Republican rivals are battling to seize the spotlight from Donald Trump ahead of the second presidential primary debate Wednesday, as the GOP front-runner finds new ways to keep the attention on himself.
The billionaire businessman, after rallying a huge crowd in Dallas the night before, gave a speech before a crowd of Veterans for a Strong America aboard the retired battleship USS Iowa in Los Angeles Tuesday night.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Trump promised the crowd of supporters in Dallas.
But Trump’s challengers increasingly are eager to bump him from his perch. With only one, Rick Perry, dropping out since the last debate, 15 not-Trump Republicans remain on the field, each looking for his or her breakout moment.
Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson is now closest to Trump in the polls. A New York Times/CBS News poll showed him rising to 23 percent, against Trump’s 27 percent, bringing the two outsider candidates to a near-tie.
“That just shows you what a good debate performance can do,” Marc Thiessen, columnist and former speechwriter for George W. Bush, told Fox News on Tuesday, in reference to Carson’s performance at the Aug. 6 Fox News debate. “It’s vaulted Ben Carson who was virtually unknown into second place in the Republican field.”