‘Trump Alternative Debate’ Full of Candidates Better at Taking on Biden Than GOP Frontrunner
© AP Photo / Mark J. Terrill
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The GOP primary race has failed to produce a candidate to rival former US President Donald Trump, although some of them seem to shine better when taking on the policies of US President Joe Biden, as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis did at a separate debate last week, a journalist told Sputnik.
The third debate in the Republican US presidential primary race is scheduled for Wednesday night. As with previous debates, Trump, the front-runner in the primaries, is not participating, leaving the debate stage for a coterie of low-polling rivals to fight it out on.
Amy DeLaura, a video journalist at the Washington Examiner, told Radio Sputnik’s Fault Lines on Wednesday that the event was “the Trump Alternative debate,” which ultimately had no hope of producing a viable rival to Trump on its own.
The interview can be viewed in full here, starting at 1:21:00.
“I think people are looking for one person to stand out and if everyone can gather behind this one person, maybe they would have a chance against Donald Trump. Now if that’s a pipe dream, I don’t know,” she said.
“I would say that [for former UN ambassador Nikki] Haley, these debates have been very good for her. She does have a lot of stand-out moments. [Entrepreneur] Vivek Ramaswamy, while he will have viral moments, he seems to attack everyone except for his primary candidate, which some people love and say ‘he is what the party needs to change the direction that it’s going.’ It seems to be 50:50, other people just find him annoying. [Florida Governor Ron] DeSantis just has completely bombed, he had higher polling numbers at up to 30%, and Trump at 40%, before he even announced he was going to run. Since he announced he was going to run in May, he has just fallen. Now, with Haley, completely coming up as a competitor again, in some state polls she’s actually above him [DeSantis].”
“Chris Christie, I don’t know what he’s still doing here to be perfectly honest with you. He did have some viral moments in the first two [debates], I can’t even remember him in the third. I mean, Donald Duck was going around forever after the second debate, he seems to still be holding onto his chance as well.”
DeSantis Warmup With Newsom
DeLaura said that opinions about the winner of the debate last week between DeSantis and California Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat who is not running for president, “seemed to go along party lines.”
“Except if you’re Donald Trump. Apparently, last night in his town hall, he was saying he thought Newsom did better overall,” she noted.
“I would say, I think DeSantis did better in that debate than he did in any of his actual GOP primary debates. He does better against Biden policies and that’s what Newsom was supposed to be, though he denies his shadow campaign and says he’s supposed to be fighting for the Biden administration. I would say Newsom, there was a lot of fact-checking going on, and when DeSantis pulled out the book that had inappropriate images on it that he had the cover of himself, when he was talking about the mass exodus from California to Florida, and he mentioned Newsom’s in-laws moving to Florida, and then when he was also talking about the economy very specifically; and Newsom’s only rebuttal was ‘well, the way you treat women in your state.’”
“DeSantis does well against bad Biden policies, but he doesn’t seem to be doing well against other GOP rivals. So that was a chance to show his strong suit in that debate,” she said.
“The economy is something that is very difficult for Democrats and Biden is foregoing his ‘Bidenomics,’ he hasn’t said it in a speech since early November, the White House press secretary used to say it four times a day during White House press briefings, she’s not mentioning it anymore. Democrats in Congress don’t want to have anything to do with it while they’re running for election in 2024.”
When it came to DeSantis’ collapse from a potential rival to Trump in late 2022 to distantly trailing him in the polls just a few months later, even before he formally announced his campaign, DeLaura said that the Florida governor had focused so much on the “culture war” as opposed to bread-and-butter issues that he probably crossed a line with many conservative voters.
“At the same time [as the polls], he started this battle with Disney, which some Republicans - you know, the old-school Republican is all about protecting big business - I think some people think he went too far … using his political power to punish a company, which is exactly what Republicans fighting the ‘cancel culture’ and fighting ‘the woke agenda’ have been fighting against, and they feel ‘oh well when we do the same thing, they’re no better.’ I think that left a sour taste in a lot of people’s mouths,” she said.
“He focuses more on the ‘culture war’ than on necessarily Republican core principles, and I think he’s finding that coming into a debate he’s either alienating certain voters or he’s not able to win necessarily when it comes to foreign policy,” she observed. “He just doesn't seem to have necessarily these stand-out moments where as a voter, you [think] ‘that’s going to help me’ that’s going to help Americans in everyday life. And the economy is the number one thing voters are looking at right now. The culture wars, everything like that, has kind of gone to the wayside with the massive inflation we’re facing right now.”
'He Doesn't See This as Competition'
She said there were of course things the candidates at the debate could do to have a stand-out moment or go viral or improve their positioning by a few percentage points, “but I mean, right now, looking at Real Clear Politics polling, Trump is 48 percentage points above all of them. Even if every single one of them were to drop out except for one and all of those percentage points all went to one candidate, no one would even come close to Trump. He’s riding at 61% right now, this is the first time he’s not doing counter-programming. Before, he had done [former Fox News host] Tucker [Carlson] at the same time, he had done his own campaign rally literally down the street ... it’s not even worth it for him to do counter-programming. He did do [Fox host Sean] Hannity last night, but it’s just not the level of doing it at the same time and I think he’s just looking forward to Iowa, looking forward to New Hampshire and he just doesn’t even see this as competition anymore.”
She also noted the importance of ultra-loyal “forever-Trumpers,” who she characterized as “a whole different breed” who would instantly turn on DeSantis once Trump began launching attacks against him. “You can’t [get elected] by p*ssing off the person who seems to be the face of the party right now.”
