Battleground Iowa: 2023 Lincoln Dinner brings the GOP candidates to same stage

It marks the first time the Republican primary candidates are together in the same room, on the same stage. The 2023 Lincoln Dinner in Des Moines, Iowa is the venue. This will be the first time Trump and DeSantis are in the same venue in Iowa since DeSantis entered the race.

The Lincoln Dinner in Des Moines is a big event for Republican candidates. All eyes this year, though, will be on Trump and DeSantis, the two frontrunners. Trump has a significant lead over the other candidates but DeSantis will be looking to ease doubts that he can successfully challenge Trump, given the disappointing start to his campaign.

DeSantis is rebooting his campaign and that is a good move. The campaign and the super PAC that supports DeSantis have raised big money but the spending by the campaign appears to have been reckless. More than 40% of contributions have been burned through in the governor’s first few weeks on the campaign trail. Rumors of too many private planes and expensive hotels plague the campaign. Those managing the campaign need to slow spending, be more frugal, and pare down the paid staff. It’s all rookie mistakes by a candidate who hasn’t run a national campaign before this one but DeSantis faces other well-funded challengers and has to smarten up quickly during the reboot. He is running out of time to turn things around. Much was expected of him when he entered the race, yet so far he hasn’t made much headway, at least if we are to believe the polls.

DeSantis has been camped out in Iowa this week, ahead of tonight’s Lincoln Dinner. As part of the campaign reboot, he is focusing more on early-voting states. That is crucial to winning Iowa caucuses and primaries in states like New Hampshire and South Carolina. DeSantis will roll out his economic policy in New Hampshire on Monday.

I have not given up hope that DeSantis can turn around his campaign and start increasing his poll numbers. Not yet, anyway. There is time. He’s a smart politician. I hope he discovers whatever special strategy he needs to run against Trump for the party’s nomination. The Republican Party will be healthier if one candidate isn’t given a coronation. Everyone has to work for it and earn votes.

That brings us to Trump. How will he be received? He dissed Governor Reynolds, a very popular Republican governor who was recently re-elected. She appears to have developed a solid relationship with DeSantis, likely because of the ties they share as governors.

For Trump, who leads DeSantis by 34 percentage points in the RealClearPolitics average of polls, many of his challenges lie outside the primary field. Trump says he is expecting a third indictment, this time in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s probe into the 2020 election aftermath and the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. His polling and fundraising spiked after past indictments — in federal court over his handling of classified documents and in New York for allegedly paying hush money to an adult film star — as his base rallied behind him. But it’s uncertain whether a fresh indictment will provide a similar wave of momentum as the previous ones.

Trump must also mend ties with Iowa conservatives after he drew their ire by attacking Kim Reynolds, the state’s popular Republican governor, for remaining neutral in the primary. The reception he receives Friday will reveal whether the tensions will be a vulnerability to winning the state’s nomination.

Trump skipped an event for Iowa evangelicals earlier in July after his spat with Reynolds, a move other candidates characterized as a snub. Evangelicals helped Trump win in 2016 but he has blamed Republican messaging on the rollback of federal abortion rights for the party’s underwhelming 2022 midterm performance. Trump also didn’t respond to a request from Reynolds’s office to be interviewed by her at the Iowa State Fair in August, according to Kollin Crompton, a spokesperson for the governor.

This isn’t 2015. In 2023, everyone knows Trump and his unusual ways of conducting a campaign. The question is whether or not voters want to continue with his drama or if they are ready for fresh blood and alternative candidates. So far, likely primary voters are sticking with Trump. As long as the field of primary candidate remains large, it benefits Trump. It is six months before the Iowa caucus.

The event will be full of Republican hopefuls. Besides Trump and DeSantis, Pence, Haley, Scott, Ramaswamy, Burgum, Hutchinson, Suarez, and Hurd will speak at the dinner. Each candidate will be given 10 minutes.