The First Phase of the Iowa Caucuses: The Story of a Candidate Whose Name Is Running for the Presidency of the United States
Republican presidential hopefuls are still more than four months away from their first official contest — the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 15, 2024 — but, in many ways, the first phase of the race is already over.
Since the first debate of the primary season, it’s obvious who the major candidates are, what they’re doing in the race, and how they’re positioning themselves.
Despite skipping this week’s debate and going through criminal processing in Georgia on state charges tied to his effort to subvert the transfer of power, the former president remains the near-prohibitive favorite to secure the Republican nomination.
“The polls show that I’m leading by 50 and 60 points,” Trump said in an interview with Tucker Carlson, after he sat out the debate. “And some of [my opponents] are at one and zero and two. And I’m saying, ‘Do I sit there for an hour or two hours, whatever it’s going to be and get harassed by people that shouldn’t even be running for president? Should I be doing that?
Many of the expected obstacles to his campaign — namely, the four long-looming criminal investigations — are now public. There are state and federal trials for the former president.
The first state case is in New York, related to hush money payments he authorized to two women who claim to have had affairs with Trump before he was in office. The second is a wide-ranging Georgia case connected to his effort to overturn the presidential election.
Now, with trials not likely to begin in any of the cases until next year and the procedural wrangling in the hands of his legal team, the former president is free to focus on his comeback bid.
Six people who themselves want to lead their country think it would be fine to have a convicted felon as the nation’s chief executive. The six candidates would not bother to watch Mr. Trump take an oath to uphold the Constitution, even if he had been convicted of violating that same Constitution by conspiring to obstruct justice. (The Fox News hosts, trying to race through the evening’s brief Trump section so they could move on to more important questions about invading Mexico, didn’t dwell on which charges qualified for a hand-raise. Any of them would do that.
“It’s important to say that the president said — Donald Trump said — ‘It’s OK to suspend the Constitution,’” Christie said. “The oath you take is to preserve, protect and defend, not suspend. I will always stand up for our Constitution, regardless of the political pressure.”
Suffice it to say that this was not a popular position to hold in the auditorium where the debate was held — both candidates were booed heavily. And it is not a popular view to hold among the Republican primary electorate either.
Vivek Ramaswamy and Ron DeSantis: The Real Truth About Climate Change and the Precarious Pedagogy of a Republican Candidate
In a July NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll, 58% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say they would support Trump as their standard-bearer, though there are early signs that support may be softening, at least among independents.
While Christie and Hutchinson’s skepticism of Trump is considerably more popular among the general electorate, both men — with poll numbers in the low single-digits — face a steep, precarious climb to the nomination.
Though Trump himself elected not to appear at the debate, Trumpism was very much present — 38-year-old businessman Vivek Ramaswamy’s combative tone and embrace of far-right staples and baseless climate conspiracy theories was reminiscent of past Trump debate appearances.
“Let us be honest as Republicans. I’m the only person on the stage who isn’t bought and paid for, so I can say this — the climate change agenda is a hoax,” Ramaswamy said during a characteristic interruption. “The reality is the anti-carbon agenda is the wet blanket on our economy. And so, the reality is more people are dying of bad climate change policies than they are of actual climate change.” (This is inaccurate. Fossil fuel pollution kills thousands of people each year.
Will the political newcomer be able to maintain his newfound popularity after the debate or will the decline of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ campaign give him an advantage?
It’s too soon to say whether or not the DeSantis campaign and those of Trump’s opponents are saving or not. There is still a lot of race left to be run and the Republican National Convention is almost a year away.
There was never any question that Vivek Ramaswamy’s hand would shoot up first. Even if she tried to position herself as an alternative to Mr. Ramaswamy, she raised her hand. So did Ron DeSantis, after peeking around to see what the other kids were doing. And Mike Pence’s decision to join this group, while proudly boasting of his constitutional bona fides for simply doing his job on Jan. 6, 2021, demonstrated the cognitive dissonance at the heart of his candidacy.