2023-08-24 08:19:02
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Candidates stand on the podium at the Fiserv Forum during the first 2023 Republican presidential debate in Milwaukee on Wednesday, August 23, 2023. © IMAGO/Mike De Sisti
The first debate of the Republican presidential candidates is over. Some of them scored, others were left behind. A balance sheet.
This article is available in German for the first time – it was first published by The Washington Post on August 23, 2023.
Eight Republican presidential candidates who wanted to stand up to former President Donald Trump squared off in the first presidential debate of 2024 Wednesday night in Milwaukee. Trump was not present. Here’s who and what made it – and what didn’t.
Winner of the first Republican debate: Donald Trump must not be missing
Things could hardly have gone better for the absent top candidate. He decided to skip the debate because it wasn’t worth his time given his almost 40 percentage point lead in the polls. And the candidates who want to beat him spent much of the debate pretending he wasn’t even in the running.
For almost the entire first hour of the two-hour debate, Trump was essentially only mentioned by one candidate, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who lumped him in with other Republicans onstage who she accused of irresponsible spending.
“The truth is, it wasn’t Biden that did this to us, it was our Republicans when they passed the $2.2 trillion COVID stimulus bill,” Haley said. Noting her opponents’ voices on raising the debt ceiling, she added, “Donald Trump has increased our debt by $8 trillion and our children will never forgive us.”
Just before the hour mark, Fox News hosts hinted at an upcoming feature about Trump’s impeachment. The audience booed. What ensued was a conversation less about the charges and more about whether then-Vice President Mike Pence did the right thing on Jan. 6.
When candidates presented apparent contradictions, they often avoided naming Trump. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie came the closest to a real broadside against Trump when he called Trump’s conduct — regardless of his guilt — “under the office of President of the United States.” Only he and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson said they would not support a convicted Trump in the general election, with Hutchinson pitching the idea that Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 riot would be equivalent to that of the Jan. 14 riot. disqualified from the post of President.
The risk for Trump of not showing up was that he would not be able to defend himself. But he didn’t have to.
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Republican debate: Vivek Ramaswamy is also among the winners
In Trump’s absence, second-place Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis appeared destined for the most attacks. Instead, it was Ramaswamy, the momentum contender in the race, who climbed up to third place. What helped Ramaswamy the most were his frequent opponents: Pence and Christie.
Both demoted Ramaswamy as a political amateur. Christie compared Ramaswamy’s initial response, in which Ramaswamy described himself as “a skinny guy with a funny last name,” to Barack Obama. (Obama actually once said something very similar.) He also referred to Ramaswamy as “a guy who sounds like ChatGPT.” But Ramaswamy was undeterred by all this. And again and again he benefited from competing against the two most unpopular candidates in the field.
Most notably, he defended Trump, accusing Christie of “blindly beating Trump without even having a shred of vision for this country.” According to a memo leaked last week, DeSantis’ Super PAC wanted his candidate to run with that phrase, but Ramaswamy forestalled him. Ramaswamy also frequently chimed in, using the relatively lax enforcement of debate rules to place himself at the center of attention.
If there were moments of awkwardness for Ramaswamy, it was when the candidates – including Haley – questioned him about his dovish stance on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “They prefer a killer to a pro-American country,” Haley said, to loud applause. Haley also accused him of not standing by US allies like Israel because he said he didn’t want to end up having to send aid to the country. “You have no foreign policy experience and it shows,” Haley added, again to loud applause. But that was about the only moment when the audience wasn’t on Ramaswamy’s side.
Praise for Pence in Republican debate: Pence’s January 6 decision
The candidates have subtly distanced themselves from Trump on one key issue: his continued claim that Pence could have helped him overturn the Jan. 6 election. Every candidate polled said Pence did the right thing: Sen. Tim Scott (SC), Christie, Haley, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum and DeSantis.
DeSantis’ endorsement was less effusive, however, and after some urging from Pence himself said, “Mike has done his duty. I have no problem with him. But here’s the thing: is that what we’re going to focus on?” Christie later said, “Mike Pence stood for the Constitution. And he not only deserves recognition; he deserves our thanks as an American for putting his oath of office and the United States Constitution above personal, political and unfair pressure.”
Ron DeSantis was the clear loser in the Republican debate
The Florida governor let Ramaswamy take the stage for most of the evening, and that wasn’t what he needed.
If he had any useful moments, it was when he positioned himself as an anti-Covid lockdown candidate. He also sought subtle contrast with Trump, citing his landslide re-election win in Florida in 2022, saying, “You don’t take someone like [das Mitglied der Coronavirus-Task-Force Anthony] Fauci up and coddle him.”
But he’s also a man who desperately needs to stop his steady descent in this race. He needed this debate more than anyone. But she just wasn’t memorable in any way.
During the Republican debate, the party’s political pride also suffered
Haley spent much of the debate painting a relatively bleak picture of the GOP’s political status. She said the GOP cannot stand on its own two feet when it criticizes Democrats for overspending. She called her 2024 lead candidate, Trump, “the most disliked politician in America.” And she spent much of the discussion on abortion downplaying the party’s ability to push through its agenda.
“If you’re talking about a federal ban, be honest with the American people: We haven’t had 45 pro-abortion senators in the last 100 years,” she said, adding, “You know we haven’t had 60 have votes in the Senate.”
Others campaigning for a federal ban balked, but Haley reiterated her point that the party simply hasn’t won enough on the issue to do something like this.
Haley began her campaign with similar arguments about the GOP’s many losses in electoral favor — seven of the last eight presidential elections, including Trump’s two races. And while her performance on Wednesday night might not have accomplished much — who wants to be told what they did or can’t do wrong — she at least tried to shake up her party.
Donald Trump is back – but the competition is tough
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Republican debate: Neither Pence nor Scott could show much of themselves
Both have at least somewhat plausible claims of being formidable candidates — Pence as a former vice president and Scott as the seemingly most agreeable candidate on the scene — but have landed in the low- to mid-single digits. But like DeSantis, neither of them really showed much.
Pence tried to portray himself as the tried and true Conservative in the running, but it seemed like he was addressing a Republican party that actually no longer exists.
Scott suffered from the same illness. He gave arguably the most memorable response for anti-abortion advocates, campaigning for a federal ban while saying it’s wrong that states like California and New York don’t have restrictions. But he was largely a spectator.
Fox News had little control over the Republican debate
The cable news network, whose journalistic credibility has already been tarnished by a momentous $787.5 million settlement in the Dominion lawsuit, hasn’t exactly covered itself in glory.
The candidates repeatedly flouted the rules of the debate and little attempt was made to control the flow of the debate. When the contestants persuaded the presenters Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum when they tried to move on, the presenters often simply relented and let them take the stage.
However, the problems were most evident when the moderators dealt with questions that were asked by hand – a good and helpful start to any debate. The first time they requested such answers, DeSantis rejected the format, after which they simply let him go and declined to ask the question again.
They later asked the candidates if they would support Trump in the general election if he was convicted. Only Christie and Hutchinson declined, but both DeSantis and Pence were reluctant to raise their hands. And for some reason there were no more questions for her.
To the author
Aaron Blake is a senior political reporter and writes for The Fix. A Minnesota native, he has also written about politics for the Minneapolis Star Tribune and The Hill newspaper.
We are currently testing machine translation. This article was automatically translated from English into German.
This article was first published in English on August 23, 2023 at the “Washingtonpost.com“ was published – as part of a cooperation, it is now also available in translation to the readers of the IPPEN.MEDIA portals.
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