As he sat within the spin room with the Fox Information host Sean Hannity after the second Republican debate on Wednesday evening, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida precisely summed up the spectacle he had simply participated in.
“If I used to be at house watching that,” Mr. DeSantis stated, “I might have modified the channel.”
The meandering and at occasions indecipherable debate appeared to validate former President Donald J. Trump’s resolution to skip it. With solely occasional exceptions, the Republicans onstage appeared content material to bicker with each other. Most of them delivered the dominant front-runner solely glancing blows and did little to upend the political actuality that Mr. Trump is lapping all of his rivals — whose cumulative help in most nationwide polls nonetheless doesn’t come near the previous president’s standing.
Listed here are 5 takeaways from 120 minutes of cross-talk, unanswered questions, prepackaged comebacks and nary a phrase mentioning the heavy favourite’s authorized jeopardy.
Punches grazed Trump, however the established order stays.
The primary time he spoke, Mr. DeSantis lastly took on Mr. Trump in entrance of a nationwide viewers.
“Donald Trump is lacking in motion,” Mr. DeSantis stated. “He ought to be on this stage tonight. He owes it to you to defend his document the place they added $7.8 trillion to the debt. That set the stage for the inflation that we now have now.”
Allies and a few donors had lengthy been itching for such forcefulness.
However by the tip of the 120-minute slog of a debate, that line felt extra like an aberration that blended into the background. The candidates largely appeared to deliberately ignore Mr. Trump’s overwhelming lead — aside from Mr. Christie, who took an ungainly stab at a nickname (“Donald Duck”).
In a memo to donors earlier than the talk, a pro-Mike Pence tremendous PAC had a blunt take: “This race must be shaken up, and shortly.”
The race appeared barely stirred.
The 91 criminal counts Mr. Trump is charged with went unmentioned — each by the moderators and the candidates ostensibly working in opposition to him. And whereas the previous president did maintain extra criticism than within the first debate, the seven candidates onstage spent many of the evening poking at each other, in what might really feel like a pitched battle for second place.
Tim Scott hit Nikki Haley over curtains and a gasoline tax. Ms. Haley sideswiped Mr. DeSantis over fracking. Vivek Ramaswamy was hit over his previous enterprise ties to China. And he accused everybody of not understanding the Structure. Chris Christie tried to show issues again to Mr. Trump — suggesting at one level that he “be voted off the island.”
All of it amounted to a muddy mess.
DeSantis provides a glimpse of what his supporters have wished.
Mr. DeSantis’s allies believed that his first debate efficiency, regardless of some criticism from the information media a few seeming lack of aggressiveness, was efficient. They usually wished a repeat efficiency.
They largely received it. Mr. DeSantis made the many of the evening’s lone query on abortion to criticize Mr. Trump for attacking Florida’s restrictive six-week abortion ban. He largely evaded a query about his previous remarks about his state’s curriculum on slavery, wherein he suggested some enslaved people were taught valuable skills.
On the outset, Mr. DeSantis appeared assertive and in command. Apart from an prolonged back-and-forth with Ms. Haley, he largely averted shouting matches.
He additionally did his finest to search out spots to enter the dialogue, after being largely ignored by the Fox Enterprise moderators for a lot of the primary hour. That enraged his advisers, however he finally ended up talking greater than anybody.
He discovered a option to push again on the moderators on the finish, when one requested the candidates to write down on whiteboards which candidate they’d vote “off the island.” As most of them shook their heads, Mr. DeSantis stated the query was “disrespectful,” letting everybody else transfer on.
However his solely glancing mentions of Mr. Trump made it onerous to think about the governor instantly closing what has change into a yawning hole with the previous president. And, moments after the talk ended, Chris LaCivita, a senior Trump adviser, issued an announcement calling for the Republican Nationwide Committee to cancel additional debates, suggesting that Mr. Trump felt no less than no instant strain to affix the debating fray.
Haley cemented her spot close to heart stage.
Ms. Haley, whose solid performance at the first debate had ignited contemporary curiosity from some main donors, appeared snug standing heart stage. She took goal at Mr. DeSantis and fended off assaults from Mr. Scott, whom she first appointed to the Senate.
In between, she rattled off one of many night’s extra memorable traces — “each time I hear you, I really feel somewhat bit dumber,” she snapped at Mr. Ramaswamy as he talked about why he joined TikTok.
Ms. Haley, like Mr. DeSantis, focused Mr. Trump, saying he had targeted on the improper points — particularly the commerce deficit — whereas combating China’s rising affect. She ticked off quite a lot of areas the place he had left America susceptible, together with the overseas buy of farmland and the operation of a Chinese language spy base in Cuba.
“We have to begin specializing in what retains People protected,” she stated.
Greater than the rest, Ms. Haley’s rising standing was confirmed by the truth that some rivals started to select aside parts of her document as governor and United Nations ambassador.
Mr. Scott at one level pressured her into an in depth dialogue of the gasoline tax of their state. However she appeared prepared to have interaction.
“Convey it, Tim,” she instructed him.
Tim Scott reasserted himself.
Tim did, actually, carry it.
The senator from South Carolina had faded into the backdrop of the first debate and slumped within the polls. However from the opening moments of Wednesday’s contest, he jostled for time and, notably, combined up his sunny model of optimism with some sharp jabs at each Mr. Ramaswamy and Ms. Haley.
Notably, he didn’t goal Mr. Trump.
Maybe his strongest second of the night got here within the alternate with Mr. DeSantis over Florida’s curriculum on slavery. He largely glided previous the specifics — although he stated there was “not a redeeming high quality” in slavery — to speak about his life story and the way it led to him standing on the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library as the one Black candidate onstage.
“I’ve been discriminated in opposition to, however America isn’t a racist nation,” he declared.
It was a line acquainted to those that have seen him on the stump however squarely in keeping with his candidacy’s central pitch, and one he hopes can stop him from falling additional towards the periphery of the stage.
Ramaswamy confirmed a kinder, gentler aspect.
Instantly after the primary debate, many pundits rapidly declared Mr. Ramaswamy the winner. He drew outsize consideration by shredding his opponents with private assaults. At one level, he went as far as to accuse them of corruption, saying he was the one one onstage who wasn’t purchased and paid for.
However the polling information that emerged after the talk didn’t help the narrative that he had received. Republican voters developed an more and more unfavourable view of Mr. Ramaswamy, and he’s performing poorly in early-state polls in contrast along with his relative power in nationwide on-line polls.
So on Wednesday evening, it was Ramaswamy 2.0 — a conciliatory candidate who was chastising his opponents for attacking each other and repeatedly going out of his option to say how a lot he favored and revered them.
As a substitute, Mr. Christie stuffed the function of combatant-in-chief on Wednesday, from his new nickname for Mr. Trump to a cringe-inducing reference to President Biden’s “sleeping” with a academics’ union member — his spouse. (Mr. Pence, who was far much less a presence than within the first debate, determined to inject that he’d been sleeping with a trainer for many years, too — additionally, his spouse.)
No one purchased Mr. Ramaswamy’s reinvention. The opposite candidates appeared at occasions to be bonding over their shared disdain for him. Ms. Haley prompted laughs from the viewers when stated she felt dumber each time he talked. Mr. Scott attacked him for doing enterprise in China. And aside from the assaults on Mr. Biden, the harshest traces of the evening have been geared toward Mr. Ramaswamy.
