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Kind of an unusual Republican presidential primary debate last night, both according to some of my own expectations and to the conventional wisdom. My take on some of the most important developments and other takeaways.

>At this early stage of Campaign 2024, it’s difficult at best to stage a debate with few enough participants to enable a thoroughgoing examination of each. Yet it’s not desirable to winnow the field down too quickly, both because the first actual votes are still months away, and especially in this era of wildly volatile 24/7 news cycles, and because major initial underdogs can rise quickly, and heavy initial favorites can collapse just as suddenly. (Google, e.g., “Donald Trump,” and “2016,” and “Jeb Bush” and “2016.”

Nonetheless, last night it again became clear that eight participants is too many to enable the voters to do much learning, unless anyone thinks that viewers will watch for much more than two hours.

>As a result, because all the polls support descriptions of the participants as “undercards” to the former President, those Republican hopefuls who have become at best sort-of-known to the public (especially former Vice President Mike Pence and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis) are still only just sort-of-known, and decided unknowns remain decidedly unknown.

>Moreover, largely because they had so little opportunity to create breakout moments, and perhaps also because most aren’t skilled enough to do so, I’d be surprised if the debate produced any notable movement in the candidates’ rankings in the polls. So even DeSantis, Trump’s main (but fading) challenger so far, probably will remain stuck in that second-tier category.

>In this vein, I also don’t see where any of the participants came close to passing the so-called likability test so crucial to political success. In particular, no examples were displayed of humility or good-natured humor or much of anything that showed any of them as much more than attack dogs. The only one that seemed remotely calm and reassuring (leading elements of “likability”), it was former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson. He managed to deliver some strong, and even harsh, opinions about Trump in particular in a folksy southern accent.

Oddly, the only example of any type of humor I remember came from former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who understandably responded with a genially expressed “Are you kidding me”-type response when co-moderator Martha MacCallum asked him about growing U.S. leaders’ interest in UFOs.

>Continuing on the pure politics of the debate: Was I the only watcher surprised that by far the biggest lightning rod for attacks wasn’t DeSantis, but entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy? It’s true that the 38-year old maverick/outsider is the only candidate who’s shown significant momentum recently. But has he really established himself as the prime Trump challenger? As the main obstacle who somehow needs to be cleared out of the way in order for any of the others to lead the Trump alternative bloc? The way I see it, that’s awfully premature at best – and an implicit admission by the rest of the field that they just haven’t come close to exciting voters yet.

>And finally on the politics, although I’m not at all a fan, I was impressed by Christie’s claim that he was the only figure on the stage who had ever defeated a Democratic incumbent – and in a Blue state, yet. (Notably, Trump hasn’t, either.)

>Turning to issues, I was disappointed in the moderators’ skimpy treatment of the economy (though the candidates took every opportunity to blast President Biden’s record on inflation). I was surprised to see former South Carolina Governor and Trump UN Ambassador Nikki Haley blame Republicans as much as Democrats for lofty government spending and federal deficit levels.

>Yet despite the limited time allotment, it was depressing (though not surprising) to hear nearly all the debaters insist that federal budget could be cut adequately by slashing the federal workforce and even abolishing several individual Cabinet agencies, rather than addressing skyrocketing entitlement outlays stemming from the population’s aging. After all, however popular they are, they represent the lion’s share of federal spending.

>Even more depressing was the childish way the Ukraine war was discussed. Christie was particularly insistent that the Ukrainians deserve open-ended support because (a) of all the atrocities evidently perpetrated by Russian troops, and (b) because a Putin victory would encourage him to attack nearby members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and spur China to attack Taiwan.

Typically, the moderators gave these claims a pass, even though atrocities are tragically an ongoing fact of life throughout much of the world, and therefore, humanitarian interventions against them would severely strain American resources and cost American lives; even though Russia was struggling militarily against Ukraine long before much Western aid arrived, which should shred the contention that Moscow would challenge those nearby NATO members, which now host significant forces from other, stronger NATO members; and because nothing could be more obvious than the best way to keep China’s hands off Taiwan is to concentrate needed U.S. attention and defenses on…Taiwan.

This last point is especially important because, as I’ve often explained, Ukraine was (sanely) never considered a U.S. vital interest, and therefore risking nuclear war over, even during the Cold War against the old Soviet Union. But Taiwan is emphatically a vital interest because it manufactures nearly all the world’s cutting- edge semiconductors.

In fact, only one candidate even briefly seemed to refer to U.S. interests in a way that expressed any specificity rather than hysterics, and that was DeSantis.

>Although Haley, too, framed foreign policy issues generally in juvenile terms as a Manichean struggle between good and evil, she made the only sensible observations about abortion. Specifically, she made clear her concern that it’s shaping up to be as much of an Achilles heel for Republicans in 2024 as it was during last year’s midterms vote – when it turned the widely predicted Red Wave into a Red Trickle. And of course, last year and this, even in staunchly Republican states like Ohio and Kansas, popular majorities have made clear that they oppose the super-restrictionist stance that’s become practically dogma for most GOP political hopefuls.

Not that she offered anything close to a coherent, politically winning message or even serious substantive ideas. But at least she signaled awareness that Republicans urgently need to get their abortion act together.

>Regarding personalities, in my view, Haley proved herself highly articulate, but interrupted the others way too much. Her fellow South Carolinian, Senator Tim Scott, showed himself to be an animated speaker and little else. Pence, somewhat unexpectedly, succeeded in eliciting praise even from debaters who are not dedicated Never Trump-ers for rejecting Trump’s demand that he obstruct the 2020 electoral vote count. Ramaswamy probably turns off as many voters as he turns on simply by talking way too fast.

I was starting to find Burgum kind of interesting, but he displayed a deer-in-the-headlights manner during his chances – maybe because he was in some discomfort from the basketball game injury he suffered on Tuesday? As for DeSantis, the aforementioned decision to make Ramaswamy their punching bag probably denied him lots of breakout moment chances. That amounts to a serious setback because DeSantis needs to reverse the rapidly mounting doubts that he’s The One (to beat Trump and President Biden).

And speaking of those breakout moments, will lackluster performances last night persuade some of the less popular hopefuls to drop out in order to increase the odds that a majority anti-Trump can coalesce? And would success by that movement, or any other development, convince the former President to debate going forward? Those are the biggest questions I see emerging between now and the second Republican debate, scheduled for September 27.