The debate Ron DeSantis needs to win
Byron York
MILWAUKEE — THE DEBATE RON DESANTIS NEEDS TO WIN. The Republican presidential field that will take the stage here at the Fiserv Forum Wednesday night is made up of several sub-groups. There is the who-are-these-guys? group, with Gov. Doug Burgum (R-ND) and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson. Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy is probably still in the who-are-these-guys? group, even though he has made significant progress toward climbing out.
For those who would disagree about Ramaswamy — after all, he’s on cable TV a lot — just look at the polls on his favorable/unfavorable rating. In a new Quinnipiac survey, 20% had a favorable opinion of him, 18% had an unfavorable opinion of him, and 61% said they had not heard enough to know. So he’s still in the who-are-these-guys? group.
Then there is the bash-Trump group, with just one member — former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who wouldn’t be running for president if not to attack former President Donald Trump. Former Vice President Mike Pence is not part of the group, but he has been moving toward the anti-Trump spot for the last few weeks. He might get there soon. The problem, especially for Christie, is that Trump has decided to skip the debate, meaning there can be no memorable confrontational moments.
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Then there is the I-want-to-be-president-but-vice-president-would-also-be-nice group, composed of Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley. They are serious candidates who haven’t yet been able to climb to the top tier.
And then there is the last group, the leader group, made up solely — in the absence of the true leader of the race, Trump — of Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL).
The stakes vary wildly for each candidate. What happens if the who-are-these-guys? group doesn’t do well? Not a lot — they stay at the bottom and perhaps leave the race earlier than they otherwise would have. Of that group, Ramaswamy has something to lose from a lackluster performance, having risen in the national GOP polls. And what if Christie doesn’t impress? Well, he’s just in it for one thing, the Trump crusade. As for Pence, it still seems hard to figure out why he is running, not because he is not qualified or experienced or able, but because the circumstances at the moment weigh so monumentally against his success.
Scott and Haley have been working hard to gain a foothold. Scott has had better results in Iowa than Haley has so far, but neither has set the world on fire, and a lackluster performance at the debate would likely not change their standing much at all.
That leaves DeSantis, who has a lot — a whole lot — to lose on Wednesday night. His behind-the-scenes behavior in the last few months shows how important he believes the debate to be. He has prepared for the debate for months, hiring the top Republican debate consultant, Brett O’Donnell, in May when some other candidates had not yet devoted any time to debate preparations. (Some of the candidates started looking for help as recently as three weeks ago.) When some of DeSantis’s debate prep documents became public, either accidentally or on purpose, it showed a candidate who had been doing his homework.
DeSantis spent a lot of time preparing for a debate in which Trump would participate. But he always believed that he, DeSantis, would be the prime target of his fellow candidates even if Trump were onstage. And, of course, Trump himself could have been counted on to trash DeSantis at every opportunity. Plus, most of the other candidates would have been too afraid to attack Trump in a way they would happily attack DeSantis. All of this indicates that DeSantis stood to lose the most of any candidate onstage regardless of whether Trump appeared, and his fellow candidates would like to help DeSantis have a bad night.
Still, DeSantis sees the debate as an opportunity. You know that Quinnipiac poll in which 61% said they had not heard enough about Vivek Ramaswamy to know whether they had a favorable or unfavorable opinion of him? Just 17% said they did not know enough about DeSantis to form an opinion. (His numbers were 32% favorable and 49% unfavorable.) DeSantis sees the debate, aired on Fox News, Fox Business, and other Fox platforms, as a way to introduce himself to millions who don’t really know much about him and to change the opinions of millions of others who have an unfavorable view of him. That is worth being a target.
The backdrop of the debate as an opportunity for DeSantis is, of course, his long slide in the polls. His highest level of support among Republicans, according to the RealClearPolitics average of polls, came when he hit 31.3% on January 22 of this year. Now, his support stands at 14.3%, less than half of what it was back then.
Other candidates have lost support, but not as much as DeSantis. Haley has lost nearly half her support — she hit 6.3% in March and is at 3.2% today. Pence’s support fell from 7% in February to 4% today. Proportionately, those are big falls, but not quite as big as DeSantis and nowhere near as big in absolute numbers.
Trump, of course, has gone the other way — from 43% in the RealClearPolitics average in March to 55.4% today. And Ramaswamy has climbed, too — from 1% in April to 7.2% today. Ramaswamy has tried to make his preparations a spectacle. He tweeted a video of himself doing exercises and playing tennis as “preparation” for the debate and held a big party for supporters in Milwaukee the night before the event. While Ramaswamy is doing conventional debate prep, he’s trying, like a student who says he aced a test without studying, to make it seem effortless. Of course, now he has to ace the test, and lately, in, for example, his statements about 9/11, he has been making careless errors.
But the candidate who needs the most to do well is the candidate who has fallen the farthest, and that is Ron DeSantis. No, an uninspiring debate performance won’t kill him. But he really, really needs to remind Republicans of why many of them supported him in the first place.
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