Fox News put on a Republican presidential debate with enough moments of edification and entertainment to justify the ticket price. But the absence of the front-runner deprived that debate of its natural focal point.
The candidates were almost entirely aligned, and sensible, on the subject of education. It’s always nice to be reminded of the uselessness (at best) of the Department of Education, school choice had universal support, and Vivek Ramaswamy had a characteristically articulate comment about the indispensability of two-parent families.
When the candidates disagreed, the conversation got muddled. Discussion of U.S. policy toward Ukraine started off badly, with a show-of-hands question about aid. (No hand gesture could convey the only truly correct answer: “My policy will depend on circumstances in January 2025.”) It then devolved into dueling nonsense, with Chris Christie insisting that Russia will attack us next if allowed to win and Ramaswamy laughing off Russian atrocities. Ron DeSantis gave an answer — no aid unless Europeans do more — that will probably satisfy none of the main camps of American opinion.
Sometimes the actual point of disagreement was elusive. Mike Pence and Nikki Haley both seemed to agree in principle that the federal government should prohibit abortion after 15 weeks. Haley emphasized that such a ban would require building consensus, and Pence that it would take leadership; why these ideas should be set in opposition to each other remained as unclear at the end of their exchange as at its beginning.
Trump wasn’t there. He has defended his no-show on the ground that he is winning the polls handily. (Polls are fake only when he loses them.) None of his supposed rivals — not even Christie, who lashed into him on other issues — criticized him over it. Nobody was so gauche as to dwell on the fact that Trump lost the 2020 election.
DeSantis expressed a desire to “move on” from controversies over January 6. But that can’t happen if Trump is the Republican nominee in 2024. Trump won’t move on, and neither will the Democrats. For some reason, DeSantis failed to make the obvious point: Moving on from January 6 therefore requires moving on from Trump. Republican voters may not be willing to do that. They surely won’t if none of Trump’s rivals ask them to.