of the same responses — but Ms. Haley had the edge of having represented the United States on the world stage.When the candidates were asked what they would urge Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to do at this moment, Mr. DeSantis said he “would be telling” him to eliminate Hamas. Ms. Haley said she did, in fact, tell Mr. Netanyahu to “finish them.”As Ms. Haley vies with Mr. DeSantis to establish herself as the field’s Trump alternative, some of the party’s biggest donors were closely watching her performance as they weighed whether to spend millions on her behalf in a desperate final effort to beat Mr. Trump.Ms. Haley’s competitors recognized her rising status by taking aim at her.DeSantis is still playing it safe in a game he’s losing.The Florida governor criticized Donald Trump’s absence from the debate stage.Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesIt seemed, for a moment, as if this would be a different kind of debate for Mr. DeSantis. His opening answer affirmatively outlined how he would be better than Mr. Trump.“He should explain why he didn’t have Mexico pay for the border wall,” Mr. DeSantis began. “He should explain why he racked up so much debt. He should explain why he didn’t drain the swamp.” He went on to say that Mr. Trump promised “winning” only to have his party endure years of “losing,” including on Tuesday.“In Florida, I showed how it’s done,” Mr. DeSantis declared, trying to take hometown advantage of a debate held in Miami.But then he mostly left Mr. Trump untouched, satisfied to prosecute his own case and push back on rivals like Ms. Haley. It was the same strategy he used in the first two debates, with little traction gained.Mr. DeSantis is plainly more comfortable than in the first debate. Yet he surprisingly left unsaid a development that his campaign has advertised as a game changer: the endorsement this week of Gov. Kim Reynolds of Iowa.You can’t debate someone who isn’t there.Chris Christie took the sharpest aim at Mr. Trump, but in his absence the five contenders were left to tear one another down, with varying levels of nastiness.Maansi Srivastava/The New York TimesThe candidates again did little to aggressively contrast themselves with Mr. Trump, who has made himself unavailable for direct sparring by refusing to stand onstage with his rivals or, for the most part, appear with them at multicandidate gatherings on the campaign trail.Without Mr. Trump present, the five contenders were left to tear one another down, with varying levels of nastiness.The first question to the candidates was the fundamental one most of them have struggled to answer to Republican voters: why they, and not Mr. Trump, should be the nominee.Mr. Christie, as expected, was the sharpest in his attack, arguing that someone who faces Mr. Trump’s criminal charges “cannot lead this party or this country.”But Mr. DeSantis took only a brief swipe. Ms. Haley praised Mr. Trump’s presidency, then criticized him, saying that he had gone “weak in the knees” on Ukraine and that his time had passed. Mr. Ramaswamy defended Mr. Trump in passing. And Mr. Scott talked about himself.Nikki Haley said that she doesn’t believe Trump is the “right president now.”NBC NewsThat was almost the extent of efforts to chip away at the runaway front-runner. Nearby, Mr. Trump held a rally in Hialeah, Fla., remarking at one point that his rivals were “not watchable.”For months, the candidates have struggled to find a way to force him into the ring with them, with Mr. Christie threatening to follow him on the campaign trail and Mr. DeSantis, in recent days, lobbing crass responses to Mr. Trump’s brutal taunts. In the third debate, none of them figured out how to make it work.This debate got personal.Vivek Ramaswamy fought with the NBC moderators and the head of the Republican National Committee, Ronna McDaniel, whom he urged to resign.Maansi Srivastava/The New York TimesAfter three debates, this much is clear: Some of the candidates onstage really don’t like one another.The most loathed appears to be Mr. Ramaswamy, who from the start fought not just with the rivals flanking him but also with the NBC moderators and the head of the Republican National Committee, Ronna McDaniel, whom he urged to resign in his opening statement.At times, Mr. Ramaswamy almost seemed to be doing Mr. Trump’s bidding, attacking NBC’s past coverage of the former president’s scandals.He made acidic attacks on Ms. Haley, mocking her foreign policy and calling her “Dick Cheney in three-inch heels.” He slipped in a crack about Mr. DeSantis’s footwear, suggesting that the Florida governor, too, was wearing lifts. Mr. DeSantis ignored him. Ms. Haley said hers were five inches and “for ammunition.”When Mr. Ramaswamy later invoked her daughter’s use of TikTok, she demanded, “Leave my daughter out of your voice,” and then added in almost disbelief about the exchange, “You’re just scum.”During a confrontation over TikTok, Nikki Haley snapped at Vivek Ramaswamy after he scolded Ms. Haley over her daughter’s use of the app.Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesAbortion remains a Republican quagmire.The crowd at Wednesday’s debate.Maansi Srivastava/The New York TimesAfter Tuesday’s defeats, the Republican candidates knew they would face questions about the way forward on abortion. But they mostly seemed uncertain what to say.“We’re better off when we can promote a culture of life,” said Mr. DeSantis, who signed a six-week ban in his state. He said little at all about what his party should do or what he would do as president. “At the same time, I understand that some of these states are doing it a little bit different.”Ms. Haley described herself as opposed to abortion, but said that passing national restrictions would be virtually impossible, arguing that it’s crucial to be “honest” with the public. At times, Ms. Haley seemed to be trying to appeal to general-election voters. “I don’t judge anyone for being pro-choice,” she said. It was the kind of line that makes Democratic strategists worry about her strength if she were to win the nomination — but also one that the G.O.P. base is unlikely to welcome.It all amounted to a reminder that Republicans, after decades of campaigning against abortion rights, have yet to figure out what to say after finally getting their wish through a Supreme Court that Mr. Trump — who also won’t say where he stands on a national ban — reshaped.Was this Tim Scott’s swan song?Tim Scott said “diplomacy only“ in the Israel-Hamas war was “a weak strategy.“Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesMr. Scott qualified for this debate by the narrowest of margins, with only a single poll — the legitimacy of which some of his rivals have privately disputed — ensuring his spot. But the thresholds will be higher for the next debate in December, and Mr. Scott’s allies acknowledge that he needs to something, anything, just to remain a factor.It’s hard to imagine that he did anything on Wednesday night to change his trajectory. He stuck to the same messages he has been hitting throughout the campaign. He described an America in need of spiritual healing and a return to Judeo-Christian values.He received more attention for what he did after the debate than for anything he said during it. Mr. Scott, 58, has never been married, and entire newspaper stories have been dedicated to a mysterious girlfriend who had never been seen with him in public.Until he brought her onstage.Michael Gold More

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      Who Won the Third Republican Debate?

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      Nikki Haley stood out, absorbing attacks and doling out many of her own. But political observers wondered how any of the candidates onstage cut into former President Donald J. Trump’s dominance.The third Republican presidential debate this year, held on Wednesday in Miami, was packed with heated exchanges over abortion policy, immigration and China as the candidates tried to shine as the front-runner, former President Donald J. Trump, once again declined to join them onstage.This time around, the hopefuls dialed up the battle for second place and delivered digs at President Biden, but directed only glancing criticism at Mr. Trump. There were also plenty of parries between the candidates. At times, they moved beyond policy and became personal, such as when Nikki Haley called Vivek Ramaswamy “scum” after he referred to her daughter.While Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida also delivered a nimble performance and made more of an effort to show empathy with voters, commentators tended to agree that Mr. Trump’s strategy of staying away from the debate fray was still paying dividends.“That debate pretty much seals it for Trump,” Michael McDonald, a professor at the University of Florida who specializes in American elections, said on the social media platform X. “The Munchkins on the stage were too afraid to take him head on.”Nikki HaleyMs. Haley, the former governor of South Carolina who served as ambassador to the United Nations in the Trump administration, had been rising in the polls after two strong debate performances. On Wednesday, despite expectations that she would take some hits, she delivered another steady debate, demonstrating her foreign policy chops in an extended discussion about the war between Israel and Hamas and clapping back at her opponents.She exchanged barbs with Mr. DeSantis over who was more accommodating of Beijing, despite both taking a firm anti-China stance.But it was Ms. Haley’s exchange with Mr. Ramaswamy, the entrepreneur who had an early surge in the polls, that will perhaps be the most memorable of the evening. After Mr. Ramaswamy mocked Ms. Haley for pledging to ban TikTok while her adult daughter was a user of the app, Ms. Haley snapped back.“Leave my daughter out of your voice,” she said. “You’re just scum.”Ms. Haley also won plaudits for pragmatism on abortion a day after Democrats won big victories in elections across the country because of their strength on the issue. She said that she opposes it but argued that a federal ban was unrealistic given the makeup of Congress. She added that people who support abortion rights should not be criticized.“Nikki Haley, to her credit, has had nuance and led on the issue from abortion from the outset of her campaign,” Alyssa Farah Griffin, a former director of strategic communications in the Trump administration, said on CNN after the debate.Ron DeSantisAfter two somewhat stilted performances, Mr. DeSantis gave sharp answers on how he would take on China and offer unwavering support for Israel in its fight to dismantle Hamas. He continued to use forceful language about how he would combat the flow of drugs across the southern border and said he would punish universities for allowing antisemitic protests.Mr. DeSantis also showed a more nuanced side at times, treading carefully when the debate turned to the topic of a federal ban on abortion, defending his opposition to drilling in the Everglades and pledging to make sure people who are eligible receive their full Social Security benefits.“Tonight was a really strong night for DeSantis, punctuated by a pitch-perfect closing statement,” said Brian Bartlett, a strategist who worked on Mitt Romney’s presidential campaigns in 2008 and 2012. “He not only spoke directly to the issues G.O.P. voters care about, but in a personal and empathetic way that distinguished him from the rest of the pack.”Tim ScottFollowing an impassioned second debate, Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina tried to keep the conservative energy flowing with an aggressive approach toward Iran and a staunch position against abortion.At one point, Mr. Scott even seemed to suggest that the United States should attack Iran.“You actually have to cut off the head of the snake, and the head of the snake is Iran and not simply the proxies,” he said.On abortion, Mr. Scott pushed his rivals to support a federal ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The position could play into the hands of Democrats, who have been winning on the issue in elections across the country.“Voters are practically shouting that what they want is control over their own bodies and not MAGA extremism,” said Alexandra LaManna, a former White House spokeswoman in the Biden administration who focused on reproductive rights.Chris ChristieA former governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie has been the fiercest critic of Mr. Trump, even referring to him as “Donald Duck” for skipping the debates.On Wednesday, however, Mr. Christie mostly laid off Mr. Trump. Instead, he offered moderate views on abortion, expressed support for raising the retirement age and offered unwavering support for Israel and Ukraine.In his final statement, Mr. Christie said he was tired of division, anger and petty politics but did not mention Mr. Trump by name.To some observers, the less pugnacious approach was lacking.“Christie has entirely faded into the background in this debate,” said James Richardson, a former spokesman and adviser for Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi and Jon M. Huntsman, a U.S. ambassador to Russia in the Trump administration. “Highly out of character.”Vivek RamaswamyThe debate stage has been less hospitable to Mr. Ramaswamy after he made an early splash on the campaign trail this year. On Wednesday night, he was clearly making every effort to stand out.Mr. Ramaswamy opened the night by blasting the news media and the NBC debate hosts, and proceeding to lob rapid-fire criticism of all his opponents, except for Mr. Trump.The attack on Ms. Haley’s daughter succeeded in getting under her skin, but most likely backfired with viewers and voters.“Nikki expressed what many of us in the audience and at home think of your desperate attempt to create ‘a moment,’” Michael Steele, a former Republican National Committee chairman, said on the X platform. More

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      Ramaswamy Compares Republican Rivals to Dick Cheney ‘in Heels’

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      Forget tax-cut pledges and RINO accusations. Heels, of all things, are the new political cudgel in Republican politics.For weeks, the question of whether Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida wears heel lifts in his cowboy boots has been the subject of attacks from former President Donald J. Trump and others.The bizarre meme found its way into the Republican presidential debate on Wednesday, when Vivek Ramaswamy used it to go after both Mr. DeSantis and former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina, the only woman on the stage in Miami.Mr. Ramaswamy compared his two Republican rivals to “Dick Cheney in three-inch heels.”The moment came during an exchange over the U.S. role in the war between Israel and Hamas. Mr. Ramaswamy, the youngest of five Republican presidential candidates at the debate, attempted to separate himself from Mr. DeSantis and Ms. Haley, both of whom said they would urge Israel to completely eliminate Hamas.Mr. Ramaswamy said Israel had the right to defend itself, but he wanted to “be careful to avoid making the mistakes from the establishment of the past.”He asked: “Do you want a leader from a different generation who’s going to put this country first, or do you want Dick Cheney in three-inch heels? In which case, we’ve got two of them onstage tonight.”Ms. Haley addressed the barb a few minutes later, saying that Mr. Ramaswamy was wrong about her footwear.“They’re five-inch heels,” she said. “And I don’t wear them unless you can run in them. The second thing I will say is, I wear heels. They’re not for a fashion statement. They’re for ammunition.”The debate was still going, but Mr. DeSantis had so far not discussed the particulars of his boots. More

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      Nikki Haley Is Gaining Ground

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      A long time ago in South Carolina, as Nikki Haley recalls when she talks to voters in New Hampshire and Iowa, she ran campaigns that nobody thought much of until, unexpectedly, suddenly, she was winning them. Is that what’s happening here? Is this real?She is gaining in the places that matter. And she is running the campaign she’s run before: hard-core conservative on fiscal matters and immigration, kitchen-table pragmatic on basically everything else. A plaintive quality in Ms. Haley’s voice joins up well with the grim statistics she shares about kids’ reading and math proficiency post-pandemic, and about what happens to veterans after they come home. She spends a good deal of time talking about U.S. support for Ukraine (and Israel) as bulwarks against further deterioration of the world order, while also outlining a hawkish “peace through strength” approach toward China.There’s a hundred little switches that would need to flip from now, in a big mousetrap-style path, toward victory. If a bloc of Republican voters’ support for Mr. Trump is as soft as some polling indicates, and if Ms. Haley could somehow continue to elevate herself the rest of the way, the race for the G.O.P. nomination would turn brutal — and volatile confrontation with Mr. Trump would be inevitable. Survivors of such moments have been rare, but for those who do, like Brian Kemp, the Georgia governor, survival becomes a position of strength. Maybe people forgot Ms. Haley’s early campaigns in favor of the easy relationship she had with Mr. Trump, but they might prove instructive.In person, her campaign feels different than Mr. Trump’s and those of the other challengers; if she agrees with them on immigration, the tone and emphasis on much of the rest differ. This includes her general impulse toward knocking Washington (both Republicans and Democrats) rather than the cultural Marxists that animate most Republican visions of what ails the country. You are, in general, unlikely to hear at another national Republican event answers about access to contraceptives, the importance of attracting and training more mental health counselors or even a slight openness to the idea of businesses transitioning to the use of electric vehicles (if on a longer time frame than the Biden administration’s, and only after Ms. Haley goes on a long riff about calling out China and India). In Nikki Haley, these things flow fluidly alongside outlines of her plan to raise the retirement age for the youngest generation, or extended and hard comments about the border, including a reactionary “it only takes one” warning about terrorism.Ms. Haley remains the governor who, after promising during a campaign to keep the Confederate flag on state grounds, later leaned on Republicans to take it down, who signed a state law requiring businesses to check the federal E-Verify immigration status program and who gave a State of the Union response about the value and honor of immigrants that doubled as a rebuke to Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign. She then served in Mr. Trump’s administration, where she pursued sanctions on Russia. Depending on how you view Ms. Haley, these are evidence of a lack of core, or the subtleties of a realist with a long game. Either way, it’s indisputable that her career runs toward brisk, business-friendly sobriety and that she hasn’t lost before.Winning is on the mind of this campaign. The strategy looks like: Ms. Haley walking slow, subtle figure eights encircled by voters on a Thursday evening in Nashua, N.H. She spoke for 33 minutes in a well-lit space inside a building that’s seen better days; answered questions for 23 minutes; shook hands; signed posters and posed for photos with older couples in puffy jackets gently touching her back for at least another half-hour; stood and worked the room again until, essentially, she was the last person in it, touching up her own makeup to do a TV interview in the near dark as staff members broke down and packed up the remaining gear. That’s the logistical play here: grinding out fractions of percentage points, voter by voter, event by event, with low overhead and a distinct tone, elevated here and there by pointed moments on television.Ms. Haley speaking at a diner in Londonderry, N.H., on Thursday.Jacob Hannah for The New York TimesMs. Haley has said that a presidential election is about relationships and trust.Jacob Hannah for The New York Times“Eight years ago, it was good to have a leader who broke things,” she told the Republican Jewish Coalition late last month, part of a highly pro-Israel speech that drew some attention. “But right now, we need a leader who also knows how to put things back together.”From here, Ms. Haley would need to continue accruing steady, modest gains; serious money would have to come through to pay for TV ads that really land; donors would have to give up their eternal dream of Glenn Youngkin, the Virginia governor who a number of Republican donors envision as the candidate to wait for. More current candidates, and especially Chris Christie, would need to drop out before, not after, the New Hampshire primary. She’d need to flip some senators, governors or conservative talk radio types — who knows who — into believers and for their belief to be persuasive with a real segment of Trump-leaning conservatives. Independents and, because every vote counts, the Romney-to-Biden crowd would need to prioritize her candidacy in states where they can vote in primaries like New Hampshire and South Carolina, and in many of the Super Tuesday states.She’d need to continue dominating debates; she’d need to not fade or completely lose it when Mr. Trump turns a real attack on her; and more than anything she’d need a substantive critique, even if gently delivered, of Mr. Trump to feel true and land with people. Maybe it’s that idea of putting things back together, which she did not repeat in New Hampshire last week, that has the virtue of matching Ms. Haley’s vibe, while also responding to the widespread feeling the earth is falling apart. A win in Iowa or New Hampshire for Ms. Haley would reset the entire primary.This, or some array of similar conditions, still seems very unlikely. But it’s a lot less unlikely than it was six months ago. And it’s more or less what happened, on a smaller scale, for Ms. Haley in 2004 and 2010 when she ran for the South Carolina Legislature and then for governor. Those campaigns started off seeming ridiculous and involved Ms. Haley, holding doughnuts, knocking on doors for votes (though that is what it looks like when someone runs against a longtime incumbent). Then those campaigns gradually caught on, brought in such disparate backers as Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney, and — though she didn’t mention it when she talked about those campaigns last week — when they became competitive, the campaigns ended in brutal attacks on her, and Haley wins.Last winter, when she announced, a lot of people considered her campaign a waste of time. Even more, they argued that her glossy corporateness was out of touch with today’s G.O.P.; that she must be running for vice president. That response likely derived from the ridiculous period after Jan. 6, when Ms. Haley criticized Mr. Trump harshly, then seemed to dial it back. Part of it is the smooth, pain-free way Ms. Haley entered and extricated herself from the Trump administration, after criticizing him in 2016 and endorsing Marco Rubio. Some of it’s the fluid way she talks and the clothes, too, even if they likely harken back to a not-Ivy-League facet of her life: growing up working in a clothing store in the small-town South. This picture of Ms. Haley culminated in Vivek Ramaswamy congratulating her on her future on the Raytheon board.But the full Haley story has a lot of brutal moments in it; hers is not a soft career. She really brings something out in people: guys who used slurs to describe her; the former Democratic Party official who in 2013 compared her to Eva Braun and said she should go back where she came from, then clarified to say he meant “being an accountant in her parents’ dress shop”; Rex Tillerson, who used a sexist term to describe her, according to the writer Tim Alberta. There have been people who have said she lies about her religion. The political consultant Stuart Stevens recently told The New Yorker that the only difference between Ms. Haley and Marjorie Taylor Greene was “purely aesthetic.”In 2004, when she was running for the state legislature, people sent racist mailers about her parents, who had lived in South Carolina for 30 years, had painted an American flag on the ceiling of their clothing store and had organized a local international night and science programs in their small town. Except voters in the district felt as if they knew her. “By that point, Nikki had already met every single voter who got those mailers,” the former state party chairman Katon Dawson told Mr. Alberta. “They all had talked to her. It made a lot of those people angry on her behalf.”When she ran for governor, multiple men claimed to have had affairs with Ms. Haley, who denied this. Voters felt as if she got a bad shake. In this way, one consistency in the Haley story is the way pain can be transformed into a political weapon — used to prevail in elections, or push another Republican to vote to take the Confederate flag down.It’s a hypothetical on top of a hypothetical to think about what would happen if Mr. Trump attacked a candidate who’s polling, at best, 19 percent in New Hampshire right now. But there’s no total glide path to defeating Mr. Trump; he will force confrontation, and Ms. Haley’s campaign seems engineered to bring that about, but only at the end. Would it work the same way as before for her?There is the possibility that no matter what Ms. Haley does, this ends with an emphatic defeat, with voters primed to have their better impulses wrecked by Mr. Trump, with people in media and politics waiting to have every suspicion about her oscillations affirmed. Maybe this moment is the ceiling, and Ms. Haley fades. Maybe she’ll pull up stakes and endorse Mr. Trump in the end, accepting reality but invalidating the interest and trust people on one side of the party might have in her. Or it’s the others: Candidates won’t drop out; the money and endorsements don’t come through; voters won’t take the chance.But, perhaps, the alchemy works the same way: The candidate keeps gaining and doesn’t fold at the decisive moment, and people walk away more secure in their vote and even protective. That happened with Mr. Kemp in Georgia, and it’s happened with Ms. Haley before.And yes, this is all horse race — who’s up, who’s down, about winning the presidency over being president. But resolving the Trump candidacy through political, persuasive means is actually an important civic project, one that could end with an imitation of Mr. Trump, or someone else. Ms. Haley clearly thinks there’s a way to do this that combines enough of what hard-line and moderate conservatives care about in real life, that joins the hard-liners’ desire to win and the moderates’ desire to move on from Mr. Trump. The biggest enemy she will have to defeat is people’s idea of what other people want from politics now.In a diner in Londonderry, N.H., last week, a voter asked Ms. Haley for her help in his defending her against some specific claims. “Absolutely,” she said. “First of all, you need to think of a presidential election — at least the way I look at it — it’s about relationships and trust. Right?”Katherine Miller is a staff writer and editor in Opinion.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. More

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      How Haley, DeSantis and Other Republicans Could Beat Trump

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      In the movie “Back to the Future II,” Michael J. Fox’s character, Marty McFly, is transported to the fall of 2015 and encounters a world of self-tying shoes and hoverboards. He finds himself trying to make sense of how people behave and the choices they make.Lately, I too feel like I’ve been transported to autumn 2015.That fall, Republican Party officials, donors and operatives were brimming with hope that the field of presidential contenders facing Donald Trump would shrink, clearing the way for a one-on-one matchup between the then-unthinkable Mr. Trump and a more conventional nominee, like the senators Ted Cruz of Texas or Marco Rubio of Florida. As one Michigan donor put it, “Just like everyone else, I’m waiting for this field to consolidate, and it doesn’t seem to be consolidating.” Arguments ensued over which candidates should take the hint. If only the field were smaller, the thinking went, surely Mr. Trump would be defeated.If only, if only, if only. This line of thinking became an excuse for candidates who didn’t want to take any real swings at Mr. Trump. It was the field — not Mr. Trump — that was the problem. No top contender took him on aggressively. No one really hammered away at his weaknesses in the kind of sustained, nimble assault they would have needed to topple him from his position as the front-runner. And even as Mr. Trump’s opponents dropped out, some of their voters wound up drifting to Mr. Trump as a second choice, keeping him at the head of the pack.Something similar is happening today. From the Republican debates to the campaign trail, the other candidates aren’t making a real attempt to dent the front-runner’s lead; instead, they are sniping at one another, pleading with donors and engaging in magical thinking. While there is some truth that having more candidates helps Mr. Trump win the nomination, consolidating the field alone is not likely sufficient to defeat him.In Iowa, late October polling from NBC News, The Des Moines Register and Mediacom showed Mr. Trump at 43 percent among likely G.O.P. caucusgoers, and an analysis of those voters’ second-choice shows that a sizable number of Ron DeSantis’s voters would simply go to Mr. Trump were the Florida governor to withdraw from the race. And though the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley has seen her fortunes improve dramatically since her first debate, she still trails Mr. Trump by a wide margin in her home state of South Carolina, according to the latest CNN polling.Mr. DeSantis is hoping for some fresh momentum in Iowa this week with the endorsement of the state’s governor, Kim Reynolds. But without bold new arguments from Mr. DeSantis, Ms. Haley or other rivals, it seems as though Donald Trump is increasingly inevitable as the Republican nominee. A shame, too; there is a sizable portion of the Republican electorate that likes Mr. Trump but claims to be open to a new direction. In early states like Iowa and New Hampshire, CBS News polling recently found that less than a quarter of primary voters are “Trump only” voters. The vast majority are “Trump and …” voters — people who are considering the former president but also alternatives.However, these voters aren’t hearing anyone clearly lay out the case for why a new direction is so critical — and they need to on Wednesday night in the third G.O.P. primary debate.To defeat Mr. Trump, something significant must change. Toughness is required. The math is clear. Mr. Trump’s opponents must take some of his voters from him. Republican candidates must make the case that Mr. Trump is also not the best that voters can do. That means directing at least as much fire at the front-runner as they do at their other adversaries. Mr. Trump’s strongest rivals have not compellingly answered this question: “If you support Donald Trump’s policies so much, why are you running against him?” It’s time they start giving an answer to voters.Candidates have avoided doing so because striking the right tone in this campaign is incredibly challenging. An attack that is too scathing can inspire a sort of antibody response in Republican voters, backfiring by activating the instinct to defend Mr. Trump. Chris Christie was booed at the Florida Freedom Summit last weekend and hasn’t gained traction in the polls because Republican voters are not looking for a candidate whose primary message is that they have been duped and that Donald Trump is a bad man.At the same time, the rest of the field has treated Mr. Trump far too gently. Speeches like one Mr. DeSantis gave on Saturday, which try to draw a contrast with Mr. Trump without saying his name, haven’t yet moved the needle. Vague platitudes about “fresh leadership” and “someone who can win” have not yet been paired with an effective explanation of why Mr. Trump is neither of those things, and as a result Republican voters don’t believe either is true.To beat Mr. Trump, the strategy can’t be weak or astringent. It should not scold, and certainly not demean the majority of Republican voters who do like Trump. It should take a tone more akin to “I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed” — and lay out why, in a sustained and convincing way every week from now through the Jan. 15 Iowa caucuses.Critically, it must echo and amplify the things that I’ve heard Trump voters who are still shopping around say to each other:But his mouth, they’ll say.“I don’t like when he makes things like a circus.”“It’s just tiring.”These are not attacks from the right flank on policy, nor attacks from centrists on his legal woes — these are truths that many of Mr. Trump’s own supporters will acknowledge in private conversation.Mr. Trump’s opponents should not shy away from pointing out how things were far from perfect during his presidency. As one Trump voter acknowledged in one of our recent Times Opinion focus groups, “He always said everything is wonderful and everything is beautiful and everything is amazing. Come on.”In Wednesday’s debate, even with Mr. Trump absent from the stage, he is looming over his rivals, and it is past the hour for them to act like it. They can try to raise more money, but they cannot raise more time.Take Ms. Haley. She can, for instance, make a strong case for her actions defending Israel during her tenure as U.N. ambassador, noting that while the world may have felt safer under Mr. Trump, his own personal drama with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has blinded him to the importance of supporting one of our most critical allies — and that this kind of self-interested behavior will keep Mr. Trump from doing what is necessary to support our friends and go after our enemies on the world stage in a second term. Based on new polling from The Times and Siena College, she can now also make a clear electability case that has thus far eluded Mr. DeSantis, and note that she is the safer, stronger bet against Mr. Biden in 2024.Taking Mr. Trump on directly is no easy task in a party that would vastly prefer him to be in the White House today. But avoiding the hard road has thus far put his adversaries on the path to defeat. At this stage of the primary, with the lead Mr. Trump holds, there is no longer an excuse for candidates to dance around the question of “Why you … and not Donald Trump?”Kristen Soltis Anderson is a Republican pollster and a moderator of the Times Opinion focus group series.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. More

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      Here’s Who Qualified for the Third Republican Presidential Debate

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      Chris Christie, Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy and Tim Scott will meet again on the stage on Wednesday night, but Doug Burgum missed the cut.Five candidates have qualified for the third Republican presidential debate on Wednesday evening, the Republican National Committee announced on Monday.Former President Donald J. Trump, the dominant front-runner in the Republican primary, is skipping the debate, which will be held in Miami — less than 70 miles from Mr. Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago. Mr. Trump also did not participate in the previous two debates.The candidates who made the cut:Former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida.Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and former United Nations ambassador.The entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina.The Lineup for the Third Republican Presidential DebateFive candidates have made the cut for the third Republican debate on Nov. 8. Donald J. Trump will not participate.Each qualifying candidate had two polling paths to a debate podium: The candidates had to either poll at 4 percent or more in two national polls or at 4 percent in one national poll and at 4 percent in two state polls in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada or South Carolina — which hold contests early in the cycle. Each poll needed to survey at least 800 likely Republican voters and meet certain standards meant to reduce bias to qualify, according to the R.N.C.The candidates also had to have a minimum of 70,000 campaign donors, including at least 200 donors from 20 states or territories.Candidates had until Monday evening to meet these requirements. The candidates also had to pledge to support the eventual Republican nominee. Candidates signed this pledge for the previous two debates. Mr. Trump has refused to sign.The debate stage has narrowed considerably from the first event held in August. Former Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, a vocal Trump critic, qualified for the first debate but not the second or third.Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota also failed to qualify for the third debate after struggling to reach the required polling threshold. Mr. Burgum has weathered calls to drop out of the race as he hovers at about 1 percent in national polls.“Skipping the next debate isn’t going to stop us,” Mr. Burgum said in a statement on X, formerly known as Twitter. “I’ve been told ‘it’s impossible’ my entire life and always beat the odds.”Former Vice President Mike Pence appeared at the first two debates but dropped out of the race last week amid signs he would not qualify for this debate. More

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      DeSantis Lands a Big Endorsement: Kim Reynolds, Iowa’s Popular Governor

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      After saying she would stay neutral in her state’s 2024 caucuses, angering Donald Trump in the process, Ms. Reynolds said “we have too much at stake.”Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida needed a lift in his quest to beat former President Donald J. Trump in the crucial Iowa caucuses.On Monday, Mr. DeSantis may have gotten one, as he received the endorsement of Kim Reynolds, the state’s popular Republican governor, during a recorded interview on NBC News.“I just felt like I couldn’t sit on the sidelines any longer,” Ms. Reynolds said. “We have too much at stake. I truly believe that he is the right person to get this country back on track.”Mr. DeSantis, sitting beside her, called her support in the Republican presidential primary “very meaningful.”The two governors then appeared together at a campaign rally in Des Moines, where Ms. Reynolds proclaimed that the nation needed a leader “who puts this country first and not himself” — a clear jab at Mr. Trump, whom she did not refer to by name during her remarks.Before the endorsement, Mr. Trump repeatedly criticized Ms. Reynolds, who had joined Mr. DeSantis at campaign events around Iowa, for her perceived disloyalty. Those personal attacks had outraged the Iowa governor. She had previously said she would stay neutral during the caucuses, as is traditional for sitting governors in the state.Mr. Trump, meanwhile, spent Monday testifying in a civil fraud trial that threatens his business empire in New York. It’s a contrast that is likely to become a running theme as the primary plays out, with Mr. Trump forced to spend time away from the campaign trail in order to deal with the four criminal indictments against him.In Iowa, Mr. DeSantis is in need of a jolt. He has staked his campaign on winning the Jan. 15 caucuses, moving much of his staff to the state in a bid to stop Mr. Trump’s momentum. But his poll numbers there have slipped. He is now tied for second place with former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina at 16 percent, far behind Mr. Trump at 43 percent, according to a Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom poll. Mr. DeSantis’s allies point out that the last three G.O.P. winners of the Iowa caucuses were also lagging at this stage of previous election cycles.Given Mr. DeSantis’s standing in the polls, the endorsement has risks for Ms. Reynolds. But she expressed confidence at the rally that he could win both the primary and the general election against President Biden.Because of her wide appeal to Iowa Republicans, Ms. Reynolds has the potential to shake up the race. “She’s the reason we’re red,” said Gloria Mazza, the chairwoman of the Republican Party of Polk County, which includes Des Moines. (Ms. Mazza is staying neutral in the caucuses.)Ben Jung, an undecided Iowa voter, said he attended Monday’s rally, held at an event space near downtown Des Moines, because of Ms. Reynolds’s endorsement.“It’s prompted me to finally get my feet out here and listen and look a little more closely,” said Mr. Jung, 53, who had been leaning toward supporting Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina but said he was also considering Mr. DeSantis and Ms. Haley.Leaders of Iowa’s evangelical community, an important voting bloc, suggested Ms. Reynolds’s endorsement was a major coup for the DeSantis campaign.Ms. Reynolds is “without question Iowa’s most popular Governor in generations,” Bob Vander Plaats, the president and chief executive of the influential Christian conservative group the Family Leader, wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Combine her popularity with her campaign tenacity and she will be a force for” Mr. DeSantis.But Mr. Trump’s followers have demonstrated their loyalty so far during the primary, even as he faces criminal charges.Steven Cheung, a spokesman for the Trump campaign, disparaged Ms. Reynolds’s endorsement as a “Hail Mary pass at the end of a blowout game.”“A Kim Reynolds endorsement does not mean anything and does not sway voters,” Mr. Cheung said in a statement.After news of the endorsement leaked out on Sunday, Mr. Trump called Ms. Reynolds “America’s most Unpopular Governor” in a post on Truth Social, his social media site.During the NBC News interview, Mr. DeSantis took the opportunity to return fire to the former president.“With Donald Trump, if you don’t kiss the ring, you could be the best governor ever and he’ll trash you,” Mr. DeSantis said. “You could be a terrible, corrupt politician, but if you kiss his ring then all the sudden he’ll praise you.”Mr. DeSantis has not always been known for his personal touch. Members of Congress who have endorsed Mr. Trump have described the Florida governor as distant. And he has sometimes appeared awkward on the campaign trail.But in an interview with The Des Moines Register on Monday, Ms. Reynolds praised Mr. DeSantis and his wife, Casey, a breast cancer survivor, for calling her after her husband, Kevin, learned he had lung cancer.“Not only is he tough and disciplined,” Ms. Reynolds said, “but he’s compassionate and cares.” More

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      Kim Reynolds, Iowa’s Influential Governor, Expected to Endorse DeSantis

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      The move is a big win for the Florida governor — and a snub to Donald Trump — just months before the Iowa caucuses.Gov. Kim Reynolds of Iowa is expected to endorse Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida in the Republican presidential primary on Monday, throwing her significant clout in the state behind him as he tries to make up ground against former President Donald J. Trump before the state’s caucuses in January.The endorsement is set to take place at a DeSantis campaign rally in Des Moines Monday evening that both governors will attend, according to three people familiar with the plans. The rally has been announced, but the endorsement has not, outside of media reports.The endorsement was first reported by The Des Moines Register and NBC News.Ms. Reynolds, who is very popular with Republicans in her state, is also chair of the Republican Governors Association. It is unusual for sitting governors to weigh in on the caucuses — the first Republican presidential nominating contest — before they take place, and she had previously said that she would stay neutral.But Ms. Reynolds is one of the few governors with whom Mr. DeSantis has had a true bond in recent years, with the two aligned on matters related to policy on Covid and abortion, among other things. Her interest in his candidacy has been clear for months, including to Mr. Trump, who criticized her for not falling in line behind him.People who have spoken with Ms. Reynolds say she has had some frustrations with the DeSantis campaign’s stumbles. But she is enraged with Mr. Trump, who has twice attacked her personally, according to those people.Some of Ms. Reynolds’s advisers had cautioned her against wading into the race, according to two people familiar with the discussions, suggesting it was a heavily lopsided risk-reward calculation given Mr. Trump’s dominant lead in the polls — and his penchant for vindictiveness. But she decided in the end it was worth it.Mr. Trump criticized Ms. Reynolds earlier this year after growing frustrated by her public appearances with Mr. DeSantis. Later, he lashed out again, saying he didn’t invite her to his events. While Ms. Reynolds stayed silent after those incidents, she did respond on social media when Mr. Trump criticized the kind of restrictive abortion legislation that both she and Mr. DeSantis have signed into law.Mr. DeSantis has pointedly defended Ms. Reynolds from those attacks, calling her “one of the best governors in the country.”“I think that Donald Trump’s attacks on Kim Reynolds are totally out of bounds,” he told reporters at the Iowa State Fair this summer. “I couldn’t disagree with it any more. And she’s done really nothing but do a great job. She’s never done anything to him. But that’s just how he operates.”The endorsement comes ahead of the third presidential debate on Wednesday in Miami, where Mr. DeSantis will try to both close ground on Mr. Trump and separate himself from Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and former United Nations ambassador who was tied with him in Iowa in the latest Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom poll in the state.The DeSantis campaign declined to comment, and a spokesman for Ms. Reynolds did not respond to multiple requests for comment.Earlier in the year, Mr. Trump’s team, in private discussions, seemed to be in denial about the fact that Ms. Reynolds and Mr. DeSantis had a unique relationship, and that an endorsement might be in the offing. But that changed as Ms. Reynolds appeared with Mr. DeSantis in the state, and there was some overlap between her team and the super PAC supporting Mr. DeSantis.So for months, Mr. Trump’s team has been girding for a potential Reynolds endorsement of Mr. DeSantis, particularly as Mr. DeSantis has suggested she might be a vice-presidential candidate on his ticket.Mr. Trump turned to his Truth Social platform to respond to media reports about the endorsement, calling Ms. Reynolds “disloyal” for siding with Mr. DeSantis.“If and when Kim Reynolds of Iowa endorses Ron DeSanctimonious, who is absolutely dying in the polls both in Iowa and Nationwide, it will be the end of her political career in that MAGA would never support her again, just as MAGA will never support DeSanctimonious again.” He added, “They can now remain loyal to each other because nobody else wants them!!!”Ms. Reynolds is deeply protective of her state, and some close to her believed she would be unlikely to endorse Mr. DeSantis unless his campaign showed signs of progress. The decision to endorse would appear to be a sign that Ms. Reynolds thinks she can make a meaningful difference. Historically, the Iowa caucuses have been volatile affairs with significant movement as the voting draws near.Mr. DeSantis has increasingly banked his entire candidacy on a strong showing in Iowa, having moved a sizable share of his staff to the state.Crossing Mr. Trump could be perilous for Ms. Reynolds, despite her popularity. In August, after the former president had begun attacking her, Ms. Reynolds appeared alongside Mr. DeSantis at a sprint car race outside Des Moines.The crowd booed both governors. More