It’s fight night again and if the second GOP debate is anything like the first (no guarantees on that, by the way) then whatever happens tonight will shape the next several weeks of the race.
Last time around, we previewed the debate by looking at the various candidates’ upside and downside potential. That turned out to be a pretty useful lens, so let’s do it again.
Donald Trump: I was dead wrong last time when I said that Trump’s upside was limited. This time, I’m not so sure. On the one hand, if you believe that Trump’s candidacy is a bubble, then if he’s not growing his enterprise, it risks popping. Just as a matter of mathematics, with 30 percent support in a field of 16, how much upside could Trump possibly have? Could he get to 35 percent? I don’t see why not. But 40 percent? The higher he goes, the harder it is to find each marginal point.
And the minute Trump ticks backward, he risks catastrophic collapse. That’s because his campaign is based on #winning. Trump can’t come from behind. He can’t sink to 10 percent and then slug his way back to the top because such a fall invalidates his argument which is, to a large degree: I’m a winner and winners win.
Also, the other candidates have seen his stuff now, and some of them might have a better bead on how to hurt him. (If I were Trump, the candidate who I’d be most careful with is Carly Fiorina; her pro-wrestling ring name would be the Cerebral Assassin.)
All of that said, if he puts in another performance like he did at the Fox debate, he’ll do very well.
Ben Carson: Unlike Trump, Carson is all upside tonight. He’s surging in the polls not because of media coverage, but because of organically grown support. He’s as personally attractive as anyone who’s run for office in the last 20 years. And if Trump falters, he’s the best positioned to gobble up the Donald’s support.
The big knock against Carson is that he doesn’t know policy, but it’ll be harder to expose that weakness on a stage crowded with eleven people. And I don’t know that anyone else on the stage (with the possible exception of Trump) is going to want to be seen as taking shots at the good doctor.
Jeb Bush: He’s the mirror-image of Trump tonight in that his downside would seem to be pretty limited. I mean, how much further can he really fall? Bush is sitting at 8 percent in the RealClear average. On the one hand, this is an astonishing indictment of his candidacy. On the other, what’s the worst this debate could do to him? I suppose he could always drop to 6 percent.
Bush’s big problem has nothing to do with the debate. At this point, his campaign is little more than giant pile of establishment GOP dollars. What he needs to worry about is preventing his big-money backers from freaking out and jumping ship to, say, John Kasich, who’s dropped a bunch of money in New Hampshire and is now running three points ahead of Bush in the Granite State. His debate tonight is really about how he comes out compared with the governor of Ohio.
Ted Cruz: I continue to be impressed with how Cruz has shrewdly kept himself in the top tier. He effectively hobbled Rand Paul and his alliance with Trump is a pretty cagey move. His main rival right now is probably Carson, and Cruz is a pretty good contrast with him, too. Every time Cruz is on a debate stage, his upside is pretty significant and his downside is limited.
Marco Rubio: On the one hand, Rubio should be worried, because his bounce from the first debate is long gone: His support is exactly where it was the day of the Fox debate: 5.8 percent today versus 5.2 percent then. He has shown a surprising lack of adaptability in the face of Trump’s surge, which should worry anyone who thinks he’s the smart-money bet for the nomination. (As I still do, more or less.)
Yet Rubio has two things going for him. Like Cruz, when he’s on a debate stage, he’s likely to help himself. But unlike anyone else in the field, Rubio is so broadly acceptable to Republicans that he has the potential to linger in the back of the lead pack for a long while-through South Carolina, even-and then emerge as the fusion candidate late in the game. That’s probably not his preferred path to the nomination, but it’s a viable Plan B.
Carly Fiorina: Since she’s new to the top tier, she’ll probably be getting a closer look from voters than anyone else onstage. And because she’s exhibited so much poise to date, her upside looks awfully big tonight.
The GOP primaries are usually two different races happening simultaneously-one contest between moderates to be the champion of the establishment, and one between conservatives to be the champion of actual rank-and-file Republican voters.
It seems possible that this cycle the two races might actually be between outsiders (Trump, Carson, and Fiorina) and traditional politicians (everyone else). If that’s the case, I like Fiorina’s chances in the outsider primary.
Scott Walker: He’s probably had the worst five weeks of any of the Republican candidates. Walker was a strong, first-tier contender up until the Fox News debate. He had a solid, if workmanlike, showing there. And then … crickets. While Trump kept moving forward, aggressively looking for angles, Walker disappeared. Drops in the polls happen—that’s not the big concern. The real worry is that Walker and/or his campaign has no imagination or political adaptability.
Which is why Walker probably has the biggest downside risk tonight-if he doesn’t make a mark, he sinks deeper into the second tier. And in trying to make an impression, he risks looking desperate. Remember, a big part of Walker’s appeal is that he’s a nice, normal guy, who just happens to have political nerves of steel. That makes him a great counter-puncher, but not a natural on offense.
Mike Huckabee: Yup, he’s still hanging around. Expect him to get a tough Kim Davis question. And expect him to give a surprisingly good answer that causes widespread grumbling among the conservative smart-set. At this point, Huckabee’s upside and downside are both pretty shallow. If he were going to take off, he would have already. On the other hand, he’s hanging around at 6 percent based on nothing but personal charm and a connection to socially conservative voters.
John Kasich: His New Hampshire numbers have probably got him thinking that Jeb is going to be his running mate. Not so fast. In order for Kasich to replace Jeb as the RINO establishment guy (I kid!) he has to hijack Jeb’s money. But he can’t get on the GOP money train just by doing a pump-and-dump with his New Hampshire numbers.
People seemed surprised by Kasich’s performance at the Fox debate just because he was a high-energy person. Maybe that will work for him again, but I suspect the expectations have been raised so that simply having a pulse won’t be enough to declare victory. Like Walker, I think his downside tonight is more significant than his upside.
Rand Paul: Huge upside tonight. All he has to do is not come across as a colossal jerk and he’ll outperform the first debate. I kid about this, too. But Paul isn’t going anywhere. If Trump stays afloat, there’s no room for him, period. And if Trump implodes, Paul is at least seven degrees of separation from inheriting chunks of his support.
Chris Christie: Still has some upside, I think. If Trump blows up, Christie could have a moment as the tough-love, tells-it-like-it-is guy. And as he showed last time, he’s a pretty sharp performer on the debate stage. But with Kasich’s boomlet, Christie is now third in line for Jeb’s entailment.
And then there’s everyone else. Bobby Jindal, Rick Santorum, George Pataki, and Lindsey Graham will be at the kids’ table and this time, I’ll be surprised if anyone gets a bounce by “winning” the undercard. At the last debate the kids’ table looked like a genuine consequence of having too many candidates. With Perry out and Fiorina promoted, the kids’ table now looks like a rump contingent of also-rans.
I expect that the logic of the debates is going to winnow the field pretty quickly from here on, because when the next guy drops out, the kids table debate will be down to just three contestants-at which point, people will start to ask why we need to have it at all. And once the kids’ table debates are done away with, anyone not on the main stage will cease to exist as a political commodity.
That Carly Fiorina caught the one golden ticket in the entire GOP debate structure is a reminder that it helps to be both good and lucky.
