Moderators will try to get GOP candidates to go after Trump

Republican presidential hopefuls have largely sidestepped taking on former President Donald Trump on the debate stage. Moderators for Wednesday's battle in Alabama want to change that.

“I think in one of the first debates they took an hour for anybody to even say his name, which is ridiculous. He's the person they all have to beat. You're not running against Joe Biden right now, candidates, you're running against Donald Trump,” NewsNation’s Elizabeth Vargas told POLITICO.

“Because otherwise, up there just criticizing Joe Biden, you're basically all surrogates for Donald Trump,” Vargas added.

Four candidates — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy — are set to take the stage at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa on Wednesday night. So far, not one has made a serious dent in Trump’s seemingly indestructible lead in the polls.

But polls are only “a snapshot of right now,” Vargas said. “A million things can happen between now and Election Day.”

The candidates making their case on stage have six weeks before caucuses begin in Iowa, where Trump holds more than a 40-point lead according to FiveThirtyEight’s average.

As usual, the former president is passing on the debate. But Vargas says moderators are “going to ask a lot of questions” about the frontrunner.

“His pronouncements of late about mass deportations or removing Obamacare — there are a lot of things that he has said that are ripe for dissection and discussion and debate,” Vargas said.

Of the candidates who will appear Wednesday, only Christie has launched a no-holds-barred attack against Trump. Taking the former president head-on, however, has done little to knock Trump off his pedestal. Christie has struggled to earn a spot on the latest debate stage as the RNC tightened its polling and donor requirements. But Trump’s biggest critic squeaked in at the last minute, the RNC announced Monday.

Vargas is co-moderating the debate alongside former Fox and NBC anchor (and now talk radio host) Megyn Kelly and Washington Free Beacon editor-in-chief Eliana Johnson. NewsNation, a fledgling television network self-described as a centrist alternative to other cable channels, will air the two-hour event, a notable turn from the mainstream networks the RNC tapped to host the first three rounds. The event will also be broadcast on the CW.

There’s a chance Wednesday is the last opportunity for the lower polling candidates to make their pitch to a national audience on a debate stage. The RNC has not publicly announced if it will host any future debates. But POLITICO reported Monday that both ABC News and CNN are exploring the possibility of sponsoring upcoming debates in early 2024.

The stage has shrunk considerably in a matter of months. In August, eight candidates qualified for the first debate in Milwaukee; three of those — former Vice President Mike Pence, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum — have since dropped out. Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson is still in the running, though he has not qualified for the last two debates.

The smaller pool could help the moderators keep discourse from devolving into “a shouting match where nobody can hear anybody,” Vargas said.

Back-and-forths have grown tense at times during each of the debates, but perhaps never more so than a moment between Ramaswamy and Haley last month. Ramaswamy attacked Haley on the Miami stage for criticizing TikTok even though her daughter was once on the app.

“You’re just scum,” Haley replied.

Haley’s reaction was within reason, Vargas said. “If one candidate decides to criticize another candidate's parenting skills… and bring up his or her children, I think that was a human emotional reaction on the part of Nikki Haley” to “what was widely perceived as a lowball attack by Vivek Ramaswamy.”

However, it’s not up to the moderators to “police” candidates’ behavior, she added.

“Voters make a lot of conclusions based not just on what a person says, but how a person says it," she said. "We are not looking to deprive the candidates of the ability to show everybody who they are. Quite the opposite.”