So far, none of the GOP presidential candidates has been willing to confront Trump in person. It may have been their death knell.
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- Trump has not shown up to five straight GOP presidential debates.
- At no point did any of his competitors try to confront him in person during his counterprogramming.
- When trailing in polls by more than 40 points, campaigns need to try something, anything different.
Now that the dust has finally settled from Wednesday night's dueling events — a town hall featuring former President Donald Trump and a GOP presidential debate between Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley — one thing appears all but certain: by refusing to confront Trump in person before the Iowa Caucus, each of his competitors dug their campaign's own graves.
As it currently stands in an average of national GOP primary polls, Trump's currently ahead of the pack by 48.3 percentage points, a seemingly insurmountable lead.
The former president's lead has become steadily higher in the months after he decided not to appear at any of the primary debates ahead of the Iowa Caucus, effectively eliminating any opportunity for his opponents to attack him on stage and in person.
"Why would I allow people at 1 or 2 percent and 0 percent to be hitting me with questions all night?" Trump said in June 2023, several months before the first GOP debate.
Skipping out on each of the debates (and running his own counter-programming to many of them) may have irked the GOP internally, but in hindsight, it certainly seems like he made the right decision.
While it made sense at the time for Trump's competitors to attend the first few debates and establish their stances and public speaking abilities, none of them were bold enough to step away and act unpredictably, or skip any of the debates, just as the former president has done.
Stunts have a vibrant and celebrated history in American presidential politics, and underdogs have relied on all sorts of unconventional and guerrilla tactics to make swipes at top contenders.
So why have these underdogs played the primary entirely on Trump's terms?
Why not make a single gamble when down 50 points to force an issue? Instead of attending one of the last few debates — each of which has received markedly less viewership than the one before — why not try and pull a stunt by showing up in person at Trump's town hall? The event was hosted by Fox News, which likely would've been more than willing to let a major candidate attempt to stand up to the former commander-in-chief.
Sure, that idea may very well have been a better fit for "The West Wing" than reality, but when the sole alternative is running a traditional campaign and trailing by more than 40 percentage points, one of the campaigns needed to do something unconventional to go after Trump.
Nevertheless, not a single one did.
Though former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson each ran campaigns predicated on fighting against Trump and brought their distaste for him to the debate stage, Christie dropped out of the race before the debate on Wednesday and Hutchinson's polling less than one percentage point nationally.
They may have gone against the grain with their admonition of Trump, but neither of the two campaigns took any other unconventional risks that could've propelled them any further.
Instead, by playing it safe pre-Iowa Caucus, if Trump wins, his opponents and their campaigns need only look internally as to why.