The First Fox News Debate in Wisconsin: How the Left Has Affective Republican Candidate After the 1996 Insurrection
Octavio Jones, Victor Blue, Mark Makela, Dan Keock, Michael M. Santiago, Anna Moneymaker and Chip Somodevilla are all pictured.
The eight Republicans who will be in Milwaukee for Wednesday’s first GOP debate in the presidential election season are faced with that question.
Wisconsin is not an early nominating state but it has been very close in presidential elections and is where this debate is taking place. It has tipped to Democrats, but it’s the type of place Republicans need to win if they want to reverse their fortunes of having lost seven of the last eight popular votes in presidential elections — and more importantly winning the Electoral College.
The first presidential debate with air on Fox News and the Fox Business Network. On Fox Nation, and also on Rumble, viewers can watch it with a mostly right-wing audience. The two-hour forum will be hosted by Fox News hosts Martha MacCallum and bt Baier.
The stage is filled with candidates for the GOP nomination for president. These candidates had to meet criteria set by the RNC. They had to reach specific polling numbers and donor metrics in addition to meeting Federal Election Committee deadlines. They also had to sign a pledge agreeing to support the eventual party nominee.
Gov. Chris Christie — The former New Jersey governor is launching another bid for the Republican nomination. Following the attack on the Capitol, Christie broke ties with the former president and was assumed to be the conservative alternative to Trump.
Trump has billed himself as the perennial outsider, despite being a quasi-incumbent former president. Fox, at one time a strong supporter of Trump, has distanced itself from him. It abandoned him after Jan. 6 and boosted Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. The conservative audience still has very warm feelings for Trump despite the campaign flopping, putting a conservative media outlet in a bit of a bind.
The first to challenge the former president was Haley who was the Ambassador to the United Nations.
Asa Hutchinson is appealing to Republican-leaning independents because he’s against the “chaos” of Trump and has criticized the former president because of his role in the insurrection.
Vice President Mike Pence — Pence has a strong appeal to white Christian evangelicals, a sizable portion of the Republican base. He denounced the former president’s interference in the 2020 election. The theory that Pence rejected is that Trump’s pressure to refuse to count certain electoral college votes was unconstitutional.
He’s one of the younger GOP candidates. The former tech and finance executive has been a prominent voice in conservative circles, arguing against the environmental, social and governance (ESG) movement and against “woke”-ism.
Let’s get right to the obvious — former President Donald Trump, the far-and-away frontrunner for the GOP nomination again, will not be at the Republican Party’s first presidential primary debate in Milwaukee, Wis. Wednesday night is when it starts to get dark.
Not eligible for the debate are: Michigan businessman Perry Johnson, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, former Texas Congressman Will Hurd, conservative talk show host Larry Elder and Texas pastor Ryan Binkley.
It’s ironic that this is a Republican National Committee sponsored debate, Donald Trump has a lot of loyalists. Instead, as he’s done before, Trump will be counterprogramming this Fox News debate, appearing instead in an interview that is set to air at the same time as the debate with Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host.
He said that the public knows who he is and what a successful Presidency he had. “I WILL THEREFORE NOT BE DOING THE DEBATES!”
Mr. Trump’s decision to record an interview with Mr. Carlson to be released while his rivals share a stage was a slap in the face to both the R.N.C., whose leadership tried hard to persuade him to participate in the debate, and to Fox News, which is hosting the debate, and fired Mr. Carlson earlier this year.
The Donald Trump Campaign and the First Reelection Debate in WI: The Case for a New Media Buy For a Democratic Campaign And The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library
Trump’s counterprogramming also comes on the week he is expected to voluntarily surrender at the Fulton County Jail in Atlanta, where he faces 13 felony counts related to efforts to overturn the state’s 2020 presidential election results.
Three-quarters of them also cited the need to show support for the former president during his legal troubles as a reason to vote for him. They simply believe the indictments are politically motivated. A survey done this week by the Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom shows that two-thirds of likely Iowa GOP voters have a favorable opinion of Trump.
The Biden-Harris campaign will run a new state-specific ad in Wisconsin as part of a $25 million ad campaign. The campaign is also touting this as the “largest and earliest media buy for a reelection campaign into constituency media ever” and the campaign’s first investment in Hispanic and African American media.
The second republican debate will take place in the fall at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. FOX Business, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute, Univision and Rumble are partners with the RNC for the event.
The qualifications to participate in this second event will be higher than the first thanks to higher polling Numbers and more unique donors, according to the Associated Press.
Why Did Trump Decide to Attend a Fox News Debate in 2016? The Case That Trump is Not Afraid of Trump, And What Has He Done About It?
Why? He’s refusing to sign a pledge to support whomever the nominee will be, proving once again that Trump believes today’s Republican Party is a party of one. It’s ironic that Trump is making this decision because the pledge was largely intended to benefit him — to make sure the other candidates would be on board with another Trump run and not display any disunity within the party.
Trump knows he has leverage, and when that’s the case, he doesn’t mind toying with the powers that be. He loves to create chaos to gain attention for himself, and it plays into his narrative.
He did this in 2016 when he decided not to attend a Fox debate because Megyn Kelly was going to host. Trump disliked a line of questioning from Kelly, and said that she had blood coming out of her.
Trump went on to counterprogram with a questionable televised veterans’ fundraiser. A judge later penalized the now-defunct Trump Foundation $2 million for misuse of funds. That stunt stole the spotlight then. Is history repeating itself now?
The most likely solution is to avoid mentioning Trump, except for vocal critics like Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson. It’s probably going to come up, but how? Will it be through the Fox News moderators or through the candidates themselves, and how will that land with the audience?
The party has not gotten out of Trump’s shadow since he came to power eight years ago. This GOP primary is one of the few times that Trump has been like a solar eclipse. This debate is an opportunity for one of the candidates to emerge from the shadows, because he’s had a deep hold on the party in that time.
Just how deep is the love for Trump among the base? According to a CBS survey, Republicans prefer him to tell them the truth over their friends and family.
That sentiment among GOP voters may be one reason a leaked memo from a super PAC supporting Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis advised him to defend the former president and attack — get this — former tech CEO Vivek Ramaswamy.
Ramaswamy, 37, is a candidate who has gained in the polls lately, but DeSantis and the other candidates need to go through Trump to win the nomination – not a candidate who i’s unlikely to be the nominee. So the focus in this debate could be a bit blurry.
Five Questions Before The First GOP Primary Debate of the 2024 Election Cycle: The Case Against Mike Pence, Tim Scott, Mike Haley, and Tim Scott
On the issues, the economy and inflation continue to poll as the top ones for potential GOP voters, but will these candidates put forward any serious proposals, as opposed to simply criticizing President Biden, floating more tax cuts or saying they want to fire the current Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, someone most Americans have probably never heard of?
It’s reminiscent of the debates in 2012 and 2016 when candidates opposed the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a “Obamacare,” but had no workable solutions to replace it.
There could be splits on some issues, too, that divide the stage, like Ukraine. On the one hand, people like former Vice President Mike Pence, former Trump U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott are in the traditional GOP, pro-Ukraine, anti-Russia camp, but DeSantis and Ramaswamy are echoing Trump’s position in walking a line and saying it’s not a war that’s a vital U.S. interest.
So what will these candidates’ messages be in a place like this? A focus on the extreme right can’t get you very far in a general election, so this is the first debate where the candidates, the party, and the nation will get to watch to see if they’re serious.
But, of course, a candidate has to win a primary before getting to a general election, so expect the primary audience for these candidates to still be GOP primary voters.
Can Scott use his biography to connect with the audience and draw a contrast with Trump that is not related to him?
Can Haley use her position as the only woman on the stage to convince the audience that she is the candidate Democrats are afraid of most?
So far no one has capitalized so that is the only thing that will happen. If the debate winner gets a boost, then it’s likely to be overshadowed by the case against Trump in Georgia, which he is expected to be booked on Thursday for attempting to change the results of the 2020 election.
Source: 5 questions ahead of the first GOP primary debate of the 2024 election cycle
Donald Trump, Mary Louise Kelly and the ‘Punch, pivot and be appealing’: Expert’s guide for candidates in Trump-less debate
The biggest problem for the Republicans in the Trump era is that they have been out of step with most Americans.
Veteran Republican communications strategist Alice Stewart told Mary Louise Kelly of All Things Considered how the candidates should approach the debate without the front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination.
Mary Louise Kelly is a coach to Republican presidential candidates in the past. What’s the best advice here? Donald Trump isn’t there so don’t ignore him. What about in absentia? What would you tell the person?
Donald Trump is going to be the subject of a lot of questions and the other candidates will make references to him.
You have to punch Donald Trump on the issues that are certainly relevant in this case. You have to go after him on the policies that you may have a disagreement on. It’s possible you had to go after him on what he did to try and overturn the election, and push back on him without alienating his voters.
The secondmost important aspect of these candidates’ plan is to pivot as quickly as possible back to their message, vision and strategy to take on Joe Biden.
The front-runner who is not here but has been indicted in four criminal cases is something these candidates are having to confront. That seems to be helping his polling numbers among Republican primary voters. How do you deal with that?
Stewart: You know what we’re seeing — the most recent issue with Donald Trump is these four indictments — is a lot of the candidates are being very cautious to push back too much because there’s a large part of Republicans that believe that this is a weaponization of politics. They think that this is a two tier justice system. The DOJ overreached, according to them.
There is no denying the fact that he has broad-based support in the Republican Party. No one can take away the successes that he had in the White House, such as the economy, safety and security.
Source: ‘Punch, pivot and be appealing’: Expert’s guide for candidates in Trump-less debate
Is the Iowa Caucus a Place to Shine? Is Then What We’re Saying about the Candidates that aren’t
Kelly: I just want to stick with this idea of punching, because what you’re saying sounds reasonable. And yet we have seen most of the GOP candidates not punching, not going on the attack in any way towards Trump.
I happen to strongly disagree with that ideology and mindset. But many Republicans believe that, and these candidates understand if they want to appeal to Republican voters, they have to, in some way, embrace that mindset and that thought in order to keep those people interested.
So, a nod there to Trump’s well-documented tendency to insult both his opponents and moderators. Can you imagine any of the candidates this year taking a similar approach?
It’s good to have a sense of humor. But I do think a lot of these candidates, as we’ve seen over the last few days, they don’t find anything funny about the fact that the former president is thumbing his nose at not just them but Republican voters and also the Republican National Committee that sent out the invitation and asked all the candidates to sign a loyalty pledge to support the nominee and their efforts to beat Biden.
The last several days, we’ve seen them pushing back at the former president for not showing up. The debate stage is where you can’t flex your muscles before you get there and you can’t quit on the stage.
So what they’ve been saying, going after Donald Trump for avoiding this debate, they have to say that on the stage or it’s going to really come back to haunt them because you have to be consistent. And trust me, I’ll put money on the fact that Chris Christie will be one of the first, if not the first person, to throw that punch.
And here’s the thing that we often say about specifically Iowa: The purpose of these debates, and ultimately the Iowa caucus, is not to choose the party nominee — it’s to winnow the field. The candidates are going to use this debate as a time to shine. And some of them, it won’t be quite as favorable. And what this will do is narrow the field down to a top two or three. And that’s what is the best for this primary.