How the GOP debate is like a game of "Survivor"
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From left: DeSantis, Ramaswamy and Haley at the last GOP debate. Photo: Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images
The first presidential primaries are still more than three months away, but Wednesday's debate feels like one of the last chances for someone other than Donald Trump to emerge as a major contender for the GOP nomination.
Why it matters: The candidates seem to sense the urgency, too. Once reluctant to take on Trump as they tried to skim support from his MAGA base, several now are taking aim at the Republican frontrunner, who has grown his lead while skipping the debates.
What they're saying: "He's running on a lot of the same promises he ran on in 2016 and didn't deliver on," Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis told Fox News' Laura Ingraham this week, calling out Trump for failing to get Mexico to pay for a border wall and eliminate the national debt, among other things.
- "Thin-skinned and easily distracted," former UN ambassador Nikki Haley said of Trump recently in New Hampshire, one of three early voting states where Haley got a boost in the polls after a well-received performance in the first GOP debate last month.
- "He used to be good on foreign policy," Haley added, "and now he's starting to walk it back, and get weak in the knees when it comes to Ukraine."
Between the lines: The stepped-up rhetoric reflects the "Survivor"-like nature of a run for a party's presidential nomination.
- As contestants drop out, the key to winning for most is simply to stay in the game and make it to a 1-on-1 battle.
- That's why Wednesday's debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif., seems especially crucial to DeSantis, Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy, the entrepreneurial showman who helped himself during the first debate in Milwaukee.
Haley was perhaps the biggest winner coming out of the first debate.
- She jumped in several state and national polls, particularly in the early voting states of New Hampshire, Iowa and South Carolina, her home state.
- In Milwaukee, Haley was able to draw a contrast between her views and the more hardline conservatism touted by Trump, DeSantis and Ramswamy, casting herself as more of a traditional moderate who would have a better chance of winning a national election.
- Some polls support her on that: A recent CNN survey indicated that among all the GOP contenders — including Trump — she's the only one who'd win a matchup against President Biden.
For DeSantis, the debate represents a chance to claw back support that has been draining from his campaign almost since the start.
- He remains second to Trump in GOP polls — but a distant second, and many Republicans' disappointment in his effort has become a signature of the campaign's early months.
The big picture: Trump isn't just skipping the debates — in some ways he seems to be moving on from the primaries before they even start, pivoting to the general election as the presumed GOP nominee.
- During the debate he'll be in Michigan delivering a prime-time speech, trying to undermine Biden's union support by courting blue-collar workers — though notably, at a non-union manufacturing plant.
- Biden's campaign also seems to be moving to the general election, mocking Trump's union overtures in a new ad that launched Wednesday.
