TJ Walker breaks down Trump's debate strategy ahead of the second GOP debate. Trump will likely stick with what works: confidence, self-promotion, and personal attacks. Other candidates face a trap: attack him and lose his voters, or stay quiet and disappear.
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The second GOP presidential debate is about to take place this Wednesday night. Here's a preview. After the first GOP presidential debate a month or so ago, the results were very clear by the pundits. Most of the pundits thought that Trump didn't really do well, didn't help himself. And all the polls showed that within the Republican Party, people loved it. People loved Trump's message, they loved his style, they loved his demeanor. Donald Trump is now on record saying he hopes the second debate goes exactly the same as the first debate. So it's hard to argue with his reasoning because he solidified his position as the front runner after that debate. Now, since then, we saw some candidates try different strategies. We saw, for example, the former governor of Texas, Rick Perry, criticized Vilify, demonize Donald Trump and his poll numbers went down and Perry is subsequently dropped out of the race. Ted Cruz, on the other hand, has acted like he's Donald Trump's little brother and has given him nothing but praise and has tried to essentially draft on to some of that same sentiment. Now, if you're Donald Trump, I think the strategy is to do exactly the same. What Trump does, well is he says, here's what I believe, here's why I'm great. I'm going to solve all the problems. That's going to be great. This person's a moron, this person's an idiot, this person who criticizes me is a fool. And trust me, I'm successful and I'm going to do it right and I'm going to make America great again. That's his message. It's hard for me to imagine any scenario where he gets off that message. I certainly can't imagine him being nervous. There's nobody in the world who is more used to being on camera on a stage than Donald Trump. He has tens and tens and tens of thousands of hours of experience on camera, communicating and performing. I know he's a first time candidate, but he spent his life, certainly since 1972 when the new York Times first profiled him. He has spent a lifetime in the spotlight on camera. So I can't imagine him having any jitters. I think he's going to do exactly what he's done before. The big question is, what will we see from the other Republican candidates? Because if they attack Trump, there's a good chance they hurt themselves because Trump supporters are almost equally divided among other candidates as far as their number two choice. So it's not an easy thing for a candidate to attack Trump. On the other hand, if they ignore him, they run the risk of the entire Democratic debate being about Trump and everyone talking about Trump and them seeming like pygmies or midgets compared to this giant of Trump. So it is a difficult, difficult challenge for any Republican candidate. The prediction I think that we'll see is that you're going to see even more forceful attacks from Republicans attacking Obama, attacking Hillary Clinton, because they realize nobody's better at attacking than Trump. They can't really attack Trump. So they might as well try to get some ink, some sound bites, some coverage from the debate by delivering the most forceful attack on Trump, excuse me, on Obama, on Hillary. They can't very well attack their fellow candidates because other than Trump, because nobody else really has much support. They can't really beat up on Ben Carson even though he has the second most support within the party now, because they would look like a bully. He's not a politician, he's never run for office before and they're certainly hoping for his vote. So it's a very difficult messaging situation for the other Republican candidates. I think we're going to see a lot of tightrope walking and forceful over the top attacks on Obama and Hillary.
