12 things to watch for in GOP debate
Thursday night’s Republican presidential debate will be the candidates’ final chance to do something radical to stand out, and the moderators’ last chance to expose the contenders’ vulnerabilities before Iowa’s pivotal vote just four days later.
If there’s a fiery exchange or a big gang attack on one of the Iowa race leaders — Rafael Edward “Ted” Cruz or Donald John Trump Sr. — the three Fox News moderators will likely let it roll.
“We’re going to play that by ear,” said Fox News’ chief political anchor, Bret Baier, who will moderate the debate panel-style with Megyn Kelly and Chris Wallace.
“We have this wonderful fourth moderator — the bell. That will help move candidates along,” he said. “But we’re going to let the interchanges breathe a little bit, especially if they’re substantive.”
Tuesday at 4 p.m. is the cutoff for candidates to qualify for the prime-time debate, which starts at 8 p.m. before an audience of about 1,500 at the Iowa Events Center in Des Moines. The earlier undercard debate will start at 4 p.m. The main debate will be open to candidates in the top six in national polling, or top five in Iowa or New Hampshire polling. The criteria for the early debate is 1 percent in national polling.
The most likely participants on the main stage are Trump, a populist conservative New York businessman; Cruz, an anti-establishment Texas U.S. senator; Marco Rubio, a Florida U.S. senator who says he can appeal to all Republicans; Ben Carson, a religious conservative retired neurosurgeon; and three mainstream conservative governors, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Ohio Gov. John Kasich. Facing being bumped to the junior stage are Kentucky U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, former tech company CEO Carly Fiorina, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and former Pennsylvania U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum.
Here are 12 things to watch for in the high-stakes debate, which can be viewed for free on FoxNews.com Thursday night:
1. Scoring points
Will any candidate bring down the house and cement victory in the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses on Monday night?
Politics watchers said now’s the time to make the case as the most effective GOP nominee to win the White House.
“I’ll be looking to see which candidate has the skill and persona to turn a team of rivals into an effective cabinet,” said Republican Ron Langston, an Iowa businessman who worked for the Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush administrations.
Trump, with his remarkable astuteness for landing political attacks, is taking credit for Democrat Hillary Clinton’s precarious position in the polls — a talking point that’s helping win over his Republican detractors, said Shawn McCoy, a former GOP presidential campaign operative in Iowa who now is publisher of a nonpartisan newswire service.
“That’s an argument other candidates, especially Cruz, are failing to make,” McCoy said.
2. Trump’s grudge
How will the interactions play out between Donald Trump and Fox News’ Megyn Kelly, who irritated the New York businessman in the first debate in August by asking him pointed questions about past disparaging remarks about women? The next day, Trump said Kelly had "blood coming out of her wherever," and has kept up a stream of insults, which have included the words “liar” and “bimbo.”
Trump, while campaigning in Iowa on Saturday, tweeted: “Based on @MegynKelly's conflict of interest and bias she should not be allowed to be a moderator of the next debate.”
But the Fox moderators have moved beyond the controversy, saying Kelly, who has publicly ignored Trump's badgering, has no conflict of interest and will be at the host table.
Baier told the Register: “I’m sure there will be some interest in that, but it’s not our focus. Our focus is on the substance.”
Trump will be treated “like one of the candidates on stage,” Baier said. “The key is what voters care about, not about interactions between candidates and the moderators.”
INTERACT ONLINE: Get the ultimate second-screen experience during the debate with tweets from Register staffers and other influential media and campaign staff. Plus, review data on tweets per minute, by candidate mention and issue, plus find the latest headlines, photos and videos. Go to DesMoinesRegister.com.
3. Targeting Sanders
Who will offer the best takedown of Bernie Sanders, a long shot who charged forward so fiercely in the Democratic polls that there’s suddenly a real chance he could overtake Hillary Clinton, the longtime presumptive Iowa winner?
Transcripts from the last six debates show no moderator has asked a question about Sanders, a Vermont U.S. senator and liberal firebrand who has in the past run as an independent.
Now that Sanders is neck-and-neck with Clinton, will any of the candidates start taking shots at him?
“All would be thrilled to run against him,” said Joe Gaylord, a former National Republican Congressional Committee executive director who now teaches politics at the University of Iowa.
4. Clash of swords
Who goes hardest after Trump, the national front-runner?
If everyone targets Cruz, who was 3 points ahead of Trump in the most recent Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics Iowa Poll, does it tarnish his momentum in Iowa, or does he continue to use the attacks to show that the “Washington cartel” is against him because he’s a conservative change agent?
“Will Trump be willing to risk another exchange with Cruz — which is risky because Cruz is a far better debater — or will Trump stay quiet and try not to risk the standing he has in the hopes that no one else breaks out of the pack?” asked Wes Enos, a former Republican Party of Iowa State Central Committee member.
5. The Branstad beatdown
Will Fox show viewers a clip of Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad breaking his promise to stay neutral in the race? Branstad told Iowans that a Cruz win would be damaging to the state because of his opposition to the Renewable Fuel Standard, which requires blending certain levels of ethanol or other renewable fuels in the nation's auto fuel supply.
And then does the camera then cut to Branstad, seated in the audience? The governor’s son Eric, a renewable fuels industry lobbyist who is waging an attack campaign against Cruz, will be in the audience, too.
“What will Cruz do in trying to answer the Branstads’ beatdown of him?” said Chuck Offenburger, a longtime Iowa politics watcher and independent voter from Greene County.
Cruz’s support has slid since Branstad delivered his anti-endorsement of Cruz on Jan. 19, some polls have shown.
“Ethanol is Cruz’s Achilles tendon in Iowa,” said Texas Republican Jim Ross Lightfoot, a former Iowa congressman. “I think his future in Iowa depends on the evangelical community. Will they overlook this one business issue and support him because he is pretty much their guy on everything else?”
If Trump is playing to the Iowa audience, he’ll continue to follow the script of the renewable fuels groups and accuse Cruz of being a handmaiden of “Big Oil” — but he needs to be mindful that eventually he’ll have to campaign in Texas, politics watchers said.
6. Trump change
The loose-talking Trump has been attempting to be more substantive, politics watchers say.
“I am definitely watching to see if Trump can repeat his very measured and strong performance that he showed at the Fox Business Network debate in Charleston," said Amy Walter, national editor of the Cook Political Report. "He has grown as a candidate since his first foray on the debate stage. Can he remained disciplined if he's consistently challenged by the moderators and his colleagues?”
Langston said one never knows which Trump will show up, “the bombastic, flamboyant New Yorker or the smooth, business 'Art of the Deal' provocateur?”
INTERACT ONLINE: Get the ultimate second-screen experience during the debate with tweets from Register staffers and other influential media and campaign staff. Plus, review data on tweets per minute, by candidate mention and issue, plus find the latest headlines, photos and videos. Go to DesMoinesRegister.com.
7. Establishment light bulb
Do Bush, Christie, Kasich and Rubio concentrate their fire on each other in the battle for the elusive “establishment" third slot?
Or do they go after Trump and Cruz, who seem more and more unstoppable?
The whisper campaign that Trump is the establishment’s reluctant choice grew louder when top GOP figures such as Branstad and former presidential candidates Bob Dole and John McCain publicly said Cruz needs to be defeated. Also feeding the whispers: Republican Party of Iowa Chairman Jeff Kaufmann and U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley gave speeches enthusiastically introducing Trump at his rallies this past weekend.
“The establishment in Washington will ride any horse that can beat Cruz and keep him from getting the nomination,” Lightfoot said. “They are scared to death he may win, and that will really upset their way of doing business in D.C.”
Enos predicted Rubio will go after Cruz early and more aggressively than he attacks anyone else. If Rubio or someone else doesn’t secure the role as the “non-Cruz” option, people will look to Trump “as the lesser of two evils,” he said.
8. Carson’s last stand
Will Ben Carson, who still polls in the top four in Iowa, do anything different this time other than his usual demeanor of speaking softly and looking calm?
Carson needs to rekindle the relationship that he had with so many Iowans earlier this year, when he led the Register/Bloomberg Iowa Poll, Enos said.
“Pretty much all accounts show that Ben Carson is a well-liked and respected guy," Enos said. "This is Carson's last chance to show that he's capable of leading. If he can do it, his organization may be strong enough to get him a respectable finish. If he's sidelined and overlooked again, what's left of his supporters are likely to move on to their second choice, and Carson's campaign is over."
In the sixth debate, in South Carolina, Cruz dominated the speaking-time chart, and Carson spoke the least.
Baier said trying to balance the time among the candidates is the biggest challenge in a live debate. Candidates jockey for attention as a producer’s voice in the moderator's earpiece updates the talk-time breakdown.
“Going in, we are structuring it to be fair to all of the candidates up there,” he said. “Things happen. Conversations happen. We’re going to let it breathe a little bit. But we’re going to try to be as fair as possible.”
9. Churching it up
Remember when John Bachman, the longtime WHO-TV anchor and moderator of the 1999 GOP debate in Iowa, asked about philosophers?
George W. Bush answered with "Christ."
It was a clincher, Iowa politics watchers said.
Over 40 percent of 2016 likely caucusgoers are evangelical conservatives, and although Cruz is leading with this bloc, others continue to make a play for them to weaken Cruz’s support.
Rubio, for example, is trying to get into both the evangelical and establishment lanes, but so far it doesn't seem to be taking, the most recent Iowa Poll shows.
Can Trump make a biblical reference without getting it wrong? “Even as Trump receives praise from Jerry Falwell Jr. and questions whether Cruz is really an evangelical, he continues to come across as inauthentic when discussing his own religious beliefs,” McCoy said.
Sioux City Christian conservative leader Cary Gordon said: “Expect Donald Trump to appear on stage clenching a Bible, promising to ‘fix the economy’ by applying every pearl of wisdom he gleaned about math while a mogul of the gambling industry — the only business operation on planet Earth that requires customers to fail before it can succeed.”
Politics watchers predicted someone will question Cruz's true personal commitment to Christianity when his tax records for 2006 to 2010 show he gave less than 1 percent of his income to church or charitable contributions.
10. Missed layups
Does anyone attempt to appeal to the rapidly growing populations of young urban professionals in Iowa’s metro areas that didn’t exist eight years ago? Those voters care most about the strength of the economy, the federal debt and national security, said Michael McInerney, 25, president of the Bull Moose Club in Des Moines.
Politics watchers said there’s an Iowa layup the candidates are missing: the water lawsuit, which has broader interest than ethanol. The Des Moines water utility is suing rural areas, saying farm runoff contributes to the contamination of waterways that are sources of drinking water for city residents. A clever sentence or two from a presidential hopeful could instantly and emotionally appeal to tens of thousands of Iowans whose livelihoods are tied to agriculture. All of them know about the lawsuit, and many of them resent it, the argument goes.
Trade is another topic that looms large because Iowa's ag economy is so heavily reliant on it, and deep fissures split the party on the issue.
11. New Hampshire, New Hampshire
Will competitors who are faring better in New Hampshire polling than in Iowa — Kasich, Bush, Christie — focus on winning over caucusgoers?
Or will they shift to themes that they believe resonate better with primary voters in the next state on the voting calendar?
12. Bombshells
What thunderclap of opposition research gets dropped in the hours before the debate, or during?
“Some campaigns have likely been saving their best oppo for last,” McCoy said. “Others may be ready to dump everything and see what sticks.”
INTERACT ONLINE: Get the ultimate second-screen experience during the debate with tweets from Register staffers and other influential media and campaign staff. Plus, review data on tweets per minute, by candidate mention and issue, plus find the latest headlines, photos and videos. Go to DesMoinesRegister.com.