Heading into the first Republican presidential debate, it was expected that as the highest-polling candidate on the stage, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) would either have a target on his back or dominate the proceedings.
Neither happened.
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Instead, a polished and prepared DeSantis largely faded into the background of a freewheeling Milwaukee debate that at times felt as if it had twice as many candidates participating as the eight who actually qualified and bothered to show up.
Former Vice President Mike Pence was uncharacteristically aggressive, perhaps sensing that it is now or never for his campaign to ascend from the single digits in the crucial early-voting states.
Pence and former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley trained much of their fire on entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who drove much of the conversation throughout the night.
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was pugnacious and eloquent, but former President Donald Trump's absence and audience boos robbed some of his patented attack lines of their potency.
Gov. Doug Burgum (R-ND) was the night’s feel-good story simply by hobbling his way onto the stage after a pickup basketball game injury left his availability in doubt.
DeSantis was stuck to his familiar script. “Our country is in decline,” he said. “This decline is not inevitable. It's a choice. We need to send Joe Biden back to his basement and reverse American decline.”
The Florida governor was relentlessly on-message, and his surrogates could argue afterward that his GOP rivals found little to critique in his Tallahassee record.
DeSantis wanted to prove he was the most conservative candidate in the room. He certainly had the most conservative debate strategy.
The above-the-fray approach might have made sense if the candidates inside the debate hall and those who failed to qualify were the entire field.
But DeSantis came into Wednesday night with a lot of ground to make up against the man who wasn’t there. Trump leads him by 26 points in Iowa, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average. Trump is beating DeSantis by 31 points in New Hampshire.
A Yahoo News poll completed two days before the debate found Trump 40 points ahead of DeSantis nationally. Other national surveys have Trump up by more than that.
DeSantis is like an NFL team playing prevent defense while down two scores.
It’s possible that the glib and inexperienced Ramaswamy won’t wear well, that Pence’s alternating between owning and spurning the Trump mantle will not add up to a coherent enough message for the with-us-or-against-us base, that Haley’s attempts to triangulate on abortion will matter more to Iowa evangelicals than her passionate defense of Ukraine aid, that all the crosstalk and insult-trading will look less presidential than DeSantis’s mistake-free repetition of stump speech.
But it is at least as likely that DeSantis’s failure to take charge of the debate will let other candidates back into the race and further fracture the non-Trump vote. Ramaswamy has been nipping at DeSantis’s heels in national polls. If that begins to show up in the early states, it is going to become a problem.
A second look at Haley could similarly threaten to propel her to second place in South Carolina, which would only further complicate DeSantis’s path to the nomination.
Trump’s ability to command a room and suck up all the media oxygen is a large part of what is keeping him in first place through multiple indictments. DeSantis did nothing to alter this power dynamic.
If mere sobriety in the face of Trump’s insults was the solution, DeSantis would have overtaken the former president months ago. Where Michael Dukakis promised "competence, not ideology" while running a too-liberal campaign, DeSantis pledges competence, not Trump loyalty, in a too-cautious one.
DeSantis’s campaign at times feels as if it is counting as much as anyone else’s on Trump collapsing under the sheer weight of numerous legal predicaments.
What failed to transpire in Wednesday night’s debate surely has been the overwhelming trajectory of the campaign. DeSantis has been targeted by all sides: Trump, who is trying to maintain his front-runner status; the other GOP candidates, because they want to supplant the Florida governor to take on Trump; Biden and the Democrats, because they want to ensure the anti-MAGA playbook still works if Trump goes down.
Nevertheless, an Ipsos/Washington Post/FiveThirtyEight poll that dropped the same day as the debate shows that DeSantis’s national favorability ratings among likely GOP voters remain competitive with Trump’s. DeSantis is still being actively considered by most of these voters.
The latest Des Moines Register poll of likely Iowa caucus-goers tells a similar story. DeSantis’s overall favorability ratings — 66% favorable, 29% unfavorable — are a touch better than Trump’s. DeSantis is being supported or considered by 61% for president, just two points behind Trump’s cumulative total.
Yet the untapped potential is still far from being realized. In the Ipsos poll, Trump is still best positioned. A bare 51% are considering voting for DeSantis, to 64% saying the same of Trump.
In the Iowa poll, Trump is still the first choice of 42% of caucus-goers to DeSantis’s 19%. Two-thirds of Trump voters have their minds made up to 31% of DeSantis’s. Among those picking DeSantis, 69% say they could still change their minds.
All the more reason for DeSantis to try to catch up to Trump before other lower-polling candidates catch up to the Florida governor.
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DeSantis nevertheless appears serenely confident that slow and steady will win the race.
We’ll see if donors who are frightened by the prospect of a third Trump nomination and voters in places such as Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina are as patient.