Not long ago, I wrote about the three ways the rest of the Republican presidential field was dealing with Donald Trump, who leads in the Washington Examiner presidential power rankings. Since then, most have settled on one strategy: attack Trump.
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who has little to lose, now seems to have staked his entire campaign on denouncing Trump. He’s joked before about mentioning Trump in speeches just to get media coverage. His anti-Trump at the National Press Club and subsequent round of interviews was the most attention the press has paid to him since he got into the race.
But other candidates in a better position have started assailing Trump too. Ben Carson is actually rising in the polls and he has been the first to raise the obvious contradictions between Trump’s nonstop braggadocio and the Christian faith, though not quite as concisely or effectively as Jindal’s line that Trump doesn’t read the Bible because he isn’t in it. And that’s without getting into Trump’s multiple marriages.
Marco Rubio is another candidate I’d listed as mostly ignoring Trump who has picked up his criticisms. He has most recently said Trump should run as a Democrat with his ideas on taxes. Rubio and Trump represent polar opposites: the Florida senator’s candidacy is a reflection of the consultant consensus that the party would benefit from youth and Latino outreach; Trump certainly isn’t engaging in either of those things.
Jeb Bush has already made anti-Trump barbs a big part of his campaign videos and remarks on the trail.
So far, none of it has had any noticeable impact. But Rand Paul and Rick Perry went after Trump on their way down in the polls, making it easy for the billionaire to brush off their jibes as desperation. It’s harder to make that argument against a candidate like Carson or Carly Fiorina who are rising.
Jindal, like Perry before him, can criticize Trump in the undercard debate. But it won’t be as effective without the Republican front-runner standing on stage with him. Fiorina and many of the others mentioned will be able to say things to Trump’s face in Simi Valley, Calif. on Wednesday.
While Trump’s poll numbers have so far been impervious to his tongue, the thin-skinned businessman is likely to react poorly to the mounting criticism. He has already responded by casting aspersions on Fiorina’s physical appearance and describing Carson, once a leading pediatric neurosurgeon, as an “okay doctor.”
At a minimum, Republican presidential candidates are no longer taking it for granted that Trump will implode on his own and now understand that if they want to knock him out of the lead, they will have to do it themselves.
