The GOP’s rowdy second presidential debate Wednesday night is being panned by many as pointless after no clear winner emerged from the fray of candidates battling to catch up to the absent front-runner, former President Trump.
Seven candidates took to their podiums in Simi Valley, Calif., to try to stand out in the crowded field against a ticking clock as the 2024 race heats up. Fox News moderator Dana Perino even acknowledged the state of the contest, telling the White House hopefuls, “It’s now obvious that if you all stay in the race, former President Donald Trump wins the nomination.”
Critics have weighed in by dismissing the California debate as being of little meaning and calling out candidates for small-scale clashes over topics, like curtains. Trump’s campaign labeled the event “boring and inconsequential.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie both called Trump out for not participating. South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, former Vice President Mike Pence and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley went after conservative entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy. North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum struggled for airtime.
Haley gave one of the night’s standout lines, knocking Ramaswamy with, “Every time I hear you, I feel a little bit dumber for what you say.”
But that line of attack was returned right back to the candidates.
“This pointless Republican debate left us all feeling a little bit dumber,” reads one post-event op-ed from The Guardian U.S. columnist Moira Donegan.
Vox’s Zack Beauchamp called the debate “a performance, a show, a pantomime: a shiny object with virtually no relevance to the outcome of the 2024 presidential primary.”
“It’s probably time to acknowledge that presidential debates are pointless when the front-runner repeatedly refuses to show up,” wrote Karen Tumulty, deputy opinion editor and columnist at the Washington Post.
Democratic strategist Max Burns summed it up as “a race to the bottom” in an opinion column published on The Hill’s website.
Trump has cited his significant lead over the rest of his fellow candidates among the reasons for foregoing the closely watched debates. A recent NBC News poll found the former president leading his rivals by more than 40 points, with DeSantis as his closest challenger — polling at 16 percent to Trump’s 59 percent.
The debates have been widely seen as critical opportunities for a non-Trump GOP candidate to stand out.
But some Republican strategists argue the second GOP debate did little to move the needle in the 2024 primary Wednesday night.
“It didn’t matter,” said Republican strategist Doug Heye, who added, “What’s changed?”
“Nothing happened last night that changes the trajectory of this race, unless we’re talking about who’s going to rocket into third place,” he said.
Florida-based Republican strategist Justin Sayfie, on the other hand, said the debate was “impactful for all the candidates that were on stage,” despite the former president’s absence.
“A lot of people judge these debates on the wrong metric. A lot of people judge the debate on: Did it move the needle? Or was there a knockout moment? Or was there a viral moment? To me that’s the completely wrong metric,” Sayfie said.
The better metric, he said, is who emerges over time — and across the multiple debates — as the winner of the “primary within a primary” to be Trump’s chief challenger.
Sayfie also highlighted the Trump campaign’s call after the debate for the Republican National Committee (RNC) to cancel future debate plans.
“Why would the Trump campaign ask the Republican National Committee to cancel all future debates if they didn’t think they were consequential?” he asked.
Yet, none of Trump’s primary rivals have been able to surpass him in national or state polling so far — raising questions of whether any candidate will be able to topple the former president or even keep the race tight heading into Iowa and New Hampshire next year.
A RealClearPolitics polling average of surveys coming out of Iowa shows Trump at 49.2 percent, with DeSantis at 16 percent and Haley at 8.8 percent. In RealClearPolitics’s polling average of New Hampshire polls, Trump is at 44 percent, while Haley is at 13 percent and DeSantis is at 10.5 percent.
Meanwhile, some Republicans are growing impatient with the number of contenders on the field and believe it needs to shrink — and quickly.
“The real failure’s the [Republican National Committee] is not culling this field fast enough,” said Republican strategist Keith Naughton.
“Burgum should not have been on that stage … he’s just wasting everybody’s time, and he’s got to go. And I think Mike Pence has to go because he’s gone absolutely nowhere,” he added.
Even as contenders are showing little indication that they’ll step aside in the primary to narrow the field, some members of the party are hopeful the debate will narrow the field.
“It’s all about who is going to be the one on stage that’ll be the last one standing to go one-on-one against Trump with the voters,” Sayfie said. “And if you look at last night’s debate in that context, someone will emerge from this.”