Trump continues down path of dominance as GOP rivals scramble for second place

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The fourth Republican debate is set for Wednesday, for whatever that’s worth.

Donald Trump, the race’s frontrunner, will not be in attendance. Having skipped three onstage clashes of candidates so far without any negative consequences whatsoever, the former president will complete his mockery of the nominating contest this month by refusing to attend the final debate before voters head to the polls next month in Iowa and begin the race proper.

There are zero signs that Wednesday’s debate will matter. A poll by NewsNation, the network hosting tomorrow’s event in Alabama, found Mr Trump in control of six in 10 GOP voters nationally this week — a clean 50-point margin over Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley, his two closest rivals. Worse for them, only a small fraction of the GOP indicated in the poll that a conviction in any of his four criminal cases would change their views, meaning that short of Mr Trump exiting the race, the minds of most voters are likely made up.

This spells more than one problem for the GOP’s traditionalist-to-neoconservative wing, which never really embraced Donald Trump beyond the vehicle that he presented for the confirmation of conservative justices and the advancement of some conservative economic policy. For starters, it means that the GOP is likely to nominate potentially its weakest candidate in a year that otherwise would be a real opportunity for the party, thanks to concerns about the Democratic incumbent’s age and job performance. Secondly, the poll’s second-choice question revealed that Florida’s Ron DeSantis is most likely to benefit the most should Mr Trump drop out — alluding to a more painful reality: the populist, isolationist hardliners still control the party’s base.

Wednesday’s kids’ table debate in Alabama will see a smaller group of Republicans in attendance; four candidates have qualified, following the suspensions of the campaigns of Doug Burgum and Tim Scott. Ms Haley and Mr DeSantis will be centre stage as rivals Chris Christie and Vivek Ramaswamy try, again, for a moment of viral relevancy to jolt their campaigns away from the brink of defeat.

But none of this matters.

Donald Trump is going to be the nominee absent some massive, cataclysmic shift in the GOP primary’s dynamics. And there is absolutely no reason to believe that one is on the way, even should he be criminally convicted for allegedly showing off secret military documents to guests at his properties, or encouraging a mob of violent rioters to hunt down his enemies in the seat of American democracy.

Maybe there’s still reason for those Republican establishment holdouts to cling to hope. Maybe Nikki Haley can pull off a surprise victory in New Hampshire. Maybe Ron DeSantis’s visit to each one of Iowa’s 99 counties will pay off next month. Or maybe we’ll just see another repeat of 2016: Donald Trump facing off against a handful of rivals unwilling to unify against him and unable to generate any comparative level of enthusiasm, before he steamrolls to the nomination. One way or another, the next two months will be a crucible for his rivals: It all comes down to the wire.

Time to find out who’s playing to win.