Via Jeremy Peters, Donald Trump is set to be the moderator of a debate hosted by Newsmax, and airing on Ion Television, on Dec. 27 in Iowa: 
 
 “Our readers and the grass roots really love Trump,” said Christopher Ruddy, chief executive of Newsmax Media. “They may not agree with him on everything, but they don’t see him as owned by the Washington establishment, the media establishment.” Continue Reading Mr. Trump’s role in the debate, which will be broadcast on the cable network Ion Television, is sure to be one of the more memorable moments in a primary season that has already delivered its fair share of circus-like spectacle. 
 
 Trump adviser Michael Cohen confirmed it. 
 
 Peters notes, correctly, that Trump carries influence with the party's conservative base. That's in no small measure because he was, as JMart memorably put it earlier this year, a neon stand-in for the type of candidate that GOP primary voters wanted — someone who would take the fight to President Barack Obama. 
 
 The idea that Trump would end up being among the most impactful players on the GOP primary would have been inconceivable earlier this year. But the reality is that the candidates have, at various levels, parroted parts of his message — and most of them have tried courting him for his endorsement. 
 
 It's unclear whether any candidates have actually agreed to take part in the forum, which will be hosted by a man best known for his reality TV show, "The Celebrity Apprentice." But given Trump's ability to command media attention, and his willingness to criticize if he disagrees with a candidate, candidates may feel compelled to attend. ||||| Itâ€™s officially a reality television Republican primary now. 
 
 Donald Trump is pairing up with Newsmax, the conservative magazine and news Web site, to moderate a presidential debate in Des Moines on Dec. 27. 
 
 “Our readers and the grass roots really love Trump,” said Christopher Ruddy, chief executive of Newsmax Media. “They may not agree with 
 
 him on everything, but they don’t see him as owned by the Washington establishment, the media establishment.” 
 
 
 
 Mr. Trumpâ€™s role in the debate, which will be broadcast on the cable network Ion Television, is sure to be one of the more memorable moments in a primary season that has already delivered its fair share of circus-like spectacle. 
 
 Mr. Trumpâ€™s own flirtation with running for president this year seems almost quaint (whose birth certificate was he all worked up about?) compared with more recent distractions â€“ like allegations of adultery and sexual harassment, gaffes that seemed scripted from a late-night comedy show, and a six-figure line of credit at Tiffany & Co. 
 
 But despite being derided by liberals â€“ President Obama likened Mr. Trump to a â€œcarnival barkerâ€? for his repeated assertions that the president was actually foreign-born â€“ the real estate mogul carries weight with a certain element of the conservative base. And that sway seems particularly strong with the Tea Party wing of the base, which will be a decisive factor in the early primaries that are likely to determine the nominee. The debate, which unlike many recent ones will not be limited to a specific topic like national security or the economy, is set to happen just a week before the Iowa caucuses. 
 
 Newsmax sent candidates the invitation on Friday afternoon. It began, “We are pleased to cordially invite you to “The Newsmax Ion Television 2012 Presidential Debate,” moderated by a truly great American, Mr. Donald J. Trump.” Spokesmen for several candidates did not immediately respond to questions from The New York Times about whether they would accept. 
 
 Though presidential candidates may initially balk at the idea of appearing in a debate where Mr. Trump â€“ with his bombast and The Hair â€“ is the one posing the questions, they may ultimately see it as an invitation they canâ€™t refuse. In fact many of the candidates have already met with him, some more publicly than others. Representative Michele Bachmann has sat down with Mr. Trump several times this year. Gov. Rick Perry of Texas had dinner with him at Jean Georges, the posh Manhattan restaurant. And Mitt Romney paid a visit but carefully avoided being photographed. 
 
 And Newsmax is a powerful player itself. It has a broad reach into the conservative base, with monthly Web traffic second only to Fox News among sites with conservative-leaning audiences. 
 
 Mr. Trump has been a popular attraction at the Conservative Political Action Conference, the annual gathering in Washington. He was such a successful presence in the eyes of Fox News executives that they added a special weekly segment to their morning show â€œFox and Friendsâ€? for him called â€œMondays With Trump.â€? 
 
 Whether his professed presidential ambitions are genuine or merely a publicity stunt seems not to matter in terms of the news media attention Mr. Trump can command. His highly publicized flirtation with running this year coincided with a Trump-branded product that stood to benefit from all the attention â€“ a new season of his highly rated NBC show â€œCelebrity Apprentice.â€? 
 
 The arc of his noncampaign was similar in 1987 and 1999 â€“ when Mr. Trump also said that he was considering running for president, episodes that are often forgotten. 
 
 His book ”Trump: The Art of the Deal” was published in November 1987 and reached The New York Times best-seller list by December. But by the time the Republican National Convention rolled around in August 1988, he had opted out. 
 
 ”Everybody wants me to do it,” he declared then. ”But I have no interest in doing it.” 
 
 And in late 1999, just before his book ”The America We Deserve” went on sale, he began courting support as a candidate on the Reform Party ticket. He even toured the country with his girlfriend, Melania Knauss, now his wife. The outcome? You guessed it. ||||| Eighteen days before the Iowa caucuses, the Republican nomination contest has come down to two big questions: Can Donald Trump actually become the party’s 2016 presidential nominee, and if he falters, who can emerge to seize the crown? 
 
 What was unthinkable a few months ago no longer is. Trump’s durability in national polls and his standing in the early states have forced GOP leaders — and all his rivals — to confront the possibility that the New York billionaire and reality TV star could end up leading the party into the fall campaign against the Democrats. 
 
 Trump is anything but a typical front-runner. In fact, he is the most unconventional and atypical front-runner for as long as anyone can remember. And unless and until he actually wins primaries and caucuses, the race will remain what it has been for months: a confusing mash-up among a relative handful of candidates looking to pick up the pieces of a possible Trump breakdown. 
 
 Almost everything about Thursday’s debate here in South Carolina underscored the current state of the campaign. It featured a series of sharp exchanges between Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and efforts by the other candidates to break through by showing they could be tougher on President Obama than any of their rivals. 
 
 The GOP race is now commonly defined as a pair of contests. The first features Trump and Cruz fighting to emerge as the leading candidate in what is either defined as the anger lane, the populist conservative lane or the outsider lane. In their own ways, both Trump and Cruz embody the vibrant anti-establishment anger of the grass roots. 
 
 Donald Trump called Ted Cruz's comments about "New York values" offensive during the Jan. 14 GOP debate in Charleston, S.C. (Fox Business Channel) 
 
 The other contest is the battle among more mainstream conservatives, representatives in one form or another of a nervous party establishment worried about protecting down-ballot candidates in the fall. 
 
 That battle features Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and former Florida governor Jeb Bush. Normally, the establishment is in the driver’s seat in nomination battles. This time, those candidates have found themselves on the defensive and struggling to adapt to a Trump-dominated environment. 
 
 But nothing is quite as clean as all that. Trump occupies space largely defined by his unique candidacy. He is not a pure conservative in any sense of the word. Although his and Cruz’s support overlap, Trump is in a lane of his own. It remains to be seen whether his support is wide, deep and loyal or shallow and fickle in the face of any signs of weakness. 
 
 Attacks are now flying in all directions, as the debate demonstrated. Cruz and Trump, who spent most of last year playing nice to each other, traded blows over whether Cruz, born in Canada to an American mother, is eligible to be president and over whether the values of New York are out of touch with those of the rest of the country. Cruz scored points on the first, while Trump effectively countered the second with a paean to New York’s collective response to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. 
 
 Because there is no dominant figure among the tightly bunched establishment candidates, they are all firing at one another. Bush and his well-funded super PAC have been the most aggressive of late, but Christie, Rubio and Kasich are using what resources they have — whether through advertising and direct mail or TV and print interviews — to launch their own assaults. 
 
 Thursday’s debate, however, highlighted the current plight of the establishment candidates. Overshadowed by the exchanges of Trump and Cruz, they struggled to stand out in the crowd. Christie and Rubio traded harsh words at one point, and Bush sought several times to undermine Trump. All tried to use their time to attack Obama. But no one seemed to gain much ground against the others. 
 
 The other reality of the campaign is that it is playing out separately in Iowa and New Hampshire. In Iowa, Trump and Cruz are the clear leaders. A few weeks ago, Cruz held a double-digit lead in a Des Moines Register-Bloomberg Politics poll. This week, that same poll showed his lead over Trump down to three percentage points. 
 
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 Given polls that show Trump well ahead in New Hampshire, the outcome in Iowa has huge implications. A Trump victory in Iowa would send seismic shocks through the party. No Republican in the modern era has won both the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. Trump would be in a position to do so. 
 
 A Cruz victory in Iowa, however, would rattle the establishment almost as much as a Trump victory, if not more. Unique among the elected and former elected officials in the race, Cruz campaigned from the start with an eye toward tapping anti-Washington sentiment among party conservatives. Party leaders fear that Cruz as the nominee could bring about a landslide loss in November. Cruz, who has played the campaign as smartly as anyone to date, is determined to disprove the doubters. 
 
 The establishment battle takes place primarily in New Hampshire, where Rubio, Christie, Kasich and Bush are seeking to emerge as the candidate with the momentum to carry the fight well into the spring. Right now, however, that battle is for second place. Not since then-governor Bill Clinton came in second in New Hampshire and declared himself the “comeback kid” has runner-up offered as many rewards as in this year’s GOP race. 
 
 But there are other crosscurrents shaping the race. As much as the Trump-Cruz contest defines the Iowa race, the battle for third place there also has real implications. Rubio currently holds third place in the Register-Bloomberg poll, but Ben Carson, who once led in the state, is just a point behind. 
 
 None of the other candidates, with the possible exception of Trump, wants to see Rubio as the clear third-place finisher in Iowa. Establishment candidates know that if Rubio takes third there over the rest of them, he will have momentum heading toward the New Hampshire primary eight days later. 
 
 But Cruz, too, wants to hold down Rubio in Iowa; Cruz senses that the fellow first-term senator represents a major threat if he is not stopped early. Belying the idea that the race is running in two separate lanes, Cruz’s super PAC took aim at the Florida senator with a new television ad attacking Rubio for having supported comprehensive immigration reform, including a pathway to citizenship for those who are here illegally. 
 
 Their competition erupted in the final minutes of Thursday’s debate in an angry exchange between the two that highlighted the distrust now existing between them. 
 
 Trump has absorbed fewer attacks to date. That’s partly because those who have attacked him have generally paid a far higher price than he has. But another reason others have left him alone is because they still believe he will be far more vulnerable when the field is winnowed by the results in the early states. 
 
 That is based on evidence that, however passionate Trump’s supporters may be, there is a large block of voters in the party who tell pollsters they will never back him. Were he to win Iowa and New Hampshire, however, everyone’s calculations about his strength and staying power would change — and he would find himself under far more intense and sustained attacks heading into the next rounds of contests. 
 
 Republicans still could be heading for something they’ve seen before: a contest that pits a mainstream, establishment candidate against a conservative backed by the party’s social and religious conservatives. 
 
 Or it could be a race pitting Trump and Cruz, with establishment candidates destroying one another in the battle for supremacy, the ultimate evidence that the balance of power in the Republican Party has now tipped in favor of the anti-establishment grass roots. 
 
 Or the party could be heading for something it’s never had in modern times: a true three-way contest that includes Trump, Cruz and someone else from the establishment wing — a race that could cause chaos and division far into the spring. 
 
 Answering the question of whither Trump is the first key to knowing which it will be.
– The "you're fired" jokes already are flying fast and furious: Donald Trump has been picked to host a Republican debate in Iowa on Dec. 27, reports the New York Times. The forum is sponsored by the conservative media group Newsmax, and invitations went out to the candidates today. It takes place just a week before the Iowa caucuses. Newsmax chief Christopher Ruddy explains the choice: “Our readers and the grass roots really love Trump. They may not agree with him on everything, but they don’t see him as owned by the Washington establishment, the media establishment." Politico notes that given Trump's clout on the right—as evidenced by many of the candidates' visits to see him—it would be a tough invitation for any of the GOP hopefuls to decline.