What Republican Candidates Should Say, and Not Say, in this Week's Debate

Avoid getting fixated on Trump, go on offense, and play smart defense.

The leading Republican candidates, minus Donald Trump, will be debating this week. To me, the strategy is obvious.

1. Don’t be sidetracked into talking about Trump. That’s the Democrats’ game — there’s a reason CNN and MSNBS and the NYT are all Trump all the time. Briefly acknowledge that Trump did some good and important things for the country, but has flaws that make it time to turn the page on a generation that’s reaching its eighties and turn to younger leaders. Then stop, and don’t let the moderators goad you into saying more. Remember that the debate is about getting your message and your qualities across. Everything else is a distraction and, as regards Trump, a distraction that plays into the Democrats’ hands. Don’t fall for it.

2. The Democrats have gifted us with so much low-hanging fruit it’s hard to know where to start, but some things are really quite clear.

   First among them is the economy, which ranks by far as the issue most on voters’ minds. Approach it graphically, as the average family has to when it goes to the grocery store or gas station. Hold up a carton of eggs and say, “When Joe Biden took office, this cost you X. Now it costs you Y, but you don’t get any more eggs. The gas station is no better and neither is your rent or the mortgage you once hoped to be able to afford. Joe Biden tells us his economic plan ‘is working,’ but the main thing it’s working to do is make you painfully stretch your budget. Before Biden took over we didn’t have this kind of ruinous inflation, and when I’m President we are going to put an end to the reckless, nonstop government borrowing and spending that causes it.”

3. Stay on offense. There are big issues that hit home, where the country is with us, and where we can go to town. First is the racial division and national shame Biden and the Democrats wallow in. Say what it is in those words. Then explain it: Joe Biden went to the Supreme Court to endorse a scheme of bigoted, illegal and unconstitutional racial preferences that victimize the majority of our young people to hand out the goodies to liberals’ politically-favored minorities. Your son or daughter should get into college — if college is what they want — based on his or her diligence and achievement, not skin color. But Joe Biden doesn’t want it that way. Indeed, just last week his Education Department gave advice to colleges that still want to discriminate on how to do it — that is, how to defy the Supreme Court — by being sneaky and underhanded. This is the same Joe Biden, mind you, who accuses Republicans of undermining the rule of law. In my administration, the racial equality and color-blindness our Constitution promises will be honored, and government subsidized colleges that want to discriminate through racial-preference-on-the-sly will be punished not rewarded.”

4. Talk about crime and keep talking: “Even the liberal press has had to report on the decay and danger that Biden’s soft-on-crime policies are bringing to major cities (New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and many others) and increasingly seeping into their suburbs as well. No cash bail, on-the-spot release of criminals, soft sentences, irrational restraints on needed policing. Retail businesses shouldn’t have to live with rampant theft and smash-and-grab mobs and neither should you. Joe Biden’s Justice Department and his fellow Democrats line up with pro-criminal, so-called civil rights groups who think police are the problem. In fact police are the solution, and my criminal justice policies will embrace this fact.”

5. You might have noticed, by the way, that I’m not recommending detailed or long answers. That’s because detailed and long answers don’t work. What works, and what will get remembered and re-played on the news cycle, is short, punchy stuff that captures in a very few words the heart of what voters care about. For example, I don’t remember much at all about Reagan’s debates with Carter, but I do remember, as most of us who were around then do, “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” That captured a great deal of the real reason voters were wise to, and did, replace Carter with Reagan. The candidates should do much the same thing this week, although I would include one more thing: “Is our country better off — more prosperous, more respected, more free — than it was when Joe Biden became President?” This added flourish makes the question appeal to voters’ patriotism in addition to their self-interest, and it’s an implicit but unmistakable dig at the fact that Biden is just not up to the job, not up to the leadership and the vision, that being President requires.

6. Then go after education — learn the lesson Glenn Youngkin taught. Don’t be fooled by Democrats’ dire warnings that we’d just be pushing the yahoo culture war. In fact, they pushed their culture war on us, what with their racial shaming and their transgender frenzy. They’re also pushing it in local schools. That the Left tells us to stay away is a wonderfully clear signal that it’s exactly the target.

   Now a lot of Republicans, me included, think the federal government has no business in local schools, but as long as it’s there, we are within our rights, and well-advised, to say what it should and shouldn’t be doing. And it’s bonus points that the Democrats are massively on the wrong side of this issue, foolishly (for purposes of a general election) lining up with far Left teachers’ unions and against parents. So the candidates should say that, while (the tiny sliver of) transgender students will be treated with respect and kindness, the much larger majority of regular students will not have traditional rules about locker-room privacy pushed aside, nor will we allow girls’ sports, which only recently have come into their own, to to ruined by allowing the intrusion of innately physically superior boys. Any school district that wants to victimize its students in this way will be facing, not merely the loss of federal assistance, but a civil rights suit from the Justice Department. Then we add that what kids are taught will be decided by parents and not the ensconced Education Establishment. In particular, parents can decide that their kids will be taught, yes, about America’s failures and shortcomings, but will also be taught about its successes and its heroism (for example, its massive and widely shared prosperity, and its sacrifices in defeating Nazism and Communism), and about why Lincoln saw that it’s “the last best hope of earth.”

7. What to say about abortion? This is where we need to play defense, but, fortunately, there’s an effective defense to be played. First off, don’t bring it up; don’t worry, the moderators are sure to do that. Second, when it is brought up, don’t be defensive. The answer is that the Supreme Court was correct to say that this issue should be in your hands — the hands of the voters of the individual states — not in the hands of the unelected federal judiciary. Different states will have different answers, true, just as state laws differ from one place to another on many subjects, which is one reason the authors of the Constitution were wise to avoid creating an all-powerful federal government. Third, the facts on the ground show that, with a vanishingly small number of exceptions, virtually any woman who wants an abortion can get one now and will be able to do so going forward. Fourth, while the candidate would say he understands that different people of good faith have very different views on the question, it’s unfortunate that Democrats want to demagogue it in order to hide their own radical nationwide agenda — abortion on demand anytime; partial birth abortion; sex selection abortion; and abortion to harvest body parts. The candidate then demands, “These questions need answers. I know where I stand. Where does Joe Biden stand?”

8. Last, you might also have noticed that my suggested answers do not pit one Republican contender against another. They pit each contender against Biden. This is the smart thing to do for one simple reason: There are a number of things that will divide the contenders, but the one thing that will unite them, and most importantly, will unite them with their audience, is the strong desire to remove our current, dilapidated version of a President. The contender who shows he is the most effective in taking on and exposing Biden will be the winner of this debate.