GOP Milwaukee debate features smaller field
MILWAUKEE — The fourth Republican presidential debate has a unique feature: a less crowded stage.
Only eight candidates — not 10 or 11 as with the first three debates — polled well enough to qualify for Tuesday's prime-time event at a downtown theater.
"I have no idea what's going to happen, but it'll be interesting," GOP front-runner Donald Trump said Tuesday on ABC's Good Morning America.
While Trump enters the latest debate amid questions about challenger Ben Carson's biography, he denied he wants to use the debate to attack the retired neurosurgeon. "We'll see what happens," Trump told ABC. "It'll be loose, and we'll be very flexible."
Fox Business Network and The Wall Street Journal are sponsoring the set-to that is expected to focus on the economy, though other issues are likely to surface.
Two candidates who participated in previous prime-time debates — Chris Christie and Mike Huckabee — have been relegated to a preliminary forum this time around because of low polling.
"I don't get to set the rules, I don't get to make those decisions," Christie said Monday on MSNBC. "I'll be in Milwaukee tomorrow night, and I'll be on a stage where I'm going to get a lot more time to talk."
Huckabee, also on MSNBC, said, "I feel like that sometimes we let national polls drive who gets to participate in the debate, and national polls don't mean a whole lot at this point."
During Tuesday's main event, Trump and Carson will seek to maintain their status as competing front-runners, while Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz will look to maintain the momentum they built during the last debate on Oct. 28 in Boulder, Colo.
One potential non-economic topic: Carson and his life story. The debate takes place in the wake of news reports challenging parts of Carson's accounts of his youth, including his claim to receiving a scholarship offer to the U.S. Military Academy in West Point. Carson said he has been the victim of unfair political attacks.
Trump has cited the stories about Carson in the run-up to the debate, and has also attacked the up-and-coming Rubio as a "lightweight."
Jeb Bush and Carly Fiorina, meanwhile, look to the Milwaukee debate to revive their flagging campaigns, while John Kasich and Rand Paul seek to gain some traction.
In addition to Christie and Huckabee, the preliminary debate will include Rick Santorum and Bobby Jindal. Santorum, the former Pennsylvania senator, canceled a Monday speech in Michigan because of what his campaign called a case of “severe laryngitis."
Two candidates who had participated in previous "happy hour" debates did not receive invitations to this one: Lindsey Graham and George Pataki.
The Milwaukee event comes less than two weeks after a heated Republican debate in Boulder. GOP candidates and their allies criticized some of the questions at the debate, calling them politically biased and needlessly confrontational.
Christie said that, whatever debate he is in, he plans to discuss the issues.
"We're not whiners and moaners and complainers in the Christie campaign," the New Jersey governor told Fox News. "Give me a podium, give me a stage, put the camera on, we'll be just fine."
Trump, speaking on ABC, said all the candidates are on the hot seat tonight.
'It's a contest," he said. "It's a very interesting set of characters."
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