Speaking to CNN afterward, Donald Trump described the 12th Republican presidential debate as an “elegant evening.” A dozen debates into the 2016 primary campaign, Trump might as well have been talking about a night at the opera.
Trump’s primary opponents didn’t exactly lay off him, especially when it came to calling attention to his lack of policy specifics and his deviations from conservative ideology. Marco Rubio in particular played to his strengths, hit the right emotional cords on Cuba and Israel ahead of the crucial Florida primary and shied away from the personal attacks on Trump he now says he regrets.
But if you care about policy details, you probably wrote off Trump a long time ago. This was his most restrained performance. Even when he criticized the other men on the stage, he tried to find common ground. When he did his usual shtick about doing better than other candidates, he strained to say that he wasn’t really making fun of his rivals.
After the debate, Trump said he liked Cruz. He stopped short of calling for Rubio to drop out of the race if he loses Florida. Trump has been road-testing this message ever since he started giving press conferences rather than full-scale rallies on primary election nights.
The central question for Trump is whether he can put back together what he has torn asunder. The secret to Trump’s success has been burning it all down, breaking all the rules, defying normal political conventions.
Now that Trump is closing in on the delegate count necessary to win the Republican presidential nomination, he needs to build the party back up and get everyone to observe the conventions he once flouted. Those rules say that he is the front-runner and the party should rally around him.
But after being on the receiving end of Trump’s withering blows for months, Republican leaders are reluctant to get behind him. After Trump shredded political customs, it became harder to once again hold other Republicans to them.
Trump mostly succeeded in being civil and conciliatory Thursday night because his rivals were so reluctant to attack him, at least in the ways most likely to irritate his notoriously thin skin. When he is offtended, however, he still goes off message.
In terms of unifying the party, Trump faces other dilemmas. His rallies are an important part of what has made his campaign a mass movement. It is hard to see him maintaining grassroots enthusiasm without them. But as fights and other disturbing scenes continue to unfold at these events, they don’t reinforce an image of Trump as a serious figure who can lead a major political party, much less a nation.
The front-runner correctly observed that his events are fun, with supporters and the candidate enjoying inside jokes. But this involves Trump insulting people, even fellow Republicans, in ways that might make it hard for them to endorse him for the general election. It also involves hyping Trump products like steaks in a way that might appear unpresidential to many Americans.
Trump’s contempt for the media has also been a major selling point to his supporters. But millions of voters are unlikely to be as forgiving of controversies like the reported assault on reporter Michelle Fields as his hardcore following.
You are already seeing signs of how Trump is pivoting to November. What Mitt Romney did in his first debate with then-Senator Obama in 2012, when he shape-shifted and briefly left the Democrats flat-footed, Trump will try to do during his whole campaign.
But first Trump must unite the party he has grown but also polarized. As any conservative can tell you, tearing something down is always easier than reassembling it.
