Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump gestures to supporters during a rally in Dallas, Tex., on Monday.Tom Pennington/Getty Images
Fractured and readying for what will likely be the most expensive presidential election campaign in U.S. history, the Republican Party has come to the burial site of one of its most influential leaders, hoping to find a new one.
Tonight, the 15 people running for the Republican presidential nomination will debate one another in what could be one of the more explosive melees of the campaign's early days. The debate, hosted by CNN, represents the best chance so far for several candidates – once absolute long-shots – to make a convincing case to a deeply undecided Republican voter base. Among the candidates who stand to benefit most from the prime-time exposure are former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina (who barely scraped the polling numbers necessary to make the main debate) and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson (who was once seen as having no shot at the nomination, but has suddenly surged to second place in the polls behind Donald Trump.
In a morning walk-through today, media members were given a tour of the stage where both debates will take place. The candidates will stand on a raised platform in the heart of the library. The looming hulk of President Reagan's old Air Force One plane will serve as a backdrop.
Compared to previous debates, the audience will be small – about 400 seats facing the central stage. Of those, the majority are reserved for invited guests – including the 15 candidates' spouses, children and campaign staff. Rather than a boisterous audience, CNN has designed the debate to focus solely on what the network hopes will be antagonistic exchanges between the candidates.
The debate will take place in two parts – an "undercard" featuring the four worst-polling major candidates, and the main event, featuring 11 potential nominees. Following the debate, a sprawling nearby conference area will serve as the "spin room" for the various candidates' teams.
Signs of last-minute planning were evident today. The stage, originally intended to hold a maximum of 10 candidates, will now hold 11, after Ms. Fiorina surged in the polls and was allowed to participate in the prime-time debate. In the program handed out to journalists, all the candidates' bios were presented in alphabetical order – except Ms. Fiorina, who was at the back of the book.
Candidates were prepping for the debate early today – sending out e-mails to their supporters, readying their "fact-checking" and social media spin teams, and making appearances on various major news networks. CNN dedicated almost all its coverage on Wednesday to pre-debate stories.
The debate site – a shrine to the man who, more than anyone else, helped shape the modern Republican party – is hallowed ground for the GOP. And yet the candidates come here at a time of unprecedented uncertainty about the party's future leadership. Far from a strong, united core led by a singular figure such as Mr. Reagan in the 1980s, the GOP heads into the coming presidential election with 14 men and one woman vying to lead it – everyone from career politicians to a tech-industry executive to a flamboyant billionaire.
What's arguably more concerning for the party, however, is the state of the leadership race. Traditional Republican figures initially expected to have the best shot at the nomination – figures such as Jeb Bush – have done much more poorly than expected. Indeed, the man leading the race, Mr. Trump, and the fastest-rising contender in the most recent polls, Mr. Carson, would have been dismissed by many Republicans as fringe candidates just a year ago.
And even as Mr. Trump continues to fly well above his opponents in most polls, his candidacy has been a magnet for antagonism within the party. Initially, Mr. Trump refused to pledge not to run as an independent candidate against whomever eventually won the Republican nomination (a feud he and the party eventually settled). And his comments on immigration and Mexicans – often vitriolic and punctuated with policy proposals that essentially entailed mass deportations and the building of a big wall – angered some in the party, who have long tried to boost the limited Republican support among immigrants.
On Tuesday, as the candidates readied to debate, another big-name conservative organization moved to oppose Mr. Trump's candidacy. The Club for Growth, an activist organization founded by wealthy investors and concerned almost exclusively with lowering taxes and cutting regulation, announced it will spend $1-million on anti-Trump ads. The group is angered by Mr. Trump's pledge to increase taxes for wealthy investors.
In many ways, the vocal opposition to the Republican Party's leading candidate coming from Republicans themselves indicates a sense among many in the party that his nomination is far from a done deal. Indeed, the latest polls show the majority of Republican voters are still undecided.
But as the race kicks into high gear, the notion that Mr. Trump's support is some kind of temporary protest by disgruntled Republicans becomes harder to believe. As such, the CNN debate marks an important inflection point – a moment for more moderate Republicans to decide whether Mr. Trump is too brash and politically unrefined a candidate to back, or if he truly represents the party's best chance at the White House.
The CNN debate will focus on three topics – foreign policy, domestic policy and "politics." The topics are deliberately broad, and give moderator Jake Tapper and the candidates wide leeway. The debate may well include some last-minute topic additions – such as the arrest of a Muslim boy in Irving Texas for bringing a clock to school (an arrest which has since set off a social media firestorm that captured the attention of Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama), or California Governor Jerry Brown's recent description of the Republican candidates as "merchants of destruction" for not having a plan to deal with climate change.
Virtually every other aspect of the debate, it seems, is designed to generate fireworks.
Rather than a moderator-led question-and-answer format, the CNN debate will encourage the candidates to go at one another. In the undercard debate, which features the four candidates who have garnered the least support in the polls so far, debaters might still be able to make the big show – if any undercard candidate says anything "particularly sharp or interesting," CNN promises to show footage of that comment at the main debate, and ask the leading contenders to respond.
That bodes especially well for hopefuls such as Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal. With dismal support in most polls, Mr. Jindal has led a charge by some candidates in recent weeks to take direct, increasingly aggressive shots at Mr. Trump. Whether that strategy will pay off is yet to be seen, but it is almost certain that Mr. Jindal will continue using it at tonight's debate – as will others.
For Mr. Trump, who seems to savour a schoolyard-brawl style of political confrontation, such attacks are unlikely to provoke much anxiety. Indeed, a debate format where candidates are not allowed to carry any smartphones or other digital aids may well work in favour of a man who often ad libs his on-stage comments.
Mr. Trump's most formidable opponent may well be the one candidate who was not at Fox's prime-time debate earlier in the year –Ms. Fiorina. By most accounts, Ms. Fiorina was the most aggressive and best-performing candidates from the Fox undercard debate. Since then, she has risen enough in the polls to make the main stage at the CNN debate. It is almost certain that she will take Mr. Trump on directly.
Mr. Trump, in turn, has a long history of making comments about women that have been widely criticized for their rampant sexism. Should he take the same approach with Ms. Fiorina, he may well leave many Republican voters cold.
On the other hand, previous accusations of sexism – indeed, previous accusations of any kind – have done little to hurt Mr. Trump's polling numbers, giving him little reason to change course.