Last night finally gave us an answer to the big question of 2023: What happens when Republicans have a debate without Donald Trump? Answer: They find other issues to discuss — and for one night, with one exception, manage to offer answers from their own experience rather than engage in petty insults and prepared attack lines.

The one exception? Vivek Ramaswamy, who attempted to steal Donald Trump’s act and spend the evening insulting everyone else on stage. At some point, many expected the other seven candidates to go after the Not-Trump lane leader Ron DeSantis, but instead the only real infighting involved Ramaswamy and Nikki Haley, Mike Pence, and Chris Christie, all of whom responded angrily to Ramaswamy’s personal insults.

We can expect the media to claim that Ramaswamy got attacked because he’s rising in the polls. Don’t buy it. Ramaswamy got attacked because he engaged in artless personal insults, although one does have to admit that Mike Pence started it. Ramaswamy had declared that only a new generation could fix what the generation on stage had broken, to which Pence responded by insulting Ramaswamy more directly (transcript from Democracy 24: FOX News Republican Primary Debate publicity office via e-mail):

PENCE: Let me explain it to you. Let me explain it to you, Vivek, if I can. I’ll go slower this time.

Almost immediately, Ramaswamy didn’t attack the new Mean Mike Pence but everyone, calling them “super-PAC puppets” while calling himself “a patriot who speaks the truth” and the leader of a “revolution.” Later, he accused Nikki Haley of auditioning for the board of Raytheon, a rather ironic accusation considering Ramaswamy’s own position as a wealthy rookie. “I’m the only person on stage who isn’t bought and paid for,” he said a few moments later, leading to a cascade of boos from the audience, which prompted Chris Christie into attacking him for his amateurish Trump impression:

CHRISTIE: I’ve had enough — I’ve had enough already tonight of a guy who sounds like ChatGPT standing up here. (LAUGHTER)

CHRISTIE: And the last person in one of these debates, Bret, who stood in the middle of the stage and said, “what’s a skinny guy with an odd last name doing up here” was Barack Obama. And I’m afraid we’re dealing with the same type of amateur standing on the stage tonight.

RAMASWAMY: Give me a hug — give me a hug just like you did to Obama.

CHRISTIE: The same type of amateur.

RAMASWAMY: And you will help elect me just like you did Obama, too. Give me that big (ph) hug, brother.

CHRISTIE: The same type of amateur.

The Obama hug from … 2012? Really? That was clearly a prepared attack line, and a lame one too. Christie’s dismissal will stick too, since Ramaswany’s other answers really did sound like ChatGPT regurgitations. Even his best answer — on education, late in the debate — was nothing more than a string of slogans, mainly rehashed from DeSantis, Glenn Youngkin, and others who actually have succeeded in these areas. The reason that was his best answer is because it was one of the few in which he didn’t personally insult someone else on stage, and so Ramaswamy managed to offer a complete thought.

His worst moment came against Nikki Haley after the “Raytheon” comment in which she dressed him down for his inch-deep thinking on national security, calling him out on his claims that the US could cut both Israel and Taiwan loose of American security collaborations by 2028. “You have no foreign policy experience,” Haley declared, “and it shows.”

And it did. Ramaswamy’s entire night consisted of picking fights he couldn’t win against people who actually have experience in the policy areas in which he claims expertise. He’s the college kid who wants to tell his parents that everyone’s a sellout, including themselves, and he’s the only one who knows how the world works, because he spent a few weeks studying Marx, or Proust, or whoever was on the Lit list that week.

He’s Amateur Hour, and the hour pretty much passed last night. The media wants to sell him, so expect plenty of he must be over the target to take this much flak, but it’s nonsense. Anyone watching last night would not be impressed with Ramaswamy’s ersatz Trump impression — not even Trump, since Ramaswamy didn’t do what Trump would have wanted: to go after Ron DeSantis rather than Christie, Haley, and Pence.

In fact, Trump might be disappointed for lots of reasons. Bret Baier brought him up and did the silly “raise your hands” schtick on whether the candidates would support Trump if he won the nomination. Christie and Asa Hutchinson demurred, but the rest raised their hands — and with the exception of Christie, tried changing the subject. Except for that segment, the name “Trump” barely got mentions, contra the claim earlier in the day that Trump would win the debate because the candidates would obsess over him. Christie got in his licks, but DeSantis scolded Baeir and Martha MacCallum for making this election about 2020:

DESANTIS: This election is not about January 6 of 2021. It’s about January 20 of 2025, when the next president is going to take office. (CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

DESANTIS: I know what the Democrats would like to do. They want to talk about all these other issues, but we have got to focus on your future. We have got to focus on reversing the decline of our country.

PENCE: Right. Right.

DESANTIS: I learned in the military — I was assigned with U.S. Navy SEALs in Iraq — that you focus on the mission above all else. (APPLAUSE)

DESANTIS: You can’t get distracted. So, Republicans, we have got to look forward, and we have got to make sure that we’re bringing the message that can win in November of 2024.

The audience didn’t seem terribly interested in this line of questioning either, and Trump as a topic got dropped fairly quickly — and didn’t arise again.

Overall, with the exception of the infighting that Ramaswamy stoked with his junior-league, low-rent-Trumpian insults, the night went well enough for most of the candidates and the RNC. The most important lesson from the debate is that the GOP exists outside of Trump and can have debates over the issues without discussing him much if at all, even when moderators keep trying to bring Trump up. It’s a good start for some, and for others … well …

Here are my assessments of each candidate, in the order of their introduction last night:

• DeSantis — How did he escape without anyone else laying a glove on him? Two factors: He never took the bait from Ramaswamy (who seemed reluctant to take more than the ‘super-PAC puppet’ shot at him) and he stayed focused on his own record. The other candidates clearly didn’t want to do Trump’s dirty work for him by attacking DeSantis either. As a result, he ended up looking like the cool, calm head in the room. Other than not offering Pence a gracious nod for his role in following the Constitution on January 6 as others did — a minor error — DeSantis had a flawless national introduction. If all you’re looking for is entertainment, you’ll overlook that, but if you’re looking for a serious nominee, DeSantis made a very good case last night amidst the distractions of …
• Ramaswamy — I covered him well enough above, but my final conclusion is that he’ll fade out soon enough. There’s no there there to compel the kind of cult following Ramaswamy clearly desires. Christie’s ChatGPT comment will stick because it fits; he just regurgitates talking points from more successful politicians without any original thinking or useful experience of his own.
• Pence — Two Pences showed up last night, and neither of them did particularly well. There was the Old Pence, with the slow, stentorian delivery that in these kind of venues has the aroma of self-importance. And there was Mean Mike Pence, tearing into Ramaswamy early and often, which was more entertaining but felt like a put-on at times, as though someone told him to get aggressive. Pence needs to find a natural middle ground between the two, drop the self-important affectation, and put his expansive intellect and good nature on display.
• Haley — Haley easily got the best of Ramaswamy, had some very good moments in that fractured foreign-policy debate, and offered some reality about abortion legislation. Her fighting persona came across more naturally than Pence’s, too. Haley never talked about her own track record in South Carolina, at least not memorably, which is a mistake. Overall, though, Haley offered a solid performance boosted by Ramaswamy’s juvenile antics, and made the case for Commander in Chief.
• Christie — People will groan reading this, but Christie had a great debate. He did exactly what he wanted to accomplish: he attacked Trump, and for a bonus he exposed Trump’s ChatGPT clone, he had the best moment in a gracious tribute to Pence, and he expounded forcefully and effectively on the rule of law. He even got one of the best laugh lines of the night: “I get the UFO question? I know I’m from New Jersey … ” He didn’t make a mistake, and he was clearly the most comfortable person on stage — probably because he’s such a long shot that the pressure is off.
• Tim Scott — This clearly is not Scott’s best format, and he struggled at times to get his answers organized, but he had some good moments too. Scott’s better walking the stage and speaking extemporaneously about hope and his life experiences, both of which he tried to weave into his answers. Still, Scott seemed to fade into the background for much of the debate and didn’t really make the most of the moments he had.
• Asa Hutchinson — I never saw anyone take so much time to say so little in a debate. He had to fight for his podium in this event, and at the end, one has to wonder why he bothered. Asa offered nothing new, and really nothing more than recycled insights from 2012 or so.
• Doug Burgum — Burgum was a surprise; after a leg injury the day before, it wasn’t clear he’d show up. He had a couple of good moments early, especially on energy issues and China, and then again in the discussion on abortion. Burgum made the 10th Amendment argument to leave the issue to the states and offered a very good warning about what might happen in Republicans federalize abortion law. But he also faded in the last half of the debate and ended up closer to Asa’s “why is he here” status.

This is, of course, just the first event in a long primary. We’ll see the same people in the next debate, and then we’ll see whether they learned anything.