First Republican Party debate: who won, who lost?
The GOP front-runner was absent from the party’s first primary debate. Here’s who stood out among the eight candidates that tussled on stage.
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez said that making in onto the stage for the first GOP presidential primary debate was a make or break for candidates like him. In the end he didn’t meet the Republic National Committee’s criteria. However, not all those who qualified for the first face-to-face match-up of Republican contenders to be the party’s nominee for the general election in 2024 capitalized on the moment.
Expectations had been that in the absence of Donald Trump that the field would pile on Gov. Ron DeSantis, running second in the polls to the former president. In fact, DeSantis found himself largely ignored, much as Trump was during the first half of the debate, by his rivals.
That was not the case though, with entrepreneur and political newcomer Vivek Ramaswamy taking the broadsides and trying to steal the limelight from the rest. Here’s a rundown of perceptions from the debate.
First Republican Party debate: who won?
The general view is that Former Vice President Mike Pence had a good night, so too did former South Carolina Gov. and former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. Perhaps Ramaswamy had the best night of those present as he didn’t back down in front of numerous attacks from the others on the stage.
In fact, he seemed to relish in it, using the debate playbook of the other big winner of the night, Trump, and plagiarizing Obama calling himself a “skinny guy with a funny last name.” Likewise, the debate gave him a chance to be seen by a wider audience of GOP voters and get name recognition.
The losers from the GOP debate
Senator Tim Scott from South Carolina, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum failed to stand out during the first debate. Without making a mark on Wednesday night they will have a harder time qualifying for the second debate 27 September in Simi Valley, California.
Many commentators felt that another big loser from the night was Fox News. The moderators Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum struggled to keep the candidates from breaking the rules of the debate. The audience was also unwieldy and often interrupted the candidates responses with cheering and booing.
Additionally, the debate on Fox had to deal with counter-programing from the absent current front-runner in the form of a 46-minute interview with ousted Fox host Tucker Carlson. The video was posted on the social media platform X at the same time as the debate.
According to statistics from the site formally known as Twitter some 74 million people tuned in at some point to watch Trump and Carlson. Even, audience members at the debate could be see watching the interview on their smartphones.
Data on viewership of the first GOP debate won’t be available until sometime Thursday.