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Sauvignon Blanc in a World of Hyatt paper cup. Nice. I have been in Milwaukee now for four days and it is time to drink. Debate's over, folks. Mama has got her pinot and she's ready to podcast, girls. Damn. If I had only known. Go get your whiskey. I mean, not to typecast you as a whiskey drinker.
Jeffrey's part of the liquor track. Yeah, I'm alone on the liquor track, on the wine and beer track. Hello and welcome to this post-debate edition of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast. I'm going to be totally blunt here. I don't have a script in front of me. I just got back to my hotel. I was in the spin room at the debate. So folks, we are doing it live. This was the first Republican primary debate of the
the season. A lot happened. They made it through a bunch of different topics. Some of them topics that Republicans mostly agree on, like the economy and immigration, and some of them that the Republicans on stage clearly did not agree on, like abortion and climate change and Ukraine. And so it was a pretty lively debate, pretty substantive at points. There were some clear disagreements. Of
We did some pre-polling with Ipsos and the Washington Post, which we will get into. We don't have the post-polling yet because we are recording this at quarter past midnight Eastern time. So we will maybe talk about that next Monday. But we got all kinds of answers on questions like, who do you think is going to do the best in the debate? Have you heard of this person?
Things like that. So we're going to find out what Americans actually think. But for now, you're just going to have to settle for a bunch of talking heads. No, I'm kidding. We're going to try to bring... Are you, though? Empirical rigor to this. Look, let's level set here. These are always weird...
events to cover from a 538 perspective because we love to ground what we're doing in evidence but like we actually don't have anything to work off of yet there's no evidence little things here we are currently we're just like a smarter version of like the like cnn panel right now like
This is total punditry. Sorry, everyone. No need to commit hate crimes on this podcast, Nathaniel. I said we were smarter. Somebody sent me a screenshot of my post-debate analysis on ABC News Live, and I was like,
Did I sound smart? Question mark. And if I didn't, did I at least look hot? And literally no response. Silence. Honestly, I'm not feeling great about things right now. Hopefully this podcast will be a little bit better. As you can tell, I'm wired. And I've been like running around Milwaukee for four days. And I now have a glass of wine. And I'm going to settle in with two of FiveThirtyEight's greatest senior elections analysts,
Jeffrey Skelly. Welcome to the podcast slash only Jeffrey. Welcome to the podcast. Hey, Galen. Good evening. Good evening. Also here with us, who you've already heard is Nathaniel Rakich. Welcome, Nathaniel. Hi, Galen. And I also am just going to, you know, kick things off by saying hello. I may be a skinny guy with a weird name who you've never heard of before.
But I'd like to introduce myself as Galen Druk, host of the FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast. So should we begin with Vivek Ramaswamy, or is that just diving in too hot? We should. Yes.
So in case you were wondering, the rest of America is also thinking about him right now. Googling him, apparently. Okay, so yes, in case you missed the reference, Vivek Ramaswamy introduced himself as a skinny guy with a weird name, which I can relate to, and is also a quote from Obama's 2004 Democratic Convention speech.
And then it was off to the races. So first of all, he was, according to our polling with Ipsos, voters rated him as...
Most likely to have the best debate performance, or at least as ranking him as like the best debater potentially compared with everyone else. I think going on down from there, it was DeSantis and then Tim Scott, then Nikki Haley, then Christie or Pence, and then, you know, Burgum, Hutchinson, if I remember correctly. But what ended up happening with all of that potential, Nathaniel?
Yeah, well, his reputation, I think, really preceded him because obviously he's kind of been raising in the polls lately. He's nipping at DeSantis' heels for second place. And a lot of that is because he is this young, charismatic guy.
who, you know, is, I think telling a lot of Republican voters what they want to hear. Um, and that, yeah. So I, I think it was interesting because in our poll with Ipsos and the Washington post, um, there was a correlation between debate expectations and like basically how popular or how well known the candidate was. Um,
But Vivek kind of broke that pattern in that he had the highest expectations. But a lot of Republicans still said that they didn't have an opinion of him around 60 percent in the poll. So I thought that was interesting. And yeah, in terms of what happened, like it was very interesting. He was literally center stage of the debate. He got into it a lot with the likes of Christie and Pence, who had some pretty pointed comments about like his age.
and an experience. And, you know, Christie did not like that comparison to Obama. And it was basically like, we're Republicans, we don't want, you know, like an Obama. And so so yeah, so I thought that was interesting. Clearly, I think a lot of candidates felt, you know, like they needed to take him down. It's gonna be real interesting to see if they did because just based on Yeah, so so like, he had some like he was well spoken in the debate.
he had some moments that were really well received by the crowd in the hall. Some, some moments that were not. And as we alluded to earlier, based on Google trends data, he was more Googled than any other candidate during the debate, like three times more Googled than Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley, who were kind of tied for second place. And,
But that doesn't necessarily mean anything, right? It's like, this is a new guy who a lot of people haven't heard of. People have heard of Chris Christie before. They've heard of Mike Pence, obviously, Ron DeSantis, but like, there's this new guy and they're Googling him. So that makes sense. What's really going to be interesting and what I'm really curious to see the results of our Ipsos poll are like, were people, did people have a positive impression of this? Did they have a negative impression? Was it mixed?
I don't know. I'm curious to see. But I feel like that 60% number of people who don't have an opinion of Ramaswami, that's going down. I'll be curious to see whether it is kind of good or bad for him. Yeah, Jeff?
Yeah.
So for instance, with Mike Pence, Pence definitely took an approach of saying, I've got experience. We don't need somebody who's so young and has no governing experience, etc., which is a really interesting approach to take in a Republican primary considering Donald Trump won the 2016 election.
primary in part because he was the outsider who promised he could fix things, right? And Ramaswamy was definitely echoing a lot of that same sort of sentiment in the appeals he was making to the audience.
So to me, it's interesting to hear experienced politicians on a stage trying to take down the outsider guy when being the outsider guy in recent times has perhaps been a good place to be as a Republican candidate. And so that's why, to Nathaniel's point, I'm really interested to see how people respond to Ramaswamy and the attacks on him and the back and forth in the debate and whether or not
his favorability goes up, his poll numbers go up, or do they go down? We'll see, because I'm not really sure those attacks worked. I mean, I saw things a little bit differently. And of course, as we've all stated here, Americans will tell us themselves with time. But...
My interpretation was he wants to be mini Trump, right? He's the most enthusiastic supporter of Trump. He says he's going to pardon him if it comes to that. And he becomes president, you know, he's raising his hand when it says like, okay, I won't fund Ukraine. Uh,
All of the sort of Trumpiest things. And he's up there trying to, you know, kind of be Trump. But the vibe of Vivek Ramaswamy is far more like the hashtag actually sort of, oh, I'm smarter than you. I know better than you. Like, I raise my hand in class all the time and, you know, whatever.
argue with the professor or disagree, you know, that kind of vibe as opposed to boss man. Who's just like, you have a small dick marker, Rubio. Like I am going to stop illegal immigration in America. Like that. It's like two very different vibes. You know what I mean?
I know what he was going for, but I think it came off as like almost hopped up on stage, like seeing his energy versus Mike Pence in particular, where he's measured and he keeps going, no, I'm a conservative and I believe in the constitution and so on compared to Vivek Ramaswamy talking a mile a minute felt a little like not Trump vibes, if that's what he was going for.
Well, no, I think you'd rather have that Ramaswamy energy than the Pence energy, right? Because like it is more animated and like that's good. And I hear what you're saying about that like Trump is even better, kind of a third approach that that's more appealing because Trump is is engaging while also kind of being
you know, speaking. Domineering. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he kind of is, speaks like, you know, like he's not like terribly like eloquent speaker. He speaks very straightforwardly, which is appealing. But he gets you to laugh with him, not act. Yeah, right. And he's funny and stuff. And I worry that Vivek himself was the, was like,
kind of crossing the line into like you're a little bit not he's not inviting you in and you're laughing with him yeah i mean i don't think being an intellectual is actually that bad in the republican primary so i thought um jeffrey made a good comparison i think it was like in one of our like private chats um to gingrich right
And, like, Gingrich kept on, to pretty good effect in 2012, would go on up in the debate stage and be like, well, I'm a history professor. Like, you know, I know, like, you know, things. And people kind of ate it up because it was, like, you know, he was kind of brash. And, like, you know, he had a little bit of that Trump energy before Trump in a more elite way. I don't know. I don't think it, I didn't really see it that way, but...
Yeah, there was an interesting dynamic coming into the debate that I was curious about because I felt like Ramaswamy was going to be very good on stage because he, in recent times, has made this something of a career, obviously. Talking in public and being on stage and being extremely engaging and quick and sharp and
And it reminded me of Gingrich because Gingrich initially, when he got into the 2012 Republican race, summer of 2011, a lot of people were kind of like, what? Like you resigned the speakership many years ago, like kind of put out the past year, but he was running for president. And then what?
Because of what was sort of the dynamic of that race, with Mitt Romney in the lead but not very high in the polls, and these candidates kept taking turns rising up to Romney's level and just beyond him and then sliding back down in the polls. And Gingrich was among them who did that, and he relished the debates famously. And I get that same energy from Ramaswamy, who's like, oh, I love this. This is where I want to be, center stage, talking, talking, talking. And to Nathaniel's point, like,
sounding smart and being smart on stage can be effective because I, you know, and I remember Gingrich using this line or, you know, something like this in his debates saying like, well, the liberals think they're so smart. They, you know, telling us how to live our lives. Barack Obama, you know, liberal elites and whatnot. Well, you know, I'm real smart and I'll tell you how it is. So, you know, I get that energy from Ramaswamy too. He also created a dynamic where the non-Ramaswamy or Trump candidates
on stage were not attacking each other pretty much at all to the point that when the moderators directly asked Mike Pence to criticize Ron DeSantis on the issue of immigration,
To the effect of DeSantis is saying he could do it better than your administration ever did, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Pence did not even mention DeSantis. He just went on to talk straight about, you know, we reduced X and Y by 90%. I don't know the exact statistics and I haven't fact checked it.
But it was really the attacks were only coming for Ramaswamy and then also for Trump. I mean, specifically from Christie and Hutchinson and Pence to a large degree. But it was not like a 2016 debate where you had everyone just sort of fighting each other at every opportunity. It was really the sort of crowd versus Trump and mini Trump.
Yeah, although I think that's true, Galen, but there was also the abortion question where Pence did pounce on DeSantis, who, you know, the matter is asked DeSantis if he would sign a national abortion ban, and he kept on evading the question. And, and Pence basically jumped on that. And obviously, Pence comes from the social conservative wing of the party, and abortion is a is an important issue for him. And he basically was, you know, saying, like, you know, you should be able to, to lead on this issue nationally. Um,
So I think there were exceptions to that. But I agree, obviously, the Ramaswami thing. Although I also think they didn't talk about Trump that much, right? Like in the first half of the debate, we had a stat because we had a running transcript going. They only mentioned Trump by name five times in that first hour and before the moderators outright asked about the quote unquote elephant not in the room.
and so I thought that was interesting since obviously that's been a theme of this primary is that, you know, the other Republican candidates aren't attacking Trump, but he's got a majority of support. So like, if you want to win, you're going to have to get some of that support and you're going to have to bring him down eventually. And like, how do you do that? Um,
And if anything, like having him not in the room would, I think, make it easier to like make swipes at him and like get away with it, quote unquote. But people didn't really do that, except for the people who have been doing that for a long time to not very good effect, like Christie and Hutchinson. Not that they didn't do it to good effect on the debate stage, but that their message has not worked so far in terms of getting Trump supporters to not support him anymore. I think.
There's a lot to talk about here, and we're probably going to have to save some of it for next Monday, especially the counter-programming from Trump, which I have not had the opportunity to look at. So it has not skipped my mind. It's just we haven't watched it, so we can't talk about it. But I think that maybe the next person on the list of people to talk about is Haley. She probably had...
Like gun to my head. I know we hate to do this, but if you're like who won the debate, I would say Nikki Haley did anyone really? Oh, okay. I thought that was going to be the consensus, the consensus take. And it's hard because like it true. And I was taught, you know, oh man on the street, I was walking back to the hotel alongside people who were watching the debate and
And I was talking to some DeSantis supporters who were, I was like, what did you think of Nikki Haley? They're like, oh, she kicked ass, blah, blah, blah. She did a really good job. And I was like, what do you think about her in general? They're like, ah, she's one of the ones where like, I don't necessarily agree with her policies, especially on Ukraine. But like, we all knew that she was really good at debates and she was good on this debate. So there's my piece of evidence. What's your take on why she was not the winner of the debate? And if not, who it was?
I don't know if I could actually pick a winner. Yeah, it wasn't that kind of debate, I don't think. Yeah, that was the... I think that's the challenge. Like, in a lot of ways, I felt like Mike Pence did a good job in terms of sort of articulating things when things came to him. The world occurred to Mike Pence, yes. Except I also...
Yeah, yeah. But I also know that he's in a really tough spot in terms of having any chance of winning because a lot of Republicans don't like him after January 6th. And even though he gave sort of an eloquent defense of what he did that day and there were other Republicans on stage, including DeSantis, said, yeah, sure. Almost all of them said that. Yeah.
Yeah, basically almost all – pretty much all of them. In fact, one person who didn't say anything was Ramaswamy, which would have been interesting to hear if they had sort of more pointedly asked him if Pence did the right thing. But Pence winning a debate, that isn't going to win a debate for him because that's what Republicans associate him with the most, and he's got negative net favorability among Republicans right now. And so –
This being the focal point isn't exactly going to improve his position. So I guess maybe in that way, if it's not Ramaswamy, then maybe Haley does have a decent argument, you know, but I think the challenge for for a lot of the candidates was just like having enough time to say things like, I mean, we could talk about Tim Scott at some point, but I felt like he was kind of in a debate. Yeah, I kind of forgot he was on stage for periods of time.
Yeah, so we have data on speaking time. And so the two candidates who spoke the least were the two on the fringes, Asa Hutchinson and Doug Burgum. But Tim Scott spoke the third least. He spoke for only eight minutes and 15 seconds. And yeah, I totally felt the same way. And I think what's important about that is that going back to our Ipsos poll, Hutchinson and Burgum had the two lowest expectations. I think basically the story with them is that nobody really knows who they are,
nobody expected great things out of them and nobody really heard much out of them today and they didn't make an impression. Tim Scott did have high expectations. He was third after Ramaswamy and DeSantis in the expectations, but he really didn't make a splash. You know, he had that, you know, that low speaking time, as I mentioned. So I feel like he's going to be seen as kind of the loser in the expectations game. Yeah, and sort of
to that point, like the thing about Scott is that he seems to have a lot of potential still, you know, he's definitely very well liked, has very strong favorability numbers among Republicans who have heard of him or familiar with him at all. But he's still not that well known. So there's, there's more ceiling to, to reach for. Right. But in trying to sort of stay above the fray, which I actually, I sort of expected him to do, but because the debate ended up having some, some real conflictual moments, he,
The fact that he wasn't really interjecting himself into those conflictual moments meant that he was kind of irrelevant at times. They would sort of turn to him on a question, and he'd give an answer that might sound stock answer. He'd refer something from his childhood a lot or his background, which is great because you're trying to get people to know more about you. It's a totally understandable answer.
And, you know, we'll see what happens with the polls. Maybe it'll have helped him to some extent. But I think the problem is because he wasn't really involved in some of the actual confrontations, right?
and wasn't interrupting. He didn't, I don't think he interrupted once, whereas some of the other candidates did. That kept his speaking time down. Yeah, he even had a pretty checked out moment where Brett Baer asked, are you bought and paid for? And he goes, absolutely. And Brett Baer was like, no, I don't think you heard what I asked you. But also... I was asking you a question with a predetermined answer.
Nathaniel, the way that you read Burgum and Hutchinson was savage.
No one knows who you are. No one had any expectations that you would perform well. You didn't perform well. You matched expectations, which were already poor. You're irrelevant going forward and your polls will not increase as a result. That was like truly savage. It's like truly like a Mariah Carey style. I don't even, I don't know her. Did we go through the most speaking time yet? Which was Pence was number one. Ramaswamy was number two. It was DeSantis number three.
Christopher Christie. Christie was third. Christie did his Christie thing, man. He was in there. He's good at mates. It was like, oh, man, I feel like I'm back in 2016. He had his chat GPT. Yeah, I mean, the thing with Christie is that he relishes sort of these verbal conflict, and he's clearly good at it. I mean, we saw him in the 2016 cycle. You know, he...
destroyed Marco Rubio's momentum going into the New Hampshire primary very famously. And I saw a little bit of that tonight because he was the one who called Ramaswamy on using a similar, you know, basically the same line that Obama had used about being a skinny kid with a funny name. It was Christie who brought it up, which, you know, I was just like, oh man, this is giving me some robot Rubio vibes.
vibes. So, you know, but to some extent, I also think that the moderators were looking to Christie for conflict as well. And obviously, moderators, they want to get things going. They want to have the back and forth. And Christie, as like sort of the most vocally anti-Trump candidate on stage, I mean, Asa Hutchins is there too, but we just talked about the fact that he is largely irrelevant. Chris Christie is the one who people know and are familiar with, and he's
You know, he's he's made a post post political career talking a lot on television. So, you know, he's good at this. He's good at this. So I feel like he was was basically there to serve that, you know, desire for conflict. He was going to give it to you. He didn't raise his hand when when asked, would you would you support Trump if he is the nominee? He's like, you know, we can't do this, basically. He's like, we got to move. We got to like take we got to move beyond this Trump.
essentially. Like that was sort of the way he phrased it, right? Trump is going to be my final question in this podcast. So in case you're getting bored, don't tune out now, but I just to prime the pump before we get to that conversation, we got to talk about DeSantis because according to that episode's polling, DeSantis had the most sort of potential energy going into the debate because he
One of the questions that was asked to Republican voters in the episode's poll was not who are you supporting, but who would you consider supporting? And so you can list any number of candidates. It was somewhere in the range of two thirds said Trump.
DeSantis was the only other person with a majority. It was 51%, the slimmest of majorities. And then pretty much everyone else that you would think of as a mid-tier candidate was a quarter or less. So like Haley, Scott, Ramaswamy, Pence, I think was a quarter as well. And so...
Basically, what that means for DeSantis is people know who you are, people generally like you, and they're willing to support you. They just need a reason to say, like, yes, you are the person I'm actually supporting now. Was tonight's debate a reason to say yes? Well, obviously, the voters will tell us. But what did y'all think?
Yeah, I thought he was pretty good. Like he, he didn't reinforce the like awkward narrative that has kind of solidified around him. I think he was like, he came across as more confident. He, um, he was maybe like a little bit of like, like misguided.
the robotic Rubio type thing, especially with like his closing statement. He also like seemed to like really be like, he didn't think his mic was as strong as it was because he was very loud, very shouty. But so maybe I just undermining what I said about him not seeming awkward, but that's all like theatrical stuff. But I think like on the substance, like he kept on bringing the things back to like issues of strength for him, like his COVID response, his response to Hurricane Ian,
his like, you know, attacks on wokeness and education and stuff like that. And like, I think, you know, he did a good job reminding Republican primary voters why they like the kind of, you know, fell in love with him in the first place.
the, the main thing for me, I mean, it's Trump, right. Is that like, he needs to give people a reason to support him over Trump specifically. It's not enough for them to just like him. That's his problem. And like, I get that they're in a hard situation and he can't just like come out attacking Trump. But like, I don't think he meant at least like the other candidates. I mean, I guess they talked a little bit about January 6th and stuff like that, but like, at least like, you know, like Pence and Christie like went there and like, you know, Asa Hutchinson, but like,
Like, DeSantis needs to... He needs to do something about that. And, like, clearly he's decided... Well, I don't know. But he's swiped at Trump in other contexts, too. So, I don't know. I think probably my instinct, if I were him, would have been to at least kind of obliquely go after Trump a little bit more. But no, but overall, I thought he did well. You know, I'm not sure that he's going to be, like, the winner of this debate because he also had high expectations. So, like, you know, I think those were met. So I'm not sure that he's going to, like, surge from this. But...
But yeah, I thought it was good overall. Yeah, I mean, DeSantis had a number of applause lines. Well, hold on. You know, I felt like he did a pretty effective job. Jeff, that audience was stacked with DeSantis supporters. Like, I... Anything? Oh, interesting. I mean, look, I don't know that for a fact, but it seemed... Was there something about Young Americans for Freedom having a bunch of people there, which seems like a DeSantis crowd? They were a co-sponsor of the debate. Yeah.
And so, yeah, there were a bunch of young DeSantis supporters who were walking back from the debate together. And like, look, I don't know. I don't know this for a fact that I don't know if it's been reported. So asterisk, asterisk, asterisk. But like, you'd have to think if Fox is inviting Trump to this debate, you know, hey, come on, we really want you here. Come join the debate. And he's just like, nope, I'm not joining this one. I'm also not joining the second one.
I would think that given that they have some control over who attends the debate, they would not want it to be a super pro-Trump crowd that would just like boo DeSantis or something like that. And so the person who has the most supporters other than Trump is going to be DeSantis. And so it felt to me like,
And it does shape your perception of who wins or who does well, because there were moments where, you know, Pence was attacking. I think it was like, I forget what attack line it was on Democrats defunding the police. The easiest applause line you can possibly imagine. And he's like, you know, what am I going to do about crime? First of all, these progressive prosecutors are letting crime go rampant. Democrats are defunding the police. No applause. Like, what?
It seemed like that audience had a bent. I was going to say, to bring a little bit of quasi-data to this, looking at the Google Trends data, Ramaswamy was the most searched overall. And if you look at some of the spikes, Ramaswamy had some big spikes, especially early in the debate. The other spikes belonged to DeSantis. He had three spikes where he was the most searched candidate by a lot. So this was at 10.05 p.m. at
at 10.47 p.m. and then 11.03 p.m., so right after the debate. I have no idea what happened at those times, but something made Americans... He had three apparently really good moments that really made Americans Google him, so we'll see. He may have had some good lines. And to Nathaniel's point, he did come back to things that he will be strong on among Republican voters. I think the challenge, though, for DeSantis is that
He probably didn't hurt himself with this debate, but how much did he help himself? And he is way behind. And so there was a little bit of a vibe of like, I'm the front runner, except you're not. Like in terms of- He was the front runner on the stage. Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, no, of course. But I just mean in terms of just the overall race, you know, it was a bit like an alternate universe. Like if Trump weren't actually in the race and these were the eight candidates who were the main candidates. And so it was very strange in that way. So, yeah, with DeSantis' position...
I wonder if it's a thing where, okay, let's wait until Trump is on stage with me at some point, assuming he ever accedes to actually appearing, and then maybe he'll take an opportunity then. And in the meantime, he'll not necessarily defend Trump every time. But for instance, I was thinking about with the January 6th conversation, he was basically pressed, if I recall correctly, by the moderator to say,
you know, did, did Pence do the right thing? He's like, yeah, Mike did the right thing, but we need to look forward, not back, you know, that kind of language, which is, you know, something a lot of Republicans have said. He did what he needed to do. He demurred many times and the moderators were like, okay, can you answer the question? Yeah. And he's like, I've answered this before. I've answered this before. And he did that a number of times.
He tried to evade a number of things. He said he did his job well. He didn't say, quote, he did the right thing, but he made it clear that he agreed with what. That was the question. Would you have done the same thing or something like that? Maybe I'm wrong. But he made it clear that he agreed with what the Pence did. Yes.
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All right. So I think we've done something of an overview of the candidates here. I think other than Trump, which we're going to save for the end, maybe the one quite notable thing about this debate is the topics that were brought up. So in that episode's polling that we partnered on, we asked folks like, what do you want to hear about from the candidates?
Unsurprisingly, number one was inflation. Number two was immigration. It goes on down from there in some order, basically taking on Biden, beating Biden, anti-wokeism, things like that. However, in the debate, we heard, of course, the first topic was inflation, the economy, unsurprising. Topic number two, I believe it was, was climate change.
They also brought up abortion quite early on in the conversation. They also brought up Ukraine, which sparked a lot of debate. And so, I mean, let's talk about what cleavages that sort of illuminated or emphasized. Because, I mean, it was an interesting choice by the moderators because those issues that Republicans said they wanted to hear were
about in the polling, those are issues that Republicans all agree on, right? Everyone wants to bring down inflation. Everyone wants to get the debt and deficit under control. Everyone wants to beat Biden. Everyone's anti the woke agenda, whatever. But there are really big divides. I mean, there are significant divides within the Republican Party on abortion, on Ukraine, on climate change. I mean, so they, Brett Baer and Martha McCallum kind of dove right in
And I don't know what candidates took the side of majority opinion within the Republican electorate, I guess, would be maybe the question worth asking and all of that. Well, I mean, at least on the foreign policy standpoint, I found it very interesting because the one candidate on stage who is sort of the Trumpiest is Ramaswamy, right?
And he certainly sort of embraced the like new right, more isolationist, stay out of foreign affairs approach. I mean, that's a generalization, but avoid foreign entanglements as much as possible, right?
and criticized the idea of further funding in Ukraine, said something along the lines of, the only war I would declare would be on the border, I think he said? I think it was something to do with the southern border. Like, why are we protecting somebody else's border when we're not even protecting ours? Protecting ours, yeah, yeah. And so...
But then that provoked responses from Mike Pence, Chris Christie, and Nikki Haley, who sort of defended what I would call sort of the more traditional Republican position, especially sort of the neoconservative – like there was a time when sort of a more interventionist –
uh, aggressive foreign policy held sway as like a dominant viewpoint within the Republican party and Trump's election sort of switched things on that. And that became more of a minority viewpoint. Uh, and so with the polling on Ukraine, you know, we now see more Republicans oppose further funding, oppose further aid and further involvement. Um, and it's been trending down in that direction, uh,
But they were more skeptical to begin with. And maybe Biden has something to do with that too. But I did find in particular, there was a moment where Nikki Haley, right after Mike Pence had said something, I think similar, but was basically like, you have no foreign policy experience, Vivek Ramaswamy. And Ramaswamy shot back with criticism of experience is not any sort of guarantee of being...
great on it, but I was getting a little bit of the same feeling that I got when we watched the Democratic debates in the 2020 cycle, especially early on when you had a number of notable women candidates on stage who were elected and had, you know, deep elected experience, governing experience facing Pete Buttigieg, who is a mayor of a small city in Indiana. And
And I – so like seeing like pictures of like Amy Klobuchar standing next to Pete Buttigieg and Nikki Haley next to – I know they're skinning her with a weird name. Yeah, exactly. Right? I mean exactly. So anyway, it was just – it was a fascinating example of sort of the split on foreign policy within the Republican Party but also the sort of –
more experienced elected officials in this particular case, a woman, the lone woman on stage versus the, the young guy sort of outsider. Yeah. I thought that was almost the moment of the debate where it was maybe the highest pitch and Haley landed probably the sharpest attack, which also, you know, speaking of Haley's positioning, um,
She was very direct about abortion, and that was a clear sort of dividing point on stage. Now, Republicans don't want to hear more about abortion. It's not a priority for them, as you wrote on the live blog, Nathaniel. How did that all go over? Who lined up on whose side?
Yeah, I mean, I think this is one of the reasons why... Like, I don't think Hayley did badly, but I don't think I would call her the winner. And I think one thing was that, like, I don't think she was really...
telling Republican primary... She wasn't exactly where the Republican primary electorate is on abortion. She was kind of taking a more moderate position. But yeah, as you mentioned in our poll with Ipsos, only 6% of Republicans said that abortion or specifically limiting abortion was one of their top three issues in determining their vote. So ultimately, I did think that that segment probably...
did not matter to a whole lot of people but yeah but you know in terms of other divides we mentioned the the desantis you know not committing to uh you know like a national ban and pence kind of calling out for that so so yeah there you know there was an interesting debate there but i just i'm not sure that you know there are a lot of primary voters who care about it
Yeah, it was fascinating to see. I mean, you did have like Doug Burgum, you know, probably one of his more notable moments of the night saying, you know, the federal government needs to just stay out of things in general. You know, I think that was the point when he cited the 10th Amendment, in fact, was during that exchange, if I recall correctly. I know he cited it at one point and –
But, you know, essentially he was like, you know, New York and North Dakota are different, for instance. But then Tim Scott came in and said something along the lines of, well, we need to stop the New Yorks and Californias from having abortion on demand.
you know, sort of a more aggressive federal approach to limiting abortion rights, which is what the stance that Mike Pence took. Mike Pence basically said, I would sign a 15 week national ban if it was put in front of me. DeSantis tried to sort of avoid saying something like that, even though he said, you know, I, I will, you know, I will protect like a culture of life or put forward a culture of life, but did not say specifically that he would sign that, which is,
It's interesting because, you know, we're going to talk more about Trump later, but Trump has also kind of been a little wishy-washy on that, even though he has a lot of support from evangelical Christians who would tend to be more in favor of a more aggressive limiting of abortion rights. All right. Well, let's dive right in, Jeff. That moment, that Trump moment is now, it's approaching 1 a.m. on the East Coast, and I don't want to torture you guys any longer. I'm getting a little tired myself.
So ultimately, it's all said and done now. Trump's decision not to join the debate, I would say, is largely he felt like he had more to lose than to gain by being on that debate stage. Basically, you know, he ends up looking bad. People land attacks against him when you're this far ahead in the polls. Why take that risk? Ultimately, do we have any sense of how his decision paid off or didn't?
I think my instinct is that it...
probably paid off, uh, only because I, I coming into this, I want to be clear. I said in a number of different places that I wasn't really sure it was wise just from the perspective of giving a lot of other candidates oxygen, because without Trump there, they were going to get to actually talk more. And we saw that. And they did. It was like a real debate. And they did. It was, there was actually a lot of back and forth. It was quite, it was quite good in my opinion. Uh, but,
you know, it was not, it was not stale at all. Uh, but at the end of the day, I, you know, a world where maybe Vivek Ramaswamy, Vivek Ramaswamy is the, the winner. I mean, I don't know. We, we haven't seen pulling on that one who thought who won, but,
That's probably a win for Trump, all things considered. So if he was going to wait and see, maybe play a wait and see game about how these other candidates would perform, get a measure of them and take the opportunity because he has such a big lead to skip Trump.
I guess he was able to do that. Yeah, I agree. Like, you know, I think there was a question going into the debate about how the other candidates would react to Trump's absence. But I think the answer was like they largely ignored him when they could and like talked, you know, got into it with each other. And,
I think, yeah, that validates Trump's decision because if he had been there, he would have been a target more maybe or at least, I mean, maybe not. You know, obviously, clearly we can't predict these things, but we know that at least the reality that did happen, he wasn't much of a target. And yeah, and obviously when you're the front runner, like you can just not bother to show up for things. And like, you know, even if he suffers for that, like he's got a lot of cushion, so...
Sort of to Nathaniel's point, you know, the fact that they were very much in kind of a scrum with each other sort of spoke to the idea that they are fighting to be the alternative candidate to Trump, but they are so far behind him. And it is a situation where you're going to have to maybe pull together a somewhat –
awkward coalition of different types of voters. In a world where Ron DeSantis can hold on to being the main alternative down the road, he needs to win over the people who are willing to vote for Chris Christie. And there are not a ton of them, but he needs them. So that's sort of the challenge here. And the way they were fighting with each other, it's kind of like fighting for the scraps at Trump's table, frankly. Yeah, I was talking to someone today about this primary and how it feels like
We're all just like going through the motions and like there are all these candidates who are like, you know, going to the state fair and like, you know, doing all the things you're supposed to do. But everybody's just kind of ignoring the fact that like Donald Trump is way ahead and like ultimately like who finishes like second through ninth isn't going to matter that much. And something needs to fundamentally change before any of this matters. And like this debate was they were talking on Fox News afterward about like, you know, this felt like just like an undercard debate.
Like, and like, you know, it was, it was a bunch of candidates who like are, unless something dramatically changes, are not going to be the Republican nominee for president. And like, you know, to some extent, why did we just spend two hours doing this? 2028. Yeah. Yeah. That's why.
Well, all of Trump's reporters were around the FISA forum with signs that said, like, VP sweepstakes. Essentially, this is tryouts for the VP position. You know, who's to say? Who's to say, really? Not me. It's too early. But I did have a moment where I left the spin room to go use...
the porta potties, which were outside around the corner in very hot Milwaukee. Um, thanks folks who planned the debate. Um, I promise I would get my complaint in just at the, at the very end of the van. I did some complaining before the podcast began as well, but I know that you're here. Me whining about how hard life is for journalists. Um, you know, some, somebody has to pay for that dominion settlement and, um,
Who knew it was going to be me? But I was like in the, in the port-a-potty thinking like, oh, okay. Like, yeah, this debate is going to end soon.
People will have done just fine, and everyone's going to focus on Donald Trump turning himself in in Fulton County Thursday. I was going to say tomorrow, but it's now officially Thursday. So we will see. We still got five months before the Iowa caucuses, folks. I mean, four and a half months before the Iowa caucuses, folks. Yeah.
You know, I don't know. You can never be too careful in coming to overly confident conclusions. So we shall see. But folks, Jeff, Nathaniel. It's far from over, but it might be over. We just don't know. We will only know if it was over when it was over. And we see that it's over. This is my words of wisdom at 1 a.m. Eastern. Even though it's over, is it ever really over? Great point.
Great point. Okay. So on that note, Jeff, Nathaniel, thank you so much. This has been a blast. Good night, Kaelin. Sweet dreams in your hotel. I hope you find your headphones. Me too. I was losing my mind. In addition to complaining, I was also losing my mind because I can see on my phone that my AirPods are in this hotel room, but I have no idea where they are. And I have checked literally every,
Um,
I hate that feeling. Anyway, I don't have a script in front of me, so let's see if I can just do this off the top of my head. First and foremost, Tony's on vacation. So, Tony, I hope you're enjoying vacation. But Cameron Chertavian is here in the control room, virtual control room. He's also editing this podcast today. So thank you, Cameron. You're a hero because I'm going to go to sleep when this is done. So thank you. If you'd like to get in touch with us, you can email us at podcasts at 538.com. You can also tweet at us or...
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