GOP Presidential Candidates, at New Hampshire’s ‘First in the Nation Summit,’ Vie To Winnow the Field and Reduce Trump’s Lead

What does it mean that President Trump is leading in the New Hampshire primary by 30 points? It means that about 49 percent of voters want the 45th president to be the GOP nominee next year. It also means that 51 percent — a majority — want someone else.That’s what the GOP’s “First in the Nation Summit” is all about. Five Republican contenders took to the stage Friday in New Hampshire to give their pitch to a ballroom of GOP state operatives and Republican voters, many of whom tell the Sun they aren’t ready to commit to a candidate. Another four candidates were slated to speak Saturday.If the second-tier field were to winnow to one, then Mr. Trump might emerge as no. 2 in a two-person race. We don’t know, of course, what the polls might look like were Mr. Trump to show up at events like the “First in the Nation Summit” or the presidential debates, where it might be possible to compare him in person with the other contenders. The Granite State is famous for electing long-shot, outsider candidates. Retail politics has outsize importance in New Hampshire, where voters expect to meet and shake hands with a candidate before committing their votes. The other wild card is independents: 40 percent of the electorate is undeclared in party affiliation and can vote in either the Democrat or Republican primary.“New Hampshire is wide open,” Mr. DeSantis told reporters this week, saying he would be spending more time in the state. “I think people have not made up their minds at all in this race. I think there is a lot of ground to be trod on here.” Mr. DeSantis’s commitment to spending time in New Hampshire comes after he recently dropped to third place in the state, behind Ms. Haley, according to a USA Today/Suffolk poll. Messrs. Ramaswamy and Christie are within striking distance of the second-place slot. All four spoke Friday at the summit.Mr. Christie was the first presidential candidate to speak, and he received an “icy” reception. The former New Jersey governor started his speech by addressing the war in Israel. He condemned antisemitism and said, “There should be no equivocation for anyone in the country on where we stand with Israel.”The problem for Mr. Christie came when he took questions from the crowd. When asked why he didn’t criticize Mr. Trump and other GOP contenders more about 2020 election fraud claims, Mr. Christie quipped, “This is the first time I’ve been accused of not being tough enough on Trump.”The crowd laughed at that response. Then Mr. Christie attacked Mr. Trump, saying there isn’t “a shred of evidence” for election fraud claims and that Mr. Trump’s conduct is “beneath the office.” He also said that the Founding Fathers would have added a provision to the Constitution that convicted felons cannot run for president had they been able to foresee Mr. Trump’s run. Scattered boos erupt in the audience.“This room does not want to hear how much you hate Donald Trump,” a GOP operative and former Trump appointee, Matthew Bartlett, told the Sun. “Like it or not, Republicans right now might be willing to choose other alternatives to Trump, but they really don’t want to hear a vehement anti-Trump message like they’ve heard from Democrats and the media for close to eight years.”North Dakota’s governor, Douglas Burgum, was the second presidential candidate to take the stage. Mr. Burgum is polling at 1.3 percent, according to 538 polling averages. Yet he dismisses calls to drop out, saying, “It’s not pollsters that pick presidents, it’s not pundits that pick presidents — it’s New Hampshire, and people like you, who pick the president.”While many in the Republican Party have become increasingly isolationist and critical of the amount of money being spent in Ukraine, Mr. Burgum told the Sun the investment is worth it. He also expresses unequivocal support for Israel.“The attack from Hamas and Hezbollah is really an attack from Iran on both Israel and the United States,” Mr. Burgum said. “They’ve killed Americans. They’ve taken Americans hostages, in part because Joe Biden set a price tag on every American head at $1.2 billion.”The ballroom filled for Mr. DeSantis’s speech, in which the Florida governor pitched himself as the effective alternative to Mr. Trump. He used the border wall as an example, saying that he is “a big supporter” of Mr. Trump’s 2016 promise to get Mexico to pay for the wall, but that Mr. Trump failed to make that happen.“I know how to use the levers of power,” Mr. DeSantis says. “You impose fees on the remittances that foreign nationals are making money here, they’re sending the remittances back to Mexico or Central America or South America. You raise billions and billions of dollars, and you construct the border wall. I will get that done.”Mr. DeSantis strongly condemned Hamas’s attacks on Israel. “What we saw over the weekend in Israel, that’s a new depth of depravity,” he said. “We must stand with Israel and their right to defend themselves.”Mr. DeSantis also criticized “woke” indoctrination in schools — his signature issue — and connected it to the protests on college campuses this week from students refusing to condemn the attacks by Hamas, and even celebrating them.Ms. Haley hit her talking points, calling for Republicans to elect “a new generational conservative leader” and to pick an accountant, not another lawyer for the White House. Her most effective pitch Friday was in portraying herself as the only candidate with real-world foreign policy experience.“You’ve got Russia invading Ukraine. You’ve got Iran building a bomb. You’ve got North Korea testing ballistic missiles. You’ve got China on the march. And now we’ve seen the most horrific brutality that we can ever imagine,” Ms. Haley said, referencing the attacks on Israel by Hamas.“I dealt with these countries every day. I dealt with Russia. I dealt with China. I dealt with North Korea, Syria, Afghanistan, Israel, the Palestinians. And yes, the terrorists. I was on the ground in Israel on the border of Gaza,” she said.Ms. Haley obliquely referenced Mr. Ramaswamy’s recent attacks on her as a war hawk who is benefiting financially from American military engagement overseas, saying, “America can never be so arrogant to think that we don’t need friends. We need friends. We needed friends on September 12. Stop acting like it’s September 10.”Mr. Ramaswamy was the last candidate to take the stage, accompanied by a live fife-and-drum band dressed in Revolutionary War costumes and playing “Yankee Doodle.” The theatrical display was an attempt to reinforce his message that we are “in a 1776 moment,” a common theme of his campaign.Mr. Ramaswamy has been criticized lately for his attacks on Ms. Haley and for his libertarian, anti-interventionist foreign policy, particularly in respect of Israel. Mr. Ramaswamy had Thursday a particularly contentious interview with Sean Hannity. Mr. Hannity read Mr. Ramaswamy’s words back to him and said, “You do this in every interview. You say things and then deny it.” On Friday, Mr. Ramaswamy defended his approach to Israel. “I think it’s completely nuts for the likes of Lindsay Graham to call for strikes on Iran long before we know what the level of responsibility is,” Mr. Ramaswamy said.“We have to stand for Israel’s right to make the decisions it needs to make without undue international criticism. … But the job of the United States is to make sure we do not end up unintentionally sleepwalking our way into another prolonged conflict in the Middle East.”“There are two America First candidates in this race. That’s Donald Trump and me,” Mr. Ramaswamy told reporters. “Everybody else comes from the old school version of neo-conservatism that is long outdated and is not where our party base is.” When pressed by the Sun, Mr. Ramaswamy did say that “we have a greater strategic interest in Israel than we do have in Ukraine.” Vice President Pence, Senator Scott, and Governor Hutchinson were to speak at the summit on Saturday. Whether any of these candidates can make a dent in Mr. Trump’s lead is the question this summit is trying to resolve.“If you’re a Trump supporter,” a New Hampshire state representative, David Milz, tells the Sun, “I could come up to you and tell you he’s committed mass murder and genocide and thrown four people off a bridge, and they’ll still vote for him.”

GOP Presidential Candidates, at New Hampshire’s ‘First in the Nation Summit,’ Vie To Winnow the Field and Reduce Trump’s Lead

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