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      Key GOP Megadonor Network Will Hear Pitches From DeSantis and Haley Camps

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      The network, the American Opportunity Alliance, will meet in Dallas, as its biggest donors weigh whether investing in any non-Trump candidate remains a worthwhile investment.A network of megadonors whose biggest members have stayed on the sidelines in the Republican presidential primary will meet next month in Dallas as advisers to two of the candidates hoping to defeat Donald J. Trump will make one of their last pitches for support, according to two people briefed on the matter.The multiday event will feature advisers to Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, according to the two people. It will be hosted by Harlan Crow, the wealthy real-estate developer who backs Republicans and who has recently drawn attention for his friendship with and financial ties to Justice Clarence Thomas. Mr. Crow is hosting a separate fund-raiser for Ms. Haley next week, according to Bloomberg News.The donor network, known as the American Opportunity Alliance, was founded a decade ago by a group of billionaires, including the hedge fund executive Paul Singer; Kenneth Griffin, another prominent investor; and members of the Ricketts family, which owns the Chicago Cubs.Some of its members have been known to be seeking options other than Mr. Trump. Mr. Griffin, in particular, has been vocal about how he is still assessing the field, despite his past support for Mr. DeSantis in his re-election effort as governor. Mr. Griffin, who has said he wants the G.O.P. to move on from Mr. Trump, bluntly told CNBC recently about Mr. DeSantis, “It’s not clear to me what voter base he is intending to appeal to.”The gathering next month comes as a number of top Republican donors are increasingly concerned that a divided Republican primary — even just through the early states — will almost unavoidably lead to Mr. Trump’s renomination.The group does not move in unison, and the meeting is in some ways a final effort for some donors to see if contributing to any candidate — either Mr. DeSantis or Ms. Haley — remains a worthwhile investment, given Mr. Trump’s commanding lead in the polls and his penchant for vengeance against those who cross him.The meeting is also a chance for the donors to assess whether backing one of the candidates could help winnow down the field ahead of the Iowa caucuses, giving either Ms. Haley or Mr. DeSantis a greater chance to defeat Mr. Trump.Aides to other well-known candidates did not receive invitations to the event, according to a person familiar with the planning.There are members of the network who will be present who are already supporting either Ms. Haley or Mr. DeSantis. Underscoring the complicated nature of the current intraparty feud is the expected attendance at the event of Brooke Rollins, a former Trump administration adviser who leads the America First Policy Institute, and Linda McMahon, another former Trump appointee and close friend of the former president, according to one of the people familiar with the event.The circumstances of the meeting reflect the reality of the current race: Mr. Trump leads by enough that he has skipped the first two primary debates and called for the Republican National Committee to cancel the remaining calendar and unite behind him.One Republican strategist who works with the group and who was not authorized to speak publicly said bluntly of the gathering that the priority was beating President Biden next November — not the ongoing Republican primary. The person said the campaign teams will have the opportunity to lay out — and try to sell — their paths to victory. The person added that Mr. Trump’s path to victory, meanwhile, was “straightforward.”Mr. DeSantis and Ms. Haley are among the leading Republicans seeking to stop Mr. Trump, but remain far behind in the polls.Mr. DeSantis has been Mr. Trump’s top rival for the entirety of 2023, but for months he has lost ground to the former president while seeing other candidates make gains. He has been increasingly banking his candidacy on a superlative showing in Iowa, the first state that will vote. Mr. DeSantis has also upset some of the American Opportunity Alliance network donors with his comments minimizing the Russian incursion into Ukraine as a geopolitical concern for the United States.For Ms. Haley’s team, simply being given equal billing with Mr. DeSantis at a crucial donor meeting is a success of sorts, as the former United Nations ambassador has converted two solid debates into momentum and money.The steepness of the task to stopping Mr. Trump was underscored by a memo this week from a group, Win It Back PAC, that has spent millions of dollars trying to soften Mr. Trump’s support in Iowa.“All attempts to undermine his conservative credentials on specific issues were ineffective,” read the memo, which was written by David McIntosh, who also leads the Club for Growth, a conservative anti-tax group.The memo described why the group’s ads — testimonials from past Trump supporters — tackled few policy disagreements and focused more on his perceived electoral weaknesses.“Even when you show video to Republican primary voters — with complete context — of President Trump saying something otherwise objectionable to primary voters, they find a way to rationalize and dismiss it,” Mr. McIntosh wrote.The group has spent essentially no money on television since the start of September, according to data from the media-tracking firm AdImpact.Sarah Longwell, a strategist who oversees a suite of anti-Trump groups, including the Republican Accountability PAC, which spent more than $750,000 on ads over the summer, said she has put her group’s spending entirely on pause in the primary — because Mr. Trump now appears so certain to win.“It’s pretty simple,” Ms. Longwell said. “We don’t see a path right now for somebody else. If it was close, if there was an actual alternative we thought could go somewhere or was running an effective campaign against Trump, we would continue.”Her group, she said, would oppose Mr. Trump in the general election and was saving its resources for that fight. “You can’t beat something with nothing,” she said of the primary. More

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      Latino Republicans Call Debate a Missed Opportunity to Reach Voters

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      Republicans have sought to make inroads with the fast-growing slice of the electorate. But voters saw a swing and a miss on debate night.The Republican Party has been on a quest to make inroads with Hispanic voters, and the second presidential debate was tailored to delivering that message: The setting was California, where Latinos now make up the largest racial or ethnic demographic. The Spanish-language network Univision broadcast the event in Spanish, and Ilia Calderón, the first Afro-Latina to anchor a weekday prime-time newscast on a major network in the United States, was a moderator.But questions directly on Latino and immigrant communities tended to be overtaken by bickering and candidates taking swipes at one another on unrelated subjects. Only three candidates — former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, former Vice President Mike Pence and Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina — referred directly to Latinos or Hispanics at all. And only Mr. Pence pitched his economic message specifically toward Hispanic voters.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, whose state has the third-largest Latino population, appeared to suggest there was no need for specific overtures to Hispanics or independents when he had won by such large margins in his home state, including in Miami-Dade County, a former Democratic stronghold.“I’m the only one up here who’s gotten in the big fights and has delivered big victories for the people of Florida,” Mr. DeSantis said. “And that’s what it’s all about.”In interviews, Latino voters and strategists called the debate a missed opportunity for Republicans: Few of the candidates spoke directly to or about Latinos or claimed any cultural affiliation or familiarity with them. The Republican field offered little in the way of economic plans to help workers or solutions to improve legal channels to immigration. The candidates doubled down on depictions of the nation’s southern border as chaotic and lawless.Mike Madrid, a longtime Latino Republican consultant in California, said the tough talk could draw in the support of blue-collar Latino Republicans who did not hold a college degree and in recent years have tended to vote more in line with white voters. But the debate was only further evidence that the party had abandoned attempts to broaden its reach beyond Latino Republicans already in its fold. Republicans are “getting more Latino voters not because of their best efforts, but in spite of them,” he said.Latinos are now projected to number about 34.5 million eligible voters, or an estimated 14.3 percent of the American electorate, according to a 2022 analysis by the Pew Research Center.Although Latino voters still overall lean Democratic, former President Donald J. Trump improved his performance with the demographic in 2020 nationwide, and in some areas like South Florida and South Texas even made sizable gains. Debate over what exactly drove his appeal continues.Some post-mortem analyses have found his opposition to city-led Covid pandemic restrictions that shut down workplaces and his administration’s promotion of low Latino unemployment rates and support for Latino businesses helped persuade Latino voters to his side, even when they disagreed with his violent and divisive approach to immigration.Historically, about a third of Latino voters have tended to vote for Republican presidential candidates. But Latino Republicans differ from non-Hispanic Republicans on guns and immigration: Fewer Hispanic Republicans believe protecting the right to own guns is more important than regulating who can own guns, and Hispanic Republicans are less likely to clamor for more border security measures, according to the Pew Research Center.At the debate on Wednesday, Ms. Calderón, who is Colombian and has gained prominence in Latin America for her incisive reporting on race and immigration, and the other moderators often turned to issues central to Latinos in the United States, including income inequality, gun violence and Black and Latino students’ low scores in math and reading.But on the stage, the candidates’ attention quickly turned elsewhere. Mr. DeSantis — the only candidate to provide a Spanish translation of his website — accused Washington of “shutting down the American dream,” an idea popular with Latino workers, but mostly pitched himself as a culture warrior.Ilia Calderón, the first Afro-Latina to anchor a major national news desk in the United States, was a moderator.Etienne Laurent/EPA, via ShutterstockIn response to a question on whether he would support a pathway to citizenship for 11 million undocumented people in the United States, Mr. Christie talked of the need for immigrant workers to fill vacant jobs. But in his central point, he pledged to increase the presence of troops and agents at the border with Mexico, calling for the issue to be treated as “the law enforcement problem it is.”Mr. Pence dodged Ms. Calderón when she pressed him on whether he would work with Congress to preserve the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA. The initiative, which remains in limbo in the courts, is temporarily protecting from deportation roughly 580,000 undocumented immigrants who have been able to show they were brought into the country as children, have no serious criminal history and work or go to school, among other criteria. About 91 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents and 54 percent of Republicans and Republican leaners favor a law that would provide DACA recipients permanent legal status. Although Mr. Pence described himself as the only candidate onstage who had tackled congressional reform before, he did not directly answer the question on DACA. Mostly, he used his responses to attack Vivek Ramaswamy and Mr. DeSantis before launching into a lengthy accounting of his track record on hard-line Trump policies.“The truth is, we need to fix a broken immigration system, and I will do that as well,” Mr. Pence said. “But first and foremost, a nation without borders is not a nation.”When asked how he would reach out to Latino voters, Mr. Scott highlighted his chief of staff, who he said was the only Hispanic female chief of staff in the Senate and someone he had hired “because she was the best, highest-qualified person we have.” But he, too, quickly turned to attacking his home-state rival, former Gov. Nikki Haley.The exchanges were a marked difference from the 2016 presidential debate when Senator Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor, defended speaking Spanish and personalized their experiences with immigration and the Latino community.Chuck Rocha, a Democratic strategist who helped run Senator Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign last election cycle, said they also were different — and less effective — from those of Mr. Trump. Missing were the pledges “to bring jobs back to America, buy American and drain the swamp,” he added, messages that he said tended to resonate with Latinos and Latino men in particular.“Their campaigns have become such grievance politics that there is not a positive message that is radiating from anyone,” Mr. Rocha said. The shift could also hurt Republicans with a Latino community that skews young and tends to be aspirational, he argued.In South Texas, Sergio Sanchez, the former chairman of the Hidalgo County Republican Party, said he listened to the debate with dismay. He wanted to hear the candidates talk about pocketbook issues and energy policies. And he wanted them to stay on message and connect the dots for voters on why their economic policies were better than those under the Biden administration. Instead, he said, they spent more time swinging at one another.That was not good for Latinos or anyone else, he said. “They swung and missed,” he added. More

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      ‘Every Time I Hear You, I Feel a Little Bit Dumber’: Who Won and Lost the Second G.O.P. Debate

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      Welcome to Opinion’s commentary for the second Republican presidential primary candidate debate, held at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California on Wednesday night. In this special feature, Times Opinion writers and contributors rank the candidates on a scale of 0 to 10: 0 means the candidate probably didn’t belong on the stage and should […] More

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      None of the Republicans on the Debate Stage Are Going to Topple Trump

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      Donald Trump won’t be defeated with sound bites. He won’t be bested with wordplay. Ron DeSantis carped repeatedly that Trump was “missing in action” at the Republican presidential debate on Wednesday night, while Chris Christie called Trump a coward and christened him “Donald Duck.” How very clever.And how totally futile. They were throwing darts at the absent front-runner when missiles are in order.Trump has a mammoth lead over all of them, and there’s no sign that it’s shrinking. He’s skating to the party’s presidential nomination. Along the way, he’s doing quadruple axels of madness, triple toe loops of provocation. He’s fantasizing about executing a respected general, and he’s fetishizing firearms, his words coming close to incitements of violence. He’s not sorry for the Jan. 6 riots. To my ears, he’d like more where that came from.But did any of the seven candidates onstage at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif., talk about that? Nope. Mike Pence criticized Trump for wanting to consolidate too much power in Washington, D.C. DeSantis argued that Trump, if elected president again, could serve only one term, while DeSantis, a newcomer to the White House, could serve two.Christie, the bravest of a timid bunch, gave eloquent voice to how profoundly Trump had divided the country, pitting friend against friend and relative against relative, and while that’s sadly true, that’s also beside the point.The point is that Trump has zero respect for democracy and has aspirations for autocracy. The point is that he keeps scaling new pinnacles of unhinged. The point is that he needs to win the presidency so that he doesn’t have to worry about living out his days where he belongs: behind bars.And perhaps the only shot that any of those seven candidates have to stop him and prevent the irreversible damage he’d do to the United States with four more years is to call a tyrant a tyrant, a liar a liar, an arsonist an arsonist. None of them did.They’re too frightened of his and his followers’ wrath. So forgive me if I chortled every time they talked about leadership, which they talked about often on Wednesday night. They’re not leaders. They’re opportunists who are letting an opportunity slip away from them.The hopelessness of their quest for the presidency and their deepening awareness of that were reflected in all the shouting and cross-talk. Dear Lord, what a din — overlapping voices, operatic voices. It was like some misbegotten a cappella competition or the trailer for a movie I hope never to see: “Pitch Imperfect.” My ears will be ringing until the next Republican debate, scheduled for early November in Miami. Those poor Floridians. With DeSantis as their governor, haven’t they suffered enough?Instead of taking Trump sufficiently to task, instead of explaining in full why just about any one of them would be preferable to the madman of Mar-a-Loco, Nikki Haley and Tim Scott quarreled about drapes. Yes, drapes. He said she squandered $50,000 of federal money on them when she was the United Nations ambassador, she said she didn’t, and they both grew very exercised about it. Where was that passion on the subject of Trump?Instead of savaging him, the seven candidates tore into one another, seemingly vying not to catch up to Trump but to be declared the No. 1 alternative, like a beauty pageant runner-up poised to fulfill the winner’s duties and wear the winner’s tiara should the need arise.DeSantis was more aggressive than ever, a contender of faded promise making a last stand. He crammed in his entire biography: working-class upbringing, Ivy League but held his nose, volitional military service, father of three.Haley tussled with him, with Scott and especially with Vivek Ramaswamy, who was yet again the political equivalent of a jack-in-the-box, popping up every time you hoped that he’d finally been squished down. Haley called nonsense on his nonsense, telling him: “Every time I hear you, I feel a little bit dumber.” It wasn’t very kind, but it was wholly relatable.Ramaswamy tried humility on for size (“I’m here to tell you, no, I don’t know it all”), but it didn’t really fit. He’s too frenetic and too splenetic, and he had the wrong hair for it, a kind of cartoon pompadour that puzzled me.But not as much as Pence’s demeanor did. He kept trying for jokes in a voice that wasn’t remotely jokey, and he reached for conviction in a manner that lacked any trace of it. It’s not more support from voters that he most needs. It’s a transfusion.“You hear the fire in all of our voices,” he said at one point, but I couldn’t detect so much as a flickering Bic disposable lighter in his. I suspect that he won’t be in the hunt for much longer. Try hard not to miss him.From the others, there was plenty of heat, and there were even important exchanges that delineated significant fault lines in the Republican Party. DeSantis and Ramaswamy objected to the continued flow of enormous aid to Ukraine; Haley deemed that reckless. DeSantis defended his extreme efforts to restrict abortion; Christie advocated something a tad closer to moderation.But what will that matter if none of them chip away at Trump’s lead? There have now been two Republican presidential debates. Trump has proudly skipped and obnoxiously counterprogrammed both of them. And his punishment from his supposed rivals has been a dainty slap on the wrist.The moderators on Wednesday night were just as gentle on him, never posing a question as pointed as one during the first debate, when the candidates were asked whether they’d support Trump as the party’s nominee even if he became a felon.Instead, one of the moderators, Dana Perino, wondered which of the seven people onstage “should be voted off the island” to winnow the field of Trump alternatives. That was hugely revealing: She was suggesting that one of them had to go, when the candidate who needs exiling is the one who didn’t bother to take the stage.At least Christie recognized and remedied that, saying, “I vote Donald Trump off the island.” It was the right choice, rendered in the wrong words and wrong tone. This isn’t a reality show. It’s no episode of “Survivor.” It’s a matter of our country’s survival. But from the way seven candidates danced around the danger of Trump, you’d never know it.For the Love of SentencesLucinda WilliamsRahav Segev for The New York TimesIn a sublime reflection in The Bitter Southerner about what Lucinda Wiliams’s music means to him, Wyatt Williams (no relation) wrote: “The songs we hear as children end up being a lot like our fathers; we go on hearing them in our heads even when they’re not around.” (Thanks to Eileen Van Schaik of Shoreline, Wash., for flagging this.)In The New Yorker, Rachel Syme pondered the sartorial oddity of a leading fashion designer: “The Thom Browne look has often been compared to Pee-wee Herman’s archly nerdy costume or to Don Draper’s office wear after a few rounds through the dryer, but it calls to my mind, too, some mischievous scamp out of a Roald Dahl book who is always conspiring to put a dead hamster in the headmistress’s bed.” (Joanne Strongin, Port Washington, N.Y.)Also in The New Yorker, Judith Thurman distilled the conflict from which the plot of “The Iliad” proceeds: “And with that puerile quarrel between stubborn warlords over the right to own and to rape a girl, Western literature begins.” (Joyce Erickson, Seattle)And Anthony Lane reflected on the liberties that the director Kenneth Branagh and the screenwriter Michael Green took in adapting Agatha Christie’s “Hallowe’en Party,” set outside London, into the new movie “A Haunting in Venice,” set amid canals. “I’m already looking forward to their next reworking of Christie: ‘The Body in the Library,’ perhaps, relocated to the freezer aisle of a Walmart,” Lane wrote. (Abigail Smith, Downingtown, Pa.)In The Washington Post, Petula Dvorak characterized the brief window in which pawpaws are available and ripe enough to eat: “They are like some of D.C.’s other ephemeral delights — cherry blossoms or the optimism and innocence of freshman members of Congress.” (Joan Tindell, Tucson, Ariz.)In Esquire, Charles P. Pierce explained Attorney General Merrick Garland’s bind during his recent clash with Republicans at a House Judiciary Committee hearing: “Garland rope-a-doped as best he could, but there were too many dopes for him to rope.” (Peter Braverman, Bethesda, Md.)In Vanity Fair, Carl Hiaasen put Trump and DeSantis side by side: “Some claim Trump has a better sense of humor, but it was DeSantis who appointed a Jan. 6 rioter to the state board that oversees massage parlors.” (Sue Jares, Los Angeles)In The Times, Pamela Paul examined the embattled House speaker: “As Kevin McCarthy announced the impeachment inquiry, you could almost see his wispy soul sucked out Dementor-style, joining whatever ghostly remains of Paul Ryan’s abandoned integrity still wander the halls of Congress.” (Jeff Merkel, Fairbanks, Alaska, and Michael Berk, San Diego, among many others)Also in The Times, Bret Stephens previewed the Republican debate in Seussian style: “I expect Ramaswamy to irritate, DeSantis to infuriate, Christie to needle, Pence to remind me of a beetle, Scott to smile and Haley to win by a mile. But I doubt it will move the dial.” (Nancy Breeding, Raleigh, N.C., and Andrew Robinson, Syracuse, N.Y., among others) Bret also noted: “Politics used to be debating ideas. Now it’s about diagnosing psychosis.” (Pierre Mullie, Orléans, Ontario, and Margaret Velarde, Denver, among others)David French analyzed Trump’s recent shadings of his position on abortion, saying: “He is not convictionally pro-life. He is conveniently pro-life.” (Paul Dobbs, Relanges, France)And Tim Kreider, in a lovely essay about aging and vulnerability, inventoried the infirmities (“arthritic hips, ovarian cysts, herniated discs, breast cancer”) that set in as we move from middle to old age: “It’s as if we were all devices made by some big tech company, designed to start falling apart the instant the warranty expires and to be ingeniously difficult to repair, with zero support for older models.” (Mike Rogers, Wilmington, N.C., and Maureen Burke, Sausalito, Calif., among others)To nominate favorite bits of recent writing from The Times or other publications to be mentioned in “For the Love of Sentences,” please email me here and include your name and place of residence.On a Personal NoteJohn TurturroCole Barash for The New York TimesOur lives are accidents of a sort. We have only so much control over them. We get no say in the genes that we inherit, and while they’re not the whole of our destinies, they’re big parts of them — seeds that are certain to flower, bombs that are sure to detonate. We’re born into circumstances that liberate or limit us. We’re the beneficiaries of good timing, or we’re the victims of the opposite.John Turturro knows that well. The actor, director and writer had a mentally ill brother, Ralph, who spent many of his 70 years at the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens. John visited him there frequently, got to know the place well and shared those memories in a moving 2015 presentation for the storytelling forum the Moth that you can find here. It’s funny, it’s soulful, and it builds to a poignant metaphor whose elegance takes you by surprise.I had students in a class of mine at Duke watch it in advance of a recent Zoom visit from John, who’d agreed to talk with them about a book they were reading, “Is There No Place on Earth for Me?” by Susan Sheehan. It’s a classic of meticulous journalism, chronicling the odyssey of a woman with schizophrenia and her parents as they struggle, often in vain, to calm her turmoil — to bring nothing more and nothing less than a steady peace and baseline contentment to her days. For several years, John has been working to adapt it into a mini-series.He wants people to understand that mental illness doesn’t have the tidy arc that movies tend to give it. That it’s not a problem reliably solved by extra heaps of love. That it’s sometimes an endless road.And the patients and families traveling it? They could be us. They’re just like us: They’re pushing through hardships that, yes, may be more daunting than other people’s, but they’re pushing nonetheless, with merciful instances of levity and cherished moments of grace. Such instances and moments flicker throughout “Is There No Place on Earth for Me?,” and John’s Moth presentation brims with them.The book and the talk are lessons in the randomness of our lives. They’re also exhortations to meet it with whatever dignity and tenacity we can muster. More

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      DeSantis Clears a Debate Hurdle. Will It Be Enough to Build On?

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      The Florida governor projected confidence onstage, but time is running out to stop his slide in the polls and convince voters he’s the best Trump alternative.At a time when his standing in the polls has slid — and Republican donors have talked about finding another candidate to stop Donald J. Trump from cruising to the nomination — Gov. Ron DeSantis acted like the former president’s leading challenger at the second Republican presidential debate.Standing center stage at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library on Wednesday night, he deployed a newly assertive tone against the absent Mr. Trump, using criticisms he has been honing in recent weeks at the urging of his allies. He drew attacks from rivals who did show up, but none seemed to land a killer blow. And despite not saying a word until 15 minutes in, he ultimately imposed himself on the proceedings, speaking more than any other candidate.“Donald Trump is missing in action,” Mr. DeSantis said during his first remarks of the debate. “He should be on this stage tonight. He owes it to you to defend his record where they added $7.8 trillion to the debt.”The question is whether the performance will be enough now to stop him from losing ground and to build momentum. Time is running out to convince both skeptical voters and skittish donors that he is still the most competitive challenger to Mr. Trump than anyone else in the field. Mr. Trump’s standing in the race has only risen since the first debate in August, which he also skipped, and national surveys show him leading Mr. DeSantis by roughly 40 percentage points But as his rivals onstage Wednesday night clamored for airtime, conscious of their fading window, the Florida governor projected an air of confidence.“This is a two-man race,” Andrew Romeo, Mr. DeSantis’s communications director, told reporters in the spin room following the debate.Still, it was not exactly a breakout showing, and the debate may be best remembered for the seven candidates chaotically shouting over each other as the moderators tried to regain control. Even Mr. DeSantis conceded in an interview with Fox News after the debate that, had he been watching as a viewer, he would have “changed the channel.”Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, said that Mr. DeSantis had “embarrassed” himself in front of the entire country, a seeming confirmation that the former president’s team still sees him as enough of a threat. (Mr. Trump’s team also sent out an email blast assailing Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and former ambassador to the United Nations.)Over the summer, Mr. DeSantis’s campaign strategy crystallized into one clear imperative: beat Mr. Trump in Iowa, the first state to vote in the Republican primary. Such a victory would pierce the sheen of the former president’s invincibility and potentially force some of the other candidates to drop out, his supporters say, allowing Mr. DeSantis to consolidate support.Having poured his resources into Iowa, and seen Mr. Trump attack the state’s popular governor and anger its influential anti-abortion activists, a win there seems more plausible for Mr. DeSantis than it did ahead of the first debate in Milwaukee. At that encounter, the other candidates avoided criticizing Mr. DeSantis, even as they could have taken advantage of his reputation as prickly and awkward when attacked.By the second debate on Wednesday night, however, their calculations had changed, and Mr. DeSantis was squarely in the cross hairs.Former Vice President Mike Pence went after him over increased government spending in Florida, as well as the Parkland school shooter’s not receiving the death penalty (a decision by a jury that was not in Mr. DeSantis’s control and to which he responded by signing a bill making it easier to execute people). Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina sparred with the governor over how slavery is taught in Florida schools, a frequent topic of dispute between the two men.Ms. Haley attacked him for opposing offshore drilling and fracking in Florida as governor while pushing for more oil and gas extraction in the United States as a presidential candidate. Of all the barbs, that one seemed to cut the sharpest. As Ms. Haley talked, Mr. DeSantis theatrically and somewhat uncomfortably laughed, saying that she was “entirely wrong,” although the thrust of her criticism was largely accurate.The attacks helped make Mr. DeSantis the center of attention in a way he was not in Milwaukee. And rather than starting fights of his own, and allowing other candidates to take back the spotlight, Mr. DeSantis generally stuck to his talking points on immigration, China and the economy while criticizing President Biden and Democrats.He even led the other candidates in a mini-revolt against the moderators, refusing to engage in a gimmicky attempt to have those onstage write down the name of the rival they thought should drop out of the race.Still, the bulk of Mr. DeSantis’s attention clearly remains on Mr. Trump.After the debate, he told the Fox News host Sean Hannity that he wanted to face Mr. Trump one-on-one.“I think he owes it to our voters to come and make the case,” Mr. DeSantis said. More

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      Nikki Haley and Tim Scott Clash at the Second GOP Debate

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      For months, Nikki Haley and Tim Scott have been polite to one another on the campaign trail. That ended in a fiery way on Wednesday night on the debate stage.Nikki Haley and Tim Scott, two Republican presidential candidates with years of political history in South Carolina, had fiery exchanges over a state gas tax and curtains.FOX BusinessNikki Haley, as governor of South Carolina in December 2012, appointed Tim Scott to the Senate. Nearly 11 years later, on Wednesday night, Ms. Haley said he had squandered repeated opportunities to rein in spending. Mr. Scott said Ms. Haley had never seen a federal dollar she didn’t like.“Bring it, Tim,” Ms. Haley said, taunting him from across the Republican presidential debate stage.Nervous laughter erupted from the friendly audience as two South Carolinians seeking the Republican presidential nomination finally shed the shared Southern politesse that had kept them from attacking each other on the campaign trail.Their skirmish began when Ms. Haley dismissed Mr. Scott’s promise to limit spending in Washington by pointing out the increase in the national debt during his time in the Senate.“Where have you been?” Ms. Haley asked. “Where have you been, Tim? Twelve years we’ve waited, and nothing has happened.”A few minutes later, Ms. Haley couldn’t contain her smile as Mr. Scott slowly wound up his counterattack, which fully unleashed their most vigorous exchange toward the end of an otherwise wearisome two-hour Republican debate.She grinned, watching him as he spoke. She stole a glance into the audience, raising her eyebrows as if to acknowledge that the moment was as unavoidable as it was preposterous.In past elections, Mr. Scott and Ms. Haley had campaigned together. Now, the former political allies were pitted against each other — bickering over the cost of gas and the price of drapes in a government office — in the increasingly desperate fight over second place to the race’s front-runner, former President Donald J. Trump.Mr. Scott, whose sunny disposition typically casts him more naturally in the role of a happy warrior on the campaign trail, tried on the persona of a political brawler. It was an imperfect fit, and he stumbled over his words, stammering as the accusations trickled out.As he turned to directly address Ms. Haley, he found her gaze waiting for him.Their eyes met, and they nearly broke character, sharing the briefest of smiles — while trying to level criticisms at each other — and signaling the absurd twist that their longtime political alliance had taken.“You literally put $50,000 on curtains at a $15 million subsidized location,” Mr. Scott said, waving his hand at Ms. Haley. It was a reference to a State Department allocation — made during the Obama administration and not by Ms. Haley — for $52,701 for the installation of customized window curtains in the high-rise apartment for the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.But it wasn’t immediately clear that Mr. Scott was finished. “Next,” he said quickly but awkwardly, suggesting that she could respond.“You got bad information,” Ms. Haley said, emphasizing her adjective with a long drawl and wagging her left index finger at him first and then following it with a wag from her right.She then defended herself against Mr. Scott’s accusations that she pushed to increase the gas tax, saying, “I fought the gas tax in South Carolina multiple times against the establishment.”“Just go to YouTube,” Mr. Scott interjected. “All you have to do is watch Nikki Haley on YouTube.”She relented a bit, acknowledging having expressed her interest in a gas-tax increase if lawmakers would agree to offset it with an income-tax cut. “So you said, ‘Yes,’” Mr. Scott said.But Ms. Haley — a more natural political debater — was rolling, and she waved her open palm at Mr. Scott as if she could tamp him back from across the stage they shared with five other Republican candidates.“On the curtains — do your homework, Tim, because Obama bought those,” Ms. Haley said.The smiles had vanished, replaced by the corrosiveness of the Republican Party on full display: friends turning on each other to squabble over the cost of window coverings. The exchange underscored the unease inside a party that has shifted over the course of their relationship and now belongs to a man who declined to show up for the debate.“Did you send them back?” Mr. Scott asked Ms. Haley about the drapes. Mr. Scott’s eyes widened, and he extended his arms at his side as he repeatedly asked if she had tried to return them.Ms. Haley tilted her forehead toward him, narrowed her eyes and returned the same accusatory question reminiscent of an I-know-you-are-but-what-am-I schoolyard taunt.“Did you send them back?” Ms. Haley asked. “You’re the one who works in Congress.”“Oh my gosh — you hung them,” Mr. Scott said, holding his arms in the air to simulate the act of hanging drapes on a curtain rod. “They’re your curtains.”“They were there before I even showed up,” Ms. Haley said, adding, “You are scrapping.”“I’m not scrapping,” Mr. Scott said.The split screen they shared as they pointed at each other on television was a long way from the moment just a decade earlier when they stood side by side in South Carolina. Back then, Ms. Haley introduced him as the best pick to represent the state in the Senate.“He knows,” she said at the time, “the value of a dollar.” More

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      The Messy G.O.P. Debate Didn’t Turn Off These Voters

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      Ron DeSantis won praise for his education policies and Nikki Haley got points for passion at a debate watch party in New Hampshire.The voters gathered at a brewery in Goffstown, N.H., to watch the second Republican presidential debate on Wednesday night were excited about many of the options on the stage at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. They were also looking forward to having fewer of them.“I’m hoping they’re going to narrow down the candidates,” said Jennifer Vallee, 45, a stay-at-home mom who lives in Goffstown. “I want to hear more from the candidates that actually have a fighting chance to make it towards the end.”Ms. Vallee, a supporter of former President Donald J. Trump, was among 28 local Republicans and Republican-leaning independents who gathered at Mountain Base Brewery in this suburb of Manchester for an informal watch party and potluck organized by Lisa Mazur, a local state representative. Over barbecue and smoked Gouda dip, they considered the contenders, seeing more to like than dislike among the seven candidates vying for their votes.“Who do we think did better than expected?” Jared Talbot, 46, a defense contractor employee and local school board member, asked as the debate wound down.“DeSantis!” several people called out.Although many in the group favored Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, they had been underwhelmed by his performance in the first Republican debate, on Aug. 23, and were hoping for a stronger showing on Wednesday. Many in the room were self-identified “parents rights” advocates, and cheered Mr. DeSantis’s criticism of college gender studies programs and his boast that “I ended up getting through Yale and Harvard Law School and somehow came out more conservative than when I went in.”Several of Mr. Trump’s rivals for the nomination are banking on New Hampshire’s early primary, with its storied history of scrambling, or at least spicing up, presidential races, as their best hope for breaking the former president’s stride toward the nomination.The debate watchers in Goffstown had seen many of the candidates in person during their dozens of appearances in the state in recent months. Although the crowd tilted toward Mr. DeSantis and the entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, most candidates on the stage had their partisans — even Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota, who narrowly qualified for the stage hours before the debate. (“I’m always the person who likes the outlier,” John Lombo, 45, a hazardous materials auditor for UPS and the lone Burgum supporter in the room, explained.)Many of them were using the debate as an opportunity to shop for vice-presidential favorites. “She’s passionate!” Mr. Talbot, who has endorsed Mr. DeSantis, said admiringly as Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and ambassador to the United Nations, clashed with Tim Scott, the South Carolina senator, late in the evening.Ms. Mazur, who also supports Mr. DeSantis, was less impressed by the exchange. “I liked her in the first debate,” she said. “This time, it was a little much.”Still, most of the crowd seemed impressed by the former governor’s feisty back-and-forth with Mr. Scott, whom she appointed to the U.S. Senate, which seemed to establish her mettle even as it made them question his.“I’m looking to see who can hold their ground, because that is someone who can hold their ground in the long term,” Heather Pfeifer, 48, a home-schooling mother who lives in Goffstown, said. “I love Tim Scott, I’m just not sure he’s a strong enough candidate to get to the place he needs to be.”She added, “I really think Haley might be my favorite.”Nikki Haley is among the candidates who have made dozens of appearances in New Hampshire in recent months.John Tully for The New York TimesMr. Ramaswamy, a first-time candidate, won a number of fans with his Aug. 23 debate performance. “I went into that debate really watching Ron DeSantis,” said Henry Giasson, a 44-year-old leather store owner and Army veteran, “and I came out watching Vivek Ramaswamy.”Some attendees remarked appreciatively on Mr. Ramaswamy’s toned-down demeanor Wednesday night after his attention-grabbing turn in August. “He’s a brilliant speaker,” Mr. Giasson said.When former Vice President Mike Pence took a jab at Mr. Ramaswamy’s patchy voting record — he has said he did not vote in the 2008, 2012 or 2016 elections — on Wednesday night, Mr. Giasson leaped to his defense: “Where’d that come from?” he said, adding sarcastically, “That was classy.”In the Granite State, Republican candidates face an electorate uncommonly marbled with libertarians, moderates and independents — unaffiliated voters are allowed to vote in primaries. The state’s voters delight in unmaking inevitabilities and legitimizing long shots — among them Mr. Trump, whose landslide victory in New Hampshire in 2016 jolted the Republican Party into taking his candidacy seriously.Mr. Trump remains the Republican primary favorite in New Hampshire by a large margin in the early polling in this election, too. But a recent CNN poll found him performing well below his national average in the state, with fewer than half of Republican voters naming him as their first or second choice. The same survey found Mr. DeSantis, Mr. Trump’s closest rival in early polling, in free-fall in New Hampshire, suggesting an open contest for second place at the very least.Perhaps none of the candidates has invested as heavily in the state as Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor and the only overtly anti-Trump candidate in the field, who launched his campaign in Goffstown and has made more than two-thirds of his campaign appearances in the state. But Mr. Christie’s moments in the debate were mostly met with silence from the Goffstown crowd.“He’s the only one I’d take off the stage,” said Karen Monasky, 73, a retired occupational therapist and a Republican-voting independent who met Christie during one of his many swings through the area.Still, reviewing the performances as the debate came to a close, several of the attendees conceded that Mr. Christie had a decent night.“The goal is to beat Biden,” Mr. Lombo said. “Even Chris Christie, who I can’t stand, is better than Joe Biden.” More

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      Vivek Ramaswamy Is Attacked Over China, Ukraine and TikTok

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      Vivek Ramaswamy was a standout last month in the first Republican presidential debate. In the second debate on Wednesday, he was a target.Nikki Haley, Tim Scott and even the typically mild-mannered former Vice President Mike Pence all took swipes at Mr. Ramaswamy, a 38-year-old entrepreneur and a political newcomer who has staked out some populist positions that defy traditional Republican ideology.The attacks were broad and searing. Mr. Ramaswamy was hit on his business dealings with China, his pledges to cut off aid to Ukraine and even his presence on TikTok.“Honestly, every time I hear you, I feel a little bit dumber,” Ms. Haley said, criticizing his use of TikTok.In response to a question about why he disagreed with Mr. Ramaswamy’s pledge to end birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants, Mr. Scott turned to Mr. Ramaswamy’s last debate performance.“We think about the fact that Vivek said we are all good people, and I appreciate that, because at the last debate he said we were all bought and paid for,” Mr. Scott said, adding that he did not understand how Mr. Ramaswamy could say that when he himself did business with the “Chinese Communist Party and the same people that funded Hunter Biden millions of dollars.”Mr. Ramaswamy argued that he had pulled his company out of China when other C.E.O.s had not. But Mr. Pence dug in further, bringing up the fact that Mr. Ramaswamy had acknowledged he did not vote until relatively recently.“Let me say, I’m glad Vivek pulled out of his business deal in 2018 in China,” Mr. Pence said. “That must’ve been around the time you decided to start voting in presidential elections.” More