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As Republicans take the debate stage, all eyes will be on Donald Trump

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Jeb Bush has been practicing all summer for this moment: his first big chance to convince voters he is a reliable problem solver fit to sit in the Oval Office.

Scott Walker has been boning up on issues foreign and domestic, eager to prove that after a rocky debut this spring he has amassed the knowledge to be a credible commander in chief.

Ted Cruz spent this week ensconced with advisers inside a Capitol Hill town house honing the rhetorical and theatrical skills that made him a standout on the college debate circuit.

But as the largest GOP field ever takes the stage here Thursday night for the hotly anticipated first presidential debate, all eyes will be on the unexpected front-runner, Donald Trump, who like any good showman is promising to perform in unscripted glory.

The potentially combustible Fox News Channel debate, which begins at 9 p.m. ET in the arena home of LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers, features Trump as the wild card. Will he hold his own amid tough questioning from the moderators? Will he draw blood from his opponents? Will he commit a mistake that deflates his candidacy or will he appear presidential and broaden his base of support?

By virtue of his polling lead, Trump will be positioned at center stage, flanked by Bush and Walker, who have averaged second and third respectively. The rest of the top 10 candidates will fan out from there, while the remaining seven candidates will participate in a 5 p.m. undercard debate. (One of the seven, Carly Fiorina, euphemistically dubbed it the “happy-hour debate.”)

The Cleveland showdown opens a new phase of direct combat for the Republicans. A debate once envisioned as an introductory forum has become an unpredictable drama thanks to Trump’s rise. Millions of voters are expected to tune in — and most of the candidates have privately acknowledged the high stakes.

“Debates are great levelers,” veteran GOP strategist Alex Castellanos said. “There is a physics to this. . . . Somebody is going to have a big moment where they show their best and true self. This election isn’t so much about issues. It’s about trying to transform a phony government. Everyone wonders, ‘Who is that person going to be?'”

Trump intends to make the case that it’s him. In an interview, Trump previewed a wait-and-see approach. He spent the week at his gleaming Manhattan skyscraper, Trump Tower, basking in news articles about his sustained lead in the polls rather than memorizing zingers and staging mock debates.

“I’ll have to feel it out, see where everyone else is coming from,” Trump said. “I’d prefer no conflict, no infighting, but if they hit me, I’ll hit them harder. It’s all going to depend on the moment.

“You watch,” he continued. “I am going to keep it on a high level. I have a lot of respect for them.”

The Cleveland debate is the first of nine nationally-televised primary debates sanctioned by the Republican National Committee, to be held roughly once a month through early next year.

In the 2012 campaign, primary debates fueled the rapid rise and collapse of several candidates and ultimately damaged the eventual nominee, Mitt Romney. This time around, with 17 declared candidates and no dominant front-runner until Trump’s summer surge, the debates provide arguably the best opportunity for contenders to break through.

Although just a single August evening in a protracted race, Thursday’s debate here on the shores of Lake Erie — at the Quicken Loans Arena, which next summer hosts the Republican National Convention — will begin to set the tone ahead of next February’s first caucuses and primary elections.

At the moment, Trump’s catapulting candidacy is the dominant storyline. As one of the debate moderators, Chris Wallace, said on Fox Tuesday evening, “We don’t want to make it the Donald Trump show, but it is.”

Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton and her campaign have tried to use Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric, especially on immigration, to paint the entire GOP field as extremists.

“I understand Trump may be an irresistible focal point,” Joel Benenson, Clinton’s chief strategist and pollster, told reporters Wednesday. The real question to be asking during the debate, Benenson argued, is, “Do the Republicans do anything to suggest they are anything other than out of touch and out of date?”

Clinton is expected to be a focal point by the Republicans, though Benenson shrugged off the suggestion that the two-hour debate poses a risk to her.

Some leading Republicans will be trying to avoid confrontation with each other. Bush hopes to convey his policy substance and explain his conservative record as Florida’s governor.

“It comes down to this: Are you going to be angry or a problem solver?” said Al Cardenas, a Bush friend and ally. “Voters want to see someone with presidential timber.. . .I doubt Jeb attacks anyone. If anything, he’ll respond to something if it’s over the top.”

Cardenas said Bush didn’t need to do much cramming, though he recently called two of Romney’s longtime advisers and debate gurus, Beth Myers and Peter Flaherty, to the Bush family compound in Kennebunkport, Maine, for prep sessions.

For Walker, the governor of Wisconsin, the goal is to come across as the nice guy with an optimistic vision for the future.

“I’m not going to worry about the other candidates,” Walker said during a campaign stop at a pizza parlor in New Hampshire on Monday. “People are tired of politicians telling you who they’re against and what they’re against . . . Americans want to vote for something and for someone.”

Rubio drew hundreds of mostly younger Republicans Wednesday afternoon to TownHall, a “vegan-friendly eatery’ in Cleveland’s Ohio City neighborhood, calling the race a “generational choice” and bantering in Spanish with the crowd. “Tune in tomorrow night,” he said.

Cruz, a star debater at Princeton University, huddled Tuesday and Wednesday with his inner circle at Hillsdale College’s townhouse in Washington to get ready for the debate. Helping the Texas senator prepare is Anthony Dolan, one of former president Ronald Reagan’s speechwriters.

In an interview Tuesday, Cruz said his strategy sessions have focused on “how one communicates with 10 somewhat conflicting messages all on the same stage at the same time.”

Ohio Gov. John Kasich recently held a mock debate session at his home in Columbus and has been reviewing a five-page memo of possible questions his staff prepared. He is relieved to be in the main debate at all, inching past former Texas governor Rick Perry in the latest polls to score the 10th spot.

It is ironic that the two candidates who have been the most aggressive in taking on Trump — Perry and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham — won’t get to face him on stage, as their low polling relegated them to the junior varsity debate.

One candidate on the big stage who might take some shots is New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. He confidently previewed his debate performance on Tuesday night in Asbury Park, where his donors feted him for a “kick-off reception.”

“We all want to see Chris get up there and be himself,” said Ray Washburne, Christie’s national finance chairman. “Our message to him all along has been, ‘Trump will be Trump, you be you — and sometimes, well, a little rough-and-tumble can work.'”

Washington Post staff writers Anne Gearan and Katie Zezima in Washington and Jenna Johnson in Manchester, New Hampshire, contributed to this report.