Eight Republican hopefuls will meet in a televised debate

tonight wednesday night

hoping to solve a puzzle that has baffled GOP politicians for eight years about how to get past Donald Trump.

Skipping the Fox News debate, the former president inspires fierce loyalty in about three in 10 Republican voters and consistently leads his closest opponents in the polls by 40 points or more.

But he also causes fear and deep antipathy in other wings of the party and will face the primaries

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criminal charges in four separate charges filed by three prosecutors.

His eight rivals face a unique task: how to capitalize on Trump’s troubles without alienating his supporters.

Some analysts see that assignment as hopeless. They point to Trump’s iron grip on his main supporters and the difficulty of uniting the party’s factions behind one rival.

Others see an opening. They note that a large majority of Republicans say they are at least considering rival candidates.

“I think he can be beaten,” says Republican strategist Alex Conant, whose DC-based firm recently surveyed Republican voters. About one Republican quarterback will vote for Trump anyway, another quarterback is against him, and “you have 50% in the middle who like Trump but are open to an alternative,” he said.

A rival would need to “consolidate the quarter that won’t vote for Trump and shrink its margins below the half that’s open to anyone else,” he said. For that to happen, one candidate will have to emerge early on as the plausible Trump alternative.

A breakthrough during the debate could be a crucial first step.

The choice facing the eight rivals boils down to actively trying to beat

the 77-year-old

Trump or who wants to cultivate his voters in the hopes of becoming his replacement if something, like his age or the criminal record, makes him unavailable.

The challengers, only one of whom has previously run for president, include the former vice president, three former and two current governors, a sitting senator and a businessman. They have given very different answers to that central strategic question.

As their debate appearances showed,

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy, a 37-year-old entrepreneur and political outsider, have presented themselves to the party’s pro-Trump wing as fellow admirers of the former president.

Ramaswamy is especially devoted to Trump, defending him at every turn in his legal path and demanding that all candidates pledge to pardon the former president if they win.

DeSantis has sometimes sidelined Trump and tried to outflank him on the policy right, but has largely failed to respond to Trump’s repeated attacks, even as the governor’s position has plummeted in the polls.

With Ramaswamy rising while DeSantis is falling, the likely clash between the two has been a major sub-theme leading up to the debate. Earlier this month, a memo went public from the super-PAC endorsing DeSantis and advising him to “hammer Vivek Ramaswamy.”

Did he?

At the other extreme, the former governor of New Jersey. Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson, the former governor of Arkansas, have chosen to turn outright against Trump. They don’t have much to show for it. Their presence has largely served to demonstrate how much the Republican electorate resists direct criticism of the former president.

insert here if Christie gets booed, etc.

The other four candidates were in between those polls, with former Vice President Mike Pence alternating praise for Trump’s presidency with denunciations of his actions on Jan. 6.

2021,

and the two South Carolinars in the race, Senator Tim Scott and former governor. Nikki Haley, who does her best not to talk about Trump unless she’s forced to.

North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, virtually unknown outside his home state, has focused on introducing himself to voters.

The 67-year-old governor will participate in the debate on crutches after tearing his Achilles tendon during a basketball game on Tuesday. Burgum’s ability to debate was compromised on Tuesday when the 67-year-old was injured playing basketball and had to be taken to the emergency room. Campaign staff said they would assess Wednesday afternoon whether he could participate.

For each of the debaters, the session offers

as long as

a chance for attention that has scanned them for months dominated by news of Trump and his parade of impeachments.

But this opportunity comes with risks, said Republican strategist Alice Stewart.

“No campaign is won in a debate phase, but you can lose one,” she said. Candidates must find a way to quickly “make a personal appeal to voters as someone who is likeable and connects with voters.

The session could also stress

marked

divisions within the party over issues. That is true, even if televised confrontations are not often a forum for deep thought about governance. Debate coaches urge candidates to aim for viral moments, not policy discussions.

The two most prominent dividing lines are support for Ukraine and opposition to abortion.

Trump’s kindness to the Russians

P

resident Vladimir Putin has drawn much of the party in opposition to Ukraine. DeSantis and Ramaswamy

to have

both have expressed skepticism about additional US aid

Kiev Kiev

. In contrast, Pence and Christie, who have both traveled to Ukraine in recent months, and Haley, who was Trump’s UN ambassador, have stuck to the pre-Trump hawkish internationalism.

insert quotes about Ukraine

On the abortion front, the Republican Party has struggled since last year’s Supreme Court ruling in which Roe v. Wade was overturned and the national guarantee of abortion rights came to an end. The decision suddenly turned Republican opposition to abortion from rhetoric to policy, shocking many voters who have reacted angrily in a series of state elections, most recently in Ohio, where the anti-abortion movement

–

The position on abortion lost heavily in a referendum this month.

As a result, the party is caught between its large and influential anti-bloc

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abortion voters and her desire to appeal to swinging voters. Anti

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Abortion groups have demanded candidates support a nationwide ban, an idea embraced by Pence and Scott. Other candidates, including Trump, DeSantis and Haley, have tried to avoid being pinned down on any policy while giving rhetorical support to anti-politics.

–

abortion cause.

Insert quotes about abortion

Despite these and other policy pitfalls, the attention of the Republican Fox audience could be valuable, especially for the two who recently gained support in the polls Ramaswamy, who has shown national appeal to younger voters and those with college degrees, and Scott, who has bet heavily on his ability to mobilize evangelical voters and other social conservatives in Iowa, where the campaign’s first ballot will take place on Jan. 15.

Both possess charisma and life stories that many Republican voters find inspiring for Ramaswamy, the entrepreneur and child of immigrants whose business bets earned him more than $200 million by the time he turned 35, and embraced Scott, a black man who grew up in poverty. the conservatism. and pious Christianity

,

and rose to the Senate.

The notoriety probably matters less to Pence, who is already almost universally known for his four years as Trump’s vice president and especially for his refusal to agree to Trump’s request that the counting of the electoral votes in Congress be postponed. January 6 to block. This act has earned him much praise, but more from the Democrats than from his own side. Many Republicans see him as a traitor.

For example, among likely participants in the Iowa Republican caucuses, only 42% viewed the former vice president favorably, compared to 53% who viewed him unfavorably and 5% who were unsure, according to a poll released Monday by veteran Iowa veteran researcher J. Ann. Selzer. The share of Republican voters who view Pence unfavorably was only surpassed by Christie, who was viewed negatively by 60%, the poll found.

Trump, on the other hand, remains highly popular with the Republican Party, both in Iowa and nationally.

Rural, approx

3 three

in ten Republican voters consistently say in polls that they will support Trump and no one else. That gives him a solid foundation to build on, but also a powerful threat to wield against any party leader who challenges him.

Trump combines that solid base with a large portion of voters who are less fond of him, but still find him acceptable. He has the support of just over half of voters in national polls of Republicans, according to the average tracked by the website FiveThirtyEight. No one else is close.

Another 25%-30% of the party’s voters oppose Trump, either because they see him as a lawbreaker or because they think he would lose the election.

President

Biden and other Republicans lost their seats.

The job for rival candidates is to find a way to unite those anti-Trump Republicans with enough soft Trump supporters to form a majority. Since the day Trump stepped onto the political scene, no Republican has succeeded. The debate will provide early clues as to whether the newest group of hopefuls have come up with a better way.

Mehta reported from Milwaukee and Lauter from Washington.