Second Republican debate has a clear winner: Ron DeSantis

The second Republican presidential debate began as a casualty of the first.

In that first contest, the winners were the ones who ignored the rules, ignored the moderators, seized the microphone and muscled through their answers.

That led every candidate to believe the same approach would win the second debate. But the moderators were determined to take back control, and the result was an opening round of all hooves and dust — a stampede of voices that trampled each other.

By the second round of Wednesday's contest, the moderators got a lasso around it and a more orderly discussion followed.

The second debate had a clear winner

The big change in this contest was that most of the candidates on Wednesday night were more relaxed, more poised than in the first. Less scripted. More candid.

Any one of their performances might have won the first debate, but for one notable exception. More on that later.

Right now, today’s obvious truth is this:

The night belonged to Ron DeSantis.

The Florida governor had been one of the losers of the first debate, who demurred from the microphone and melted through the cracks in the stage floor.

In the second debate, his presence was felt. And by the end it became a crescendo built upon biography and a powerful answer to the question of abortion.

He ended with one final flourish, a spontaneous moment when he told the moderators, in so many words, they could take their stupid question and go to hell.

DeSantis showed a genuine CEO moment

Asked to write down on paper the candidate among them they would vote off the island, all of the candidates looked puzzled.

DeSantis stepped forward and spoke for the group, “With all due respect, I mean we’re here. We’re happy to debate. I think that’s disrespectful to my fellow competitors. Let’s talk about the future of the country.”

It was a CEO moment that called for genuine leadership, and it came naturally to DeSantis, who spoke with such force the moderators shrank back to their doggie pillows.

Before this, he had schooled all his opponents on his bona fides to challenge Donald Trump for party dominance.

We are fighting a larger cultural war

There is a war being waged for the soul of America — a culture war that is bigger than our conventional politics.

Our institutions — from the universities to the public schools to journalism to sports, to arts and entertainment, Big Tech and much of corporate America — have embraced what Korean-American writer Wesley Yang has disparagingly called “the successor ideology.”

It is constructed on the idol of post-modernism, a belief that objective truth is a fallacy — that truth is in the eye of the beholder. That no matter the focal point, there are many truths to explain it.

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This in turn has made us a house divided, a collection of self-interested, color-coded flags and tribes that have foresworn “E pluribus unum” for intersectionality and victim worship.

The movement hates free-market capitalism. It hates the Founding Fathers. In its most fevered manifestations it wants to dismantle the American creed and replace it with equity — the top-down enforcement of equal outcomes through diktats, censorship and cancellation.

If you let them, these forces will take control of the culture. And, in fact, they did.

Trump stepped in to fight ... and lost

Establishment Republicans such as George W. Bush, Mitt Romney, John McCain and Paul Ryan would not fight this ideological battle. To do so would have meant getting beaten up and bloodied. They declined.

So, the Republicans hired someone who wouldn’t. Donald Trump.

Trump, however, is a vainglorious scoundrel who is a not a conservative and has proven as contemptuous of the Constitution as his left-wing opponents and his most crazed acolytes. He is so off-putting he emboldens his foe more than his allies.

This has led to Republican defeat in the last three election cycles, and it is why Democrats wait with giddy anticipation to face him in the 2024 general election.

DeSantis is someone who can win

On Wednesday night, DeSantis reminded everyone that he is the only one on that stage who has taken on the culture war that the American left started. That he has fought it not with words and books, but with policy in the pit of the Florida Legislature.

He comes armed to fight post-modernism not with red ballcaps and bone-spurs, but degrees from Yale and Harvard and military service in time of war. He reminded all that 9/11 has special significance for him because it was the day he decided to put on the uniform and serve his country.

I’ve argued that you cannot measure DeSantis by opinion polls. You have to measure him by fear — the fear he provokes in Democrats and their water-carriers in the mainstream press.

This is the candidate they fear the most, because he took the battleground state of Florida and turned into a solid shade of red, winning reelection by 19 points, while taking greater control of the state legislature and school boards.

Trump Republicans have a choice to make. They can stay loyal to Trump or they can win back the culture. They can’t do both. Because Trump is going to lose.

Haley should have avoided this fight

I thought Nikki Haley was one of the clear winners of the first debate, exhibiting a calm that stood in contrast to the brawling men.

When the moment called for fisticuffs, she could hold her own and then some, but always with measured judgment and self-control. It’s one of her great qualities.

On Wednesday she volte-face abandoned that by trading punches with fellow South Carolinian Tim Scott.

It was foolish moment. She made herself just another sharp-tongued brawler in the scrum. It was wholly unnecessary.

The dust-up began with a question in which the moderator reminded everyone that then-South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley had hired (appointed) Tim Scott to serve in the U.S. Senate. Got that? She’s the boss to the worker bee. Game over.

No need to spend any capital punching down.

Where Haley has been strong, and was again in this debate, was explaining why Republicans need to support the Ukrainian resistance. She was joined by others — Chris Christie, Mike Pence — in making the case that a war by proxy with the Russians and Chinese is cheaper in blood and treasure than a hot war with these authoritarian adversaries.

Ramaswamy goes back to the Peanut Gallery

Vivek Ramaswamy is brimming with talent. He’s an undeniable force in the Republican Party who will one day become one of its most important leaders.

But he has a youth problem. He knows it. And he tried to address it head-on.

Still that couldn’t compensate for his juvenile antics of preaching civility to his fellow candidates. They and everyone watching knew that Ramaswamy was the guy who started the last debate saying he was the only candidate not bought and paid for by the monied interests.

His conversion to Reagan’s 11th Commandment (“Thou shall not speak ill of a fellow Republican”) was just little too late to be credible.

It made him a comic figure, and he shrank before our eyes.

Christie does essential dirty work

The best line of the night was delivered by Chris Christie who reminded his fellow Republicans of the essential nature of Donald Trump. Pushed to tell who he would vote off the island, because he had been the only one seen writing something down, Christie responded:

“I vote Donald Trump off the island right now. You know why, because every person on this stage has shown respect for Republican voters. To come here and express their views honestly …

“This guy has not only divided our party, he’s divided families all over this country. He’s divided friends all over this country. I’ve spoken to people, and I know everyone else has, who have sat at Thanksgiving dinner or at a birthday party and can’t have a conversation anymore if they disagree with Donald Trump. He needs to be voted off the island and taken out of this process.”

I’ve had this sneaking suspicion that Christie is working on behalf of Team DeSantis, speaking brutal truths that DeSantis can’t without driving off the Trump base. I’ve no evidence of this, and it almost doesn’t matter.

The practical effect is that they’ve become a tag team pulling in the same direction to try to achieve the impossible — save their party from Donald Trump and what otherwise seems its inevitable self-destruction.

Phil Boas is an editorial columnist with The Arizona Republic. Email him at phil.boas@arizonarepublic.com.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Who won the second Republican debate? It wasn't even close