Tuesday will bring best GOP debate yet

Of all the Republican debates held thus far, and of all that will be held, this is the one to watch.

Tuesday's CNN-sponsored matchup at the Venetian will be more spirited than perhaps any up to this point. Republican candidates have no choice now but to confront the rising menace in their midst, businessman Donald J. Trump.

No longer can other candidates hope that Trump's own statements will sink his candidacy; if anything, Trump gets more popular with each ever-more-outrageous utterance, any one of which alone would have killed off the candidacy of a lesser Republican.

No longer can other candidates hope media attention will cause Trump to stumble in the polls. Not only does Trump disregard the media when they catch him in an untruth, so do most of his followers. Even worse, some media outlets hew to Trump's agenda, while frankly acknowledging they're being played.

No longer can other candidates follow the supremely bad advice to emulate Trump's style if not his actual words, in the hopes that heretofore lackluster candidates can revivify lagging campaigns by pretending to be somebody else.

And no longer can candidates hope that world and national events — including terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, Calif. — will sober an electorate that has drunk too freely and too long at Trump's insubstantial idea fountain.

If anyone else in the Republican field is to break out of the pack and challenge him for dominance of the primary vote, and ultimately the party, it will begin at Tuesday's debate. And it's more likely than not to be a candidate such as Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, ex-Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Dr. Ben Carson or New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

Attacking Trump — even with all the material Trump himself has provided — is a risky proposition. Trump has proved himself an able if not terribly sophisticated debater, able to hurl cutting personal insults in responses to attack on policy. And since Trump represents that part of the American psyche distrustful of the political class, every insult is not just a laugh line, it's a building block in the house of authenticity that Trump is seeking to create for himself.

If a person were to collect a dollar for every time it's been said that Trump is merely saying what many people in America are thinking, that person could amass a Trump-like fortune in short order. But it's not clear what's worse about that statement: that it's true, or that it's false.

If nothing else, Trump represents our fears, our darkest impulses, our desire to address complex problems with simple, often violent solutions. He represents a plainspoken persona in an era of politically correct, poll-tested dialogue that, in Orwell's formulation, is designed to give the appearance of solidity to pure wind.

But if America is anything, it's a nation created by overcoming its dark demons. We overcame fear and a larger, occupying military force to create America in the first place. We overcame slavery, at the great cost of a civil war. We overcame hatred of and discrimination of immigrants from Europe, and we struggle today to overcome the same impulses for the immigrants of today.

Whenever we have given in to our fears, our hatreds and our prejudices, we rightly look back on those actions with shame and not pride. Sometimes, both emotions repose in the same person. FDR interred Japanese citizens without particularized suspicion, while simultaneously reminding his fellow citizens that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

On Tuesday, we may find out if anyone in the Republican field of candidates takes Roosevelt's lesson to heart.

— Steve Sebelius is a Las Vegas Review-Journal political columnist and co-host of the show "PoliticsNOW," airing at 5:30 p.m. Sundays on 8NewsNow.
Follow him on Twitter: @SteveSebelius or reach him at 702-387-5276 or ssebelius@reviewjournal.com.