What the Chaotic GOP Debate Actually Clarified

The second, Trump-less Republican presidential debate Wednesday night at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California was an often ugly, uncontrollable mess between a septet of candidates trying either to stay in the mix or leap to a new stage of competitiveness. There was not one, single target—there were seven. (Well, six. Love ya, Doug Burgum. You’ll get time to speak shortly).

The melee reflected the changing landscape among the non-Trump candidates since the first debate. Leading into August’s throw down, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was still the clear Trump alternative. That wasn’t the case heading into Wednesday night. DeSantis is now actively duking it out for primacy in the race to take on Donald Trump down the stretch. Before Trump, DeSantis has to contend with Nikki Haley, whose polling support and resources have risen since a strong first debate, and with Tim Scott, whom the donor class and pre-Trump establishment likes but needs to see a little more from.

Haley, once again, had the strongest debate, mixing well-prepared answers on education, China, and the border with the only noncringeworthy zingers in a night full of catastrophic attempts from her competitors. There was something spectacular in Haley that prompted her, following Vivek Ramaswamy’s consultant-borne direct-to-camera moment trying to level with voters who find him annoying, to turn to him and say, “Every time I hear you, I feel a little bit dumber.” (Don’t confuse the field’s kicking of Ramaswamy, which picked up right where it left off from the first debate, with fear of him. It gets them speaking time and attention to get into it with a real, live character, in Trump’s absence.) The only Trump campaign attack email I received during the debate was one titled “The Real Nikki Haley,” listing her supposed heresies. She’s made the Trump campaign’s radar, which has been trained almost exclusively on DeSantis for the duration of the campaign.

What of DeSantis? First: He continues to need work on his pivot from speaking to smiling. This is grisly, folks:

In the first hour of the debate, DeSantis stayed above the fray as if he were the undisputed top dog onstage. He’s not. He picked it up in the second half though and scored his best moment of either debate when he cut off a going-nowhere dispute between Haley and Scott about who’d accomplished more and pointed out what was, all those months ago when he was touted as a front-runner, his strength: He really did change the political culture of one of the largest swing states in the country into a conservative bastion, and under great scrutiny.

DeSantis also successfully rallied the stage against moderator Dana Perino’s power trip of a theme question demanding the participants write down which candidate onstage they’d “vote off the island.” Leadership!

The candidate most visibly changed from the first debate—and not just because he was sporting a slight goatee—was Tim Scott. Maybe it was nerves, or getting a feel for the situation, but Scott was nowhere back in August. He absorbed much feedback about that. In this debate, he was more forceful not just in his speaking but in the elbows he was throwing, too.

Scott tousled briefly with DeSantis, reiterating his criticism of the Florida middle school curriculum instructing students that slaves learned useful skills in their enslavement. But he saved his dirtiest work for Haley, whom he hit for raising the gas tax as governor of South Carolina, and for the long-forgotten dust-up about expensive new curtains during her time as United Nations ambassador.

The problem for Scott is that Haley is still a better debater—“Bring it, Tim,” she said when he began going down the attack path—and his hits weren’t on especially meaningful stuff. The “curtains” episode (discussion of which may go down in the transcript as “CURTAINS [CROSS-TALK] CURTAINS??”) involved swanky new fabrics that were purchased during the Obama administration.

“Did you send them back?” Scott pressed. “Did you send them back??”

“Fight-y Tim Scott” is a work in progress. But it is, finally, in progress.

Elsewhere, two candidates who remain unviable because too large a chunk of the Republican electorate views them as traitors for not being very nice to Mr. Trump whiffed on some lines.

Chris Christie has based his entire campaign on his ability to take it to Donald Trump directly. But he can’t do it directly, since Trump isn’t showing up to the debates. All he can do is point his finger at the camera.

“You’re ducking these things,” Christie said to the absent Trump. “And let me tell you what’s going to happen. You keep doing that, no one up here is going to call you Donald Trump anymore.” Here, I thought he was building up to calling Trump “fuckface,” or something interesting. Instead, he went to: “We’re going to call you Donald Duck.” An agonizing payoff.

Christie also had the most uncalled-for line of the night when, while inveighing against teachers unions, he noted that “you have the president of the United States sleeping with a member of the teachers unions.” Well, it was the most uncalled for moment of the night, until former Vice President Mike Pence, Christie’s fellow unviable competitor, said a few minutes later that “My wife isn’t a member of the teachers union, but I’ve got to admit, I’ve been sleeping with a teacher for 38 years.”

Ramaswamy, who is too annoying to poll much higher in the race, nevertheless made for a good CHINA! punching bag given his history of doing business in the country. (“A win for Russia is a win for China,” Haley said to him during the Ukraine portion of the evening, “but I forgot you like China.”)

Doug Burgum, bless him, technically had the least speaking time of any candidates, but was bugging the moderators for time for almost the entirety of the debate, his voice reverberating in the cavernous glass building from his lectern on the wing. When he does speak, he gives a lightning-fast summary of the day’s economic geopolitics (his takeaway is that we need more American drilling!) before his time runs out. We’ll see if he makes the third debate.

That third debate is scheduled for Nov. 8 in Miami. After Wednesday’s proceedings wrapped, the Trump campaign released a statement saying the Republican National Committee should cancel it and any other debates it has planned.

“Tonight’s GOP debate was as boring and inconsequential as the first debate, and nothing that was said will change the dynamics of the primary contest being dominated by President Trump,” senior adviser Chris LaCivita said, before insisting that “the RNC should immediately put an end to any further primary debates so we can train our fire on Crooked Joe Biden and quit wasting time and money that could be going to evicting Biden from the White House.”

I don’t think this debate was inconsequential. Haley will continue rising, DeSantis found some footing, and Scott showed up. But if these second-tier debates are to serve a larger purpose, they need, eventually, to identify one candidate who presents the best option for beating Trump in Iowa. Because if that doesn’t happen, this truly has been a waste of time.