The GOP Candidates Debating Just Made the Case for Donald Trump

Three of the four Republican presidential debates are now complete; the coronation of Donald Trump, who participated in none of them, is close at hand. The five remaining Republican candidates, in a dubious battle for runner-up on Wednesday night, made rare mention of the man they are all seemingly resigned to accept as the GOP nominee.

They even effectively made his case for him. Trump has, since 2016, campaigned as an anti-war candidate and has bragged about his enduring opposition to endless war in the Middle East (despite doing little to end conflicts while in office): The Republican field blustered all night about the myriad sorts of new military engagements they’d get into if elected. Trump has claimed he would cut entitlements; the Republican field unabashedly committed themselves to various cuts to Social Security and Medicare. Trump has proclaimed himself a TV ratings maker; viewership of the previous GOP debate had already collapsed quite a bit since the first one, and I can’t imagine that many Americans (who weren’t required to do so for work) made it through Wednesday night’s slobberknocker.

What did you miss, wise reader who did not watch? The candidates were heated but managed to train their fury less on one another and more on the various sovereign nations of the world. (The exception was several sniping exchanges between Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy.) This debate was foreign policy–themed, which meant that we viewers were treated to a list of exotic locales that make these candidates mad. China, Russia, Ukraine, Iran, Mexico, and Venezuela all got mention. What unites them? Well, don’t get too comfortable, because on a different Earth, where any of these candidates might have a real shot at becoming president, we’d be going to some sort of war in any or all of those places (with the exception of Israel, which all of the candidates vowed, without reservation, to support in its own war).

So went the bloodthirsty first hour of the two-hour debate window. That, plus the asking of questions unanimously embraced—would you ban TikTok? Do you blame the border for fentanyl and opioid addiction rates?—kept the rancor largely in check. Not a single domestic policy question was raised until well into the second hour, by which time we’d already locked in potential new military conflicts on at least three continents, as well as on college administrators. Tim Scott, Nikki Haley, and Ron DeSantis all independently claimed (or strongly implied) that there were now sleeper terrorist cells in the U.S., staffed by individuals who’d sneaked in through the southern border, seemingly since the most recent debate. What a difference a month makes.

None of it was delicate. On multiple occasions the candidates, supposedly trying to win over Republican voters, appealed, by name, to Republican megadonors outright. Haley name-dropped billionaire Trump donor Bernie Marcus, whom she would no doubt love to have in her corner, and Ramaswamy used his opening statement to claim that the debate should be moderated by Elon Musk, whom he has been busy working over for a major financial commitment.

Scott started off the night by rolling out his vision of a Christian nationalist America, his remarks freighted with Bible verses. But over the course of the evening, he proved to be an incredibly clumsy orator, stumbling through basically every question he answered, throwing in the odd clarion call for, say, the “XL Keystone Pipeline” and his perilously named “Build Here, Don’t Borrow From China” plan. The one practiced line he got off clean was about opening up new sources of domestic energy in the U.S. and striving for “not just energy independence but energy dominance”—a phrase Haley cribbed verbatim a few minutes later. Possibly a labor shortage of South Carolina sloganeers.

Ramaswamy’s hair was less tall than last time. His team leaked his one-play playbook (act “unhinged”) before the debate, and it was certainly on display. “I’d go one step further,” he said repeatedly, in response to basically everything, which resulted in him committing to building not just one wall but two, the second one for the northern border of the U.S. and Canada.

Christie made sober appeals to the Republican populace; pledged to cut Social Security by explaining that his son, now in his 30s, would be able to handle an older retirement age when the time came; and advised Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “keep your eye on the ball.”

DeSantis should have had some home-field advantage, with the debate hosted in Miami, but it didn’t seem to count for all that much. On two separate occasions, he said his solution would be to “rip it up and throw it in the trash can where it belongs”—it being the Green New Deal, which has never been passed into law, and it also being Joe Biden’s undifferentiated “executive orders.” He recycled lines from the previous debates and used identical phrases in his opening and closing statements. “I will take the hits, I will take the arrows,” he said twice; “it’s about you,” he said twice. The best thing that can be said for DeSantis is that the camera spared him any close-ups while he did that thing that is supposed to look like smiling, and that he, for one, did not pledge to cut Social Security.

That can’t be said for Nikki Haley, who didn’t even try to evade her spectacularly unpopular position on Social Security cuts. Haley, who is already very much on the record about being opposed to organized labor, pledged to raise the retirement age, which is about as robust a nonstarter as there is in American politics. (She refused to say by how much.) After grabbing one third rail, she tried a similar move with abortion, saying she wouldn’t “judge” anyone for being pro-choice; that national abortion bans were impractical given the partisan makeup of the Senate; then, immediately, that she would support any national abortion ban that could get votes in the Senate.

That answer was sure to offend the pro-lifers, who are still a core and zealous part of the Republican constituency despite losing many, many recent ballot measures related to abortion. (Or should I call them “referenda”? Inside joke, for DeSantisheads only!)

If there was real Haleymentum going into tonight—again, we’re talking about distant runners-up to Trump, with very small percentages—that might have put a stop to it. All the favorable head-to-head polling in the world is not going to yield a national path to victory for someone who wants to cut Social Security, is reviled by organized labor, and doesn’t have the backing of the evangelical pro-life contingent.

The most straightforward question of the night, and the one with some substantive disagreement, was about boats. I’m not kidding. Moderator Hugh Hewitt went to each candidate with his notion that the American naval fleet was too small, and wanted to know just how many ships each aspirant intended to build. This line of inquiry was taken up without any hesitation. The answer: many boats. More boats than even that. I’d go one step further. Actually, Christie said, the boats were secondary to submarines, which is where he’d spend his watercraft energies.

It was one of the few exchanges that didn’t end with military intervention or a deportation spree.