“Have you noticed that anybody who attacks Donald Trump goes down in the polls?” asked one adviser to a primetime debate candidate outside Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland Thursday afternoon. The adviser went on to list Rick Perry (who called Trump a “cancer on conservatism”), Lindsey Graham (who called Trump a “jackass”), and even Jeb Bush (who criticized Trump’s immigration statements and on the day of the debate was quoted privately calling Trump a “clown,” “buffoon” and “a–hole”) as among those on the losing end of confrontations with Trump. While the adviser conceded that Graham was never a presence in the polls anyway, the point was made.
“There’s no percentage in doing it [attacking Trump],” said another adviser to another primetime candidate. “Anybody who’s done it, their poll numbers have gone down.”
Other candidates share those views. Some are hoping to win over the kind of voters who are attracted to Trump, so why alienate them now? Others fear a confrontation with Trump backfiring in front of a huge Fox News audience. Others just don’t want the distraction.
One candidate who might go after Trump is Rand Paul, who on Thursday morning said his aides have advised him against it but that he is inclined to “mix it up” with other candidates on stage. “I don’t think we should just sort of succumb to, ‘Oh you can say anything’ and, you know, all of the sudden we’re in sort of some sort of reality TV show,” Paul said on CBS. “I think there needs to be a substantive debate.”
Beyond the “reality show” dig, Paul has recently said that Trump’s rise in the polls is the result of a “temporary loss of sanity.” Of course, Paul has gone down in the polls recently, too.
So it may be that Trump has very little to fear in terms of attacks from his fellow candidate on the stage. A much more serious concern, for Trump, is the Fox moderators. Fox debates have always been marked by tough questioning on substantive issues; many Republicans have emerged unhappily from grilling by Fox News journalists. Trump will get the same treatment, and he may emerge the worse for wear after questioning that probes his positions, consistency, and depth of knowledge. That could be the real problem for Trump by the end of the night Thursday.
